Why Europeans Don't Refrigerate Their Eggs | Hacker News Reader

Why Europeans Don't Refrigerate Their Eggs

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44 pointsTurukawa77 comments

Oh look, it's another American who thinks Europe is a single cultural entity.

I'm European and I've never seen an unrefrigerated egg in my life.

Agreed, I'm European and I've never seen a refrigerated egg in my life.

I'm an Austrian living in Austria, and I used to put my eggs in the fridge. Then I stopped doing that because my spouse thinks they absorb the smell of the fridge and now I don't.

The store I usually buy my eggs from doesn't store them in a fridge. Other stores do.

Most eggs I buy at the supermarket don't seem to be washed or sanitized.

I think some supermarkets fridge their eggs, some don't here in The Netherlands. However, I have never seen anyone not fridge their eggs at home. In fact, it seems crazy gross to me to keep eggs outside of the fridge at room temperature. I wouldn't want to eat an egg that wasn't stored "properly" (i.e., our definition of properly). This is probably entirely irrational, but there it is.

Interestingly, the 'official' Dutch storage advice for eggs [1] states they are to be kept in the fridge, because it reduces the risk of salmonella and makes sure they dry out less quickly.

[1] http://www.voedingscentrum.nl/encyclopedie/eieren.aspx

Counter anecdote: I am dutch and never keep my eggs in the fridge.

Ditto

At the supermarkets in South Africa they're not refrigerated. So I buy these unrefrigerated eggs and bring them home to put them into the fridge, because that's how I was raised

The problem is my fridge can only hold about a dozen eggs but I buy them in trays of 48. The ones that can't fit have to fend for themselves outside in the cupboard. I eat eggs from the fridge, and bring reinforcements in from the cupboard to replace the eaten ones.

This whole process strikes me as absurd (especially since I recall a chef at a cooking class saying that it's preferable to cook things at room temperature) but I do it anyway. Where do I fit in?

If you put some in the fridge and some not, I'd definitely start eating the ones not in the fridge first, and slowly move the ones in the fridge out of the fridge well before you use them. They're better to cook with if they're at room temperature.

It's best to keep the eggs in the carton they came in anyway[0]. Do refrigerators there still come with those silly egg "holders?"

[0]-http://eggs.ab.ca/recipes-tips/handling-storage

I am English. It never even occured to me that people would put eggs in the fridge.

Yes, eggs absorb odours and so a bad idea to keep them in the fridge.

What did you think the egg holder in the fridge was for ?

However, I have never seen anyone not fridge their eggs at home

That is just a cultural/educational thing. For a first-timer you could visit me, or my entire family for that matter, in Belgium. That's not too far away. Eggs never go in the fridge here. But I know people that put them in the fridge as well.

Even if we get them in a store where they are cooled, we don't put them in the fridge afterwards. And if we get them fresh from our chicken we just mark the date on them and put them in an egg-box in a normal room. Without washing nor removing the occasional small amounts of dried up faeces on them. We also have a tendency to try to figure out how long an egg stays well. Record is something like 6 weeks :P

I'm in Czech republic and I generally keep eggs in fridge, but I have seen people who keep eggs in some other "dark and cold place" (eg. bread-room), but nobody I know stores eggs just in the open. On a similar note everyone here seems to have different opinion as to whether should frying oil be kept in fridge or not.

I've never seen a Dutch supermarket keep eggs refridgerated, and putting them in the fridge at home seems like a custom from a distant past. I know that when I was young, fridges did have a little egg tray, but I don't know anyone who keeps their eggs in the fridge nowadays.

And it's better for the egg not to. You can use it right away if you don't keep it refridgerated. A cold egg behaves different in cooking (though I forgot the details), so you have to take it out of the fridge 10 minutes before you use it.

To me, the clincher is that supermarkets don't store their eggs in the fridge. If refridgeration was important, supermarkets would be required to do that. Also, despite refridgerating their eggs, the US seems to have a lot of salmonella cases.

(Northern) China here.

