Friday, September 12, 2014
Why The U.S. Chills Its Eggs And Most Of The World Doesn't by RAE ELLEN BICHELL September 11, 2014
Why The U.S. Chills Its Eggs And Most Of The World Doesn'tby RAE ELLEN BICHELL
To refrigerate or not to refrigerate? It boils down to bacteria,
aesthetics and how much energy you're willing to use.Robert S. Donovan; Flickr / Alex Barth; FlickrGo in search of eggs in most foreign countries and you might
encounter a strange scene: eggs on a shelf or out in the open
air, nowhere near a refrigerator.Shock and confusion may
ensue. What are they doing there? And are they safe to eat?
We Americans, along with the Japanese, Australians and
Scandinavians, tend to be squeamish about our chicken
eggs, so we bathe them and then have to refrigerate them.
But we're oddballs. Most other countries don't mind letting
unwashed eggs sit next to bread or onions.The difference
boils down to two key things: how to go after bacteria that
could contaminate them, and how much energy we're
willing to use in the name of safe eggs.The
SaltThink You Know How To Cook Eggs?
Chances Are You're Doing It WrongTo
understand when the rift happened, let's
rewind. About a hundred years ago, many people
around the world washed their eggs. But there are
a lot of ways to do it wrong, so the method got a
bad reputation in certain parts of the world. A batch
of rotten eggs, which had been washed in Australia,
left a bad impression on its British importers.By
1970, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had
perfected the art of the wash with the help of fancy
machines, and it required all egg producers to do it.
Meanwhile, many European countries were prohibiting
washing, and Asian countries never got on board with
it. The exception was Japan, which joined the
egg-washers after a bad spate of salmonella in
the 1990s.So what's the deal with washing and
refrigeration? Soon after eggs pop out of the
chicken, American producers put them straight
to a machine that shampoos them with
soap and hot water. The steamy shower leaves
the shells squeaky clean. But it also compromises
them, by washing away a barely visible sheen that
naturally envelops each egg."The egg is a marvel
in terms of protecting itself, and one of the protections
is this coating, which prevents them from being
porous," says food writer Michael Ruhlman, author
of Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World's Most
Versatile Ingredient.
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The coating is like a little safety vest
for the egg, keeping water and oxygen in and bad bacteria
out. Washing can damage that layer and "increase the
chances for bacterial invasion" into pores or hairline
cracks in the shell, according to Yi Chen, a food scientist
at Purdue University. So we spray eggs with oil to
prevent bacteria from getting in, and refrigerate
them to keep microorganisms at bay.
The SaltChickens That Lay Organic Eggs
Eat Imported Food, And It's PriceyWhy go to
the trouble of washing eggs? A lot of it has to
do with fear of salmonella."It just sort of seeped into
our culture that chickens are dirty, or crawling with
bacteria," says Ruhlman. (The Salt stumbled into this
when our post started a #chickens*$!storm.)
Salmonella enteritidis can infect a chicken's
ovaries, contaminating a yolk before the shell
firms up around it. Cooking usually kills the bacteria
before they can harm you; still, eggs contaminated
with salmonella are responsible for about 142,000
illnesses a year in the U.S.,according to the Food
and Drug Administration.In some European countries,
egg-laying hens are vaccinated against salmonella. In
the U.S., vaccination is not required, but eggs must be
washed and refrigerated from farm to store, and
producers must follow a host of other safety measures.
"They're different approaches to basically achieve
the same result," says Vincent Guyonnet, a poultry
veterinarian and scientific adviser to the International
Egg Commission. "We don't have massive [food
safety] issues on either side of the Atlantic. Both
methods seem to work."The important thing, he
says, is to be consistent."Once you start refrigeration,
you have to have it through the whole value chain,
from farm to store. Because if you stop — if the
eggs are cold and you put them in a warm
environment — they're going to
start sweating," says Guyonnet.
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No one wants sweaty eggs. They can
get moldy. Another perk of consistent refrigeration
is shelf life: It jumps from about 21 days to almost
50 days.In a lot of countries, constant refrigeration
just isn't possible because it's simply too costly.
"Some of the countries cannot afford cold storage
during the whole supply chain," says Chen.And
as for why the U.S. and Europe developed such
different attitudes about washing, it's also hard
to tease apart how much is about safety versus
egg aesthetics."In North America, we like to have
everything superclean. So they probably initiated
the washing of the egg very early on," leading
down the refrigeration path, says Guyonnet.But
in a lot of places, "a dirty egg with poop on it is
no big deal. You brush it off when you get home,"
says Guyonnet, who was raised in France and now
lives in Canada.A 38-country survey by the International
Egg Commission found that people feel strongly
about how their eggs should look. The Irish,
French, Czechs, Hungarians, Portuguese,
Nigerians and Brits hanker for brown eggs.
Canadians, Finns, Americans and Indians
prefer white shells. Dutchmen and Argentines
don't seem to care.
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