Maybe Eggs Should Have Been a Luxury Food All Along

"cheap foods" often have a hidden cost ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash

Are you stick about hearing about eggs yet? It’s seemingly impossible to move through this world with out encountering a headline or conversation about egg prices these days. Thanks to the outbreak of the avian flu, which has killed 17.2 million egg-laying chickens in November and December alone, the price of eggs is at an all time high, grocery stores are placing limits on how much can be purchased, and restaurants and bakeries are struggling with their new normal.

The American obsession with the egg runs deep — after all the average adult in this country eats nearly 280 eggs a year. (I am sure that number is only climbing rapidly thanks to the chokehold protein currently has on the American diet.) And it makes sense: eggs have long been seen as a versatile and cheap source of nutrients. Eggs are seen as a staple at breakfast — scrambled, fried, poached — and show up regularly through out the day in dishes like egg salad sandwiches, fried rice, deviled eggs, and baked goods.

A dozen large eggs in the United States on average, between 1995 and 2024, cost less than $2. That number is now well past $4 a dozen and climbing. But, it’s a cruel system that allows eggs to be cheap with several hidden costs.

In the wild, chickens might lay an average of 12-24 eggs a year. On the giant factory farms, they are bread to lay almost and egg a day, or over 300 eggs per year. These unnatural cycle takes a huge toll on their bodies cause all sorts of medical issues and most of these chickens are only able to lay eggs at this capacity until they are about 72 weeks old (or about a 1.5 years) before they are shipped off to be slaughtered.

This is not to mention the other horrors including the fact that all the male chickens are killed off at birth and the living conditions the hens are kept in: the more chickens you cram into a space, the more money you can make. The most cost-effective type is called a battery cage, where chickens are unable to fully sit, much less spread their wings or walk around (this type of cage is now outlawed in the European Union and a handful of states like California and Michigan.)

It’s these terrible, claustrophobic, and cluttered environments on commodity farms that allow diseases like the avian flu to spread so rapidly. This was always a system teetering on the brink — and this latest outbreak is only highlighting that.

What about cage-free and free-range eggs you might ask? They are varying degrees kinder — chickens have room to roam, their diets might be better — but that also comes at a higher price point for customers. The best eggs are the ones raised by small farms, where the chickens live long, happy lives, fed a nutritious diet, and aren’t forced to produce eggs at unnatural rate. The lack of cruelty also comes with sticker shock for many. It’s not uncommon for eggs at the farmers market to cost $6-$8 a dozen, or more.

The good eggs, the ethical eggs, the eggs raised with the most humane farming practices that are kind to both the chicken and the farm workers have always been more expensive.

Ultimately, this spike in egg prices speaks to a larger issues at hand, too, which is that in America we fail to really understand the true cost of food. Our grocery store packaging and our obsession with convenience sanitizes what it really takes to grow produce, or raise chickens, gather a gallon of milk, or collect eggs and get them to store shelves.

Not only do we need more general awareness and education around our food system, there also needs to be a growing acceptance that as the climate changes, so will our staples. In fact, some of our staple foods need to change now if we have any hope of mitigating and reversing the effects that climate change has already had. It means a shift away from commodity meat and dairy to more regenerative practices. To do this means an uptick in cost — that meat and dairy should be thought of more as a luxury good than a daily staple. That our staples really need to be drought-resistant and nutrient dense crops like buckwheat and beans and seasonal, more local, produce.

We have shifted staples into luxuries before: just look at lobsters and oysters, both of which used to be considered cheap foods are now some of the most expensive luxury items out there thanks to overfishing. So why can’t we do it again? Egg and cheese sandwiches do not need to go the way of lobster rolls and cost $24 each, but perhaps they shouldn’t be a fast-food breakfast item at $3 a sandwich, either.

How much do you usually pay for eggs? Would love to know in the comments.