Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Eggs

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Every day around the world, over a billion eggs are consumed.  Eggs have become a staple food product used both by itself and as an ingredient in other products.  Humans have been consuming eggs of one sort or another for thousands of years, and today, there is a whole system around the production and consumption of eggs that most people are totally unaware of.  Learn more about eggs, their history, and how they are produced and consumed today on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors BetterHelp Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month ButcherBox Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free steak for a year and get $20 off."  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every day around the world, over a billion eggs are consumed. Eggs have become a staple food product used both by itself and as an ingredient in other products. Humans and our ancestors have been consuming eggs of one sort or another for millions of years. And today, there's a whole system around the production and consumption of eggs that most people are totally unaware of. Learn more about eggs, their history, and how they're produced on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. For most of this episode, I'm going to be talking about chicken eggs because they are overwhelmingly the most popular type of eggs consumed today. However, chickens are far from the only animal that produces eggs. Edible eggs, and here I'm referring to bird eggs, not eggs from reptiles fish, or monotrim mammals, are a result of a biological quirk where some birds will lay eggs regardless of whether or not they are fertilized. Not every bird will exhibit this behavior, and even if a bird does it, it may not do it that often in the wild. Every bird egg will have a shell,

usually consisting of calcium carbonate. In the case of chickens, a shell is 95 to 97% calcium carbonate, the same substance that makes up seashells, coral, and limestone. Under the shell is a thin membrane followed by the albumin, more commonly known as the egg white, which surrounds the vitellus, known as the yolk. An egg contains everything required to make a full bird, including protein, fats, and a host of micronutrients.

Human consumption of eggs is believed to date back millions of years to our earliest hominid ancestors. They would look for birds' nests that had eggs in it and steal them. If you remember back to my episode on the history of the chicken, they were originally domesticated in China and or Southeast Asia about 8,000 years ago. It's believed that chickens were domesticated for their eggs, not their meat. And this makes total sense, as an egg-laying chicken can produce far more calories via egg-lux. laying over its life than it can if it's harvested just once. To this extent, the origin of eggs is very similar to the origin of milk and dairy products. Other birds such as ducks and quails

were quasi-domesticated early on, but it was the chicken that became the most popular source of eggs because of their size and laying habits. Via selective breeding, it was possible to get chickens that produced more eggs year-round. Eggs were consumed in ancient Greece, Egypt, China, and in Rome. In fact, in high-end Roman banquets, the first course was traditionally based around eggs. This necessitated the creation of recipes that used eggs as a main ingredient. Eggs remained a regularly consumed food stuff for centuries, both in the old world and then later in the new. During this time, egg production was mostly a small affair on small farms, although there were some monasteries in other places that focused on egg production. In 1878, dried egg meal was created in St. Louis, Missouri.

a process that was popularized during the Second World War to ship eggs to soldiers in the field without fear of spoilage or breaking. In 1911, a Canadian by the name of Joseph Coyle invented the egg carton, or as it's known in some Commonwealth countries, an egg box. Coil developed the egg carton to solve a dispute between an egg producer and a hotel that complained about eggs being delivered broken. It wasn't until the 1950s that there was a revolution in egg production, with the development of battery cages. Battery cages place individual chickens inside of small cages with the cages stacked on top of each other, dramatically increasing the density of chickens in an egg facility. Conveyor belts would carry away manure, bring feed to the chickens, and allow for eggs to roll down a slope to be collected. These battery cage systems were able to increase egg production dramatically,

but there were ethical concerns about raising chickens in such small spaces. Many countries have banned their use or are in the process of phasing them out. Today, eggs are a big business. In 2022, 87 million metric tons of eggs were produced worldwide. Assuming the average chicken egg has a weight of 50 grams, that would mean that there were 1.7 trillion eggs laid last year. That is, 212 eggs per person per year, although much of that goes into baked goods and other processed foods.

So with that being said, there is a lot of basic things about eggs that most people don't realize. and the first has to do with how eggs are stored and sold. For those of you listening to this podcast all over the world, it's highly likely that all of the eggs sold near you are either always refrigerated or they are never refrigerated. Most people don't realize that it's done differently in other countries. In the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan, eggs are almost always refrigerated.

