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chick to breathe, but the porous egg shell still lets gases in and out very slowly, gradually
deteriorating the quality of the egg itself. At cooler temperatures deterioration is even slower.
It is the egg shell that allows the egg to remain viable in a non-refrigerated nest for a
week or two before the hen is satisfied there are enough to make incubating them worth her
while. The shells themselves have a protective coating to keep harmful microbes out, too. The
washing process in the egg factories also removes that protective coating, but processors replace
it with a thin film of oil to retard the exchange of gases and loss of moisture, thus extend
shelflife.
Egg Nutrition
Eggs are one of the few nearly complete foods for a human body—nature designed them
to be the sole source of food and nutrients to the fast-growing chick embryo. Their protein
content is high, 13 percent (or 6 grams in each large egg). Even the egg shell is nutritious, 96
percent calcium carbonate, an essential element for building human bones (but how do we eat
it?). If the kids get upset with bits of egg shell in their scrambled eggs, assure them that you are
just trying to help them build strong bones.
Once a favorite breakfast food in the Anglo-Saxon world, egg consumption has steadily
declined since the 1950s. Americans ate 402 eggs apiece annually in 1945 (1.1/day). By 1991 per
capita consumption had dropped to 234 (0.6/day), but it is slowly rising again. In 1998 the
annual consumption is 255 eggs. The major reason for the decline is all that cholesterol in the
yolk, a health concern to many people today. A large egg contains an average of 215 milligrams
of cholesterol. Its total fat content is a moderate 5 grams or 10 percent of each egg. All the
cholesterol and fat are in the yolk.
TASTINGS. What’s Inside the Shell
Water
Protein
Fat
Vitamins
11.6%
0.2%
Minerals +
Whole
White
Yolk
65.5%
88.0%
48.0%
11.8%
11.0%
17.5%
11.7%
0.8%
2.0%
32.5%
Food scientists are working feverishly to reduce the cholesterol level of eggs, attacking
the problem on several levels. One approach is to cut down on the development of cholesterol
before the hen produces the egg. Biologists are putting laying hens on special diets to do that.
Another approach is to chemically remove some of the cholesterol after the hen lays the
egg. If we can take the caffeine out of coffee beans, surely we can reduce the amount of
cholesterol in eggs to a tolerable level. It is just a matter of time. But to do this, biochemists have
to remove the eggs from the shells and add chemicals that bind with the cholesterol, then remove
the chemical together with the cholesterol. This part was easy. They ran into problem getting the
eggs back into their original containers after they reduced the cholesterol. At this time they can
only market the low-cholesterol eggs as scrambled or separated into yolks and whites.
Genetic alteration of the hens is another approach they are working on. In early 1995, a
small egg farm in the Milwaukee area introduced “designer” eggs with 25 percent less fat and 25
percent lower cholesterol using this technique.
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