In Europe and most other countries, eggs are never refrigerated. It doesn't seem like there would be such a division. Either one or the other would be the safe way to store and sell eggs. And obviously for centuries, there was no refrigeration, so people managed to store eggs just fine without it. The difference in egg storage has to do with salmonella, a disease that can be transmitted through chickens. After an outbreak of salmonella in the 1970s, the United States instituted a policy of cleaning eggs soon after they're laid. They're cleaned with hot water and soap to remove a very very very important. thin natural covering on an egg known as a cuticle. The cuticle normally provides a barrier for the

egg which protects it from water, air, and bacteria. Without the cuticle, it's necessary to do something to inhibit bacterial growth. This system of egg washing and refrigeration was adopted in Japan, Australia, and Canada as well. In other countries, such as most of Europe, they took the exact opposite approach. They prohibited egg washing to keep the cuticle intact, thus protecting the egg. With the cuticle intact, there's no need to refrigerate the egg. Both methods can work as seen by the large number of eggs consumed in both refrigerated and non-refrigerated countries. Each system has its pluses and minuses. Refrigerated eggs can last longer, about 50 days rather than just 21. on. However, refrigerated eggs can absorb odors and flavors from other foods that they're

refrigerated with, and many people say that eggs at room temperature just taste better. If you get eggs from a farmer's market that aren't refrigerated, then you probably don't need to refrigerate them. One thing you may have noticed about eggs is that they sometimes have different colored shells. White is popular and brown is not uncommon. However, there can be speckled egg shells and even blue egg shells. Shell color has nothing to do with the inside of the egg, including its taste and nutritional profile. Shell colors have more to do with the breed of chicken, genetics, and diet. There are some cultural preferences for certain shell colors, but it's really just that, a preference. Fun fact, because eggshells are mostly calcium carbonate, you can actually

dissolve an egg shell in vinegar, and the result is a raw egg which is held together by the very thin membrane that's under the shell. The white of an egg is translucent and only turns white when it's cooked. The egg white is mostly water with about 10% protein. The yolk of an egg is where almost all of the nutrients in an egg are and where the biggest difference in eggs can be found. Chickens that are fed a strict grain diet tend to have light colored more yellowish yolks. Chickens which are allowed to forage naturally and have an omnivorous diet will have darker yolks. On rare occasion, an egg can have more than one yoke. Double yoke eggs tend to be laid by younger or older hens, but certain breeds are more likely to have double yokes as well.

The odds of getting a double yoke egg have been reported to be about one in a thousand, and the odds of a triple yoke are estimated to be about one in 25 million. The Guinness Book of World's Records has determined the most yolks in a single egg to be nine. The record egg was found by Diana Hainsworth of Hainsworth Poultry Farms located in Mount Morris, New York in July of 1971. When you're buying eggs, at least in the United States, there are several things to look for on the carton. And the first thing that will be listed is the grade of the egg. Eggs can have one of three grades, double A, A, and B. The grade of an egg is determined by the shell and the yolk. A double A grade egg will have an unblemished shell and a firm

round yolk with no spots of blood inside. The yolk can be analyzed via a device known as an egg candler, which is really just a bright light that can shine through the egg, giving you an outline of what's inside. A single-a-grade egg is not that much different from a double-A egg. The yolk is perhaps a bit less defined, and there may be some minor blemishes on the shell. The biggest difference between a double-A and a single-A is aesthetics. A B-grade egg, however, is very different. There might be a hairline for. fracture in the shell, meat or blood spots inside the egg, and other defects. Great B eggs are almost never sold directly to consumers.

They're perfectly edible, but they're usually sold to commercial operators who would use them in bulk. And if there's anything worse than a B grade, it'll usually be destroyed. Another thing you'll find on most egg cartons is a size. Eggs have six size classifications. Peawee, small, medium, large, extra large, and jumbo. The size classifications are actually made via weighing the egg, not by measuring the size or volume. However, the odds are that an egg will have a larger volume, the more it weighs.

The final thing that you'll find on a carton of eggs is something that isn't nearly as defined or regulated, the living conditions of the chicken. If there is nothing whatsoever on the package, then the odds are that the chickens were raised in a very small cage of only about 67 square inches. The chickens were also only fed a diet of corn or soy, and this is how the vast majority of commercial eggs are produced. The next term, which is rather deceptive, is the term cage-free. Cage-free sounds like the chicken is just able to walk around a farm field all day. In reality, a cage-free chicken will probably never be outside and see sunlight. They have a space of approximately 1.2 square feet allotted to them, only slightly larger than

cage chickens. They might not be in a cage because they're just walking around in a crowded area indoors with other chickens. The next type is free-range chicken eggs. Free range again evokes certain images, but in reality it's probably not that different from the environment cage-free birds are raised in, except they get a bit more space on average and have some access to the outdoors. The final and most expensive type of egg are pasture-raised eggs. Paster-raised eggs are pretty much what you would expect. Chickens have vastly more space, often 100 square feet per bird, and are almost always outside and have a more varied diet because they can peck and scratch the ground.

None of these four terms to describe the living environments of chickens are legally defined, nor are they strictly enforceable. eggs are enormously popular and widely consumed. And what we do today is simply the modern version of what our hominid ancestors did, who would often steal eggs out of a bird's nest whenever they could find them. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon.

Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified of future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.