Eggs sold unrefrigerated and unwashed. Almost exclusively refrigerated at home. Eggs are invariably cooked thoroughly; the suggestion of a runny or even moist yolk is traditionally met with confused looks and fears of food poisoning.

Brooding of poultry is not permitted in most cities/towns/areas with apartments, but considered normal in rural areas (places with gardens).

I understand the freshness / verifiability of freshness of a chicken egg is easily determined by how easy it is to peel after being hard-boiled: thin, hard to peel (i.e. without indenting the white) shell is a sign of a fresh egg, thick and easy to peel shell indicates an older egg.

Japan here. People refrigerate eggs, but often eat them raw over rice. In summer, raw egg take away, is usually stopped. eg. http://www.yoshinoya.com/menu/sidemenu/index.html You can see it on the menu there as "Talk away ok" but underneath it says from 6/1 ～9/30 no take away.

Interesting. When you say over rice, is the served rice hot enough to partially cook it? I love a raw egg over Korean style 'banfan' where rice is cooked in an iron bowl, and raw egg and beef / fish are mixed in at serving time (at the table), together with salad style vegetables.

Nope, just a bowl of rice with a raw egg blobbed on top. Add some soy sauce and there you go!

http://m.youtube.com/results?q=卵かけごはん

Britain ≠ Europe. In Denmark most supermarkets refrigerate eggs and some don't.

In France eggs are not refrigerated. Also the refrigeration can cause condensation, and water outside of the egg can cause the infection.

Not refrigerated in France either.

In Spain, supermarkets never refrigerate eggs, but they are refrigerated when they are bought by customers.

Some customers.

Not refrigerated in many parts of Mexico and Latin America either.

Belgium also no refrigeration...

In Turkey, there is no refrigeration either.

I do often see the notion that 'UK is Europe', particularly by American media; and that if something is true in the UK, it's probably true in the rest of Europe, so they often don't bother checking.

Because, sure, we all drive on the left.

Most of europe drives on the right, or was that the joke?

Yes, that was a joke. We make fun of UK for driving on the wrong side too sometimes.

That was the joke.

It's unfortunately, not uncommon for stories to describe something Europeans do (when they really mean Britons), that I seldom can relate to, until I realise they are only using the UK as a sample. Although, I should point out, that sometimes it's other countries used as basis for what Europeans do (say France or Germany), when it might be exclusive to either two countries (or a subset of European countries, say Southern European).

I also notice this in release dates for video games,[0] often a UK release date is published, when they really mean a European release date. (Although, to be fair to Canada, I often see US release dates, when they mean North American.)

[0] The same pattern isn't necessarily true for music, film and book releases, because they don't have so wide releases as video games usually have.

That was irony, which is used often by Europeans.

But people still store them in the fridge after they get back home!

No refrigeration of eggs here in Switzerland.

I'm Danish. I've also worked in something like 5 different supermarkets and naturally shopped in many, many more. I have _never_ seen a supermarket that doesn't refrigerate them. Which supermarkets don't?

Also Danish eggs aren't washed, they are however salmonella free.

How could you possibly know that

He checks them. All of them.

Your comment prompted me to ask DuckDuckGo that exact question, where I found a quite interesting report on the prevelance of salmonella in eggs: http://multimedia.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/fsis5004report...

Some take-aways:

The overall UK finding was that 9 samples (0.34%) were contaminated with Salmonella , which is equivalent to approximately 1 in every 290 “boxes” of 6 eggs.

Factors that might have influenced whether or not eggs were contaminated with Salmonella were also examined. However, where differences were found these tended to be small and much larger sample sizes would have been required to demonstrate a statistically significant difference.

There was no statistically significant difference between the prevalence of Salmonella contamination in samples purchased in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland; or between the prevalence of Salmonella contamination in samples from different egg production types; or between non-Lion code eggs and Lion code eggs; or between eggs that were stored chilled or at ambient temperature.

However, there was a statistically significant higher prevalence of Salmonella contamination of eggs from medium sized retailers* than large retail outlets.

*independent/local shops

The Danish poultry farmers have been working extremely hard to eradicate salmonella. They do have some small insentive though. If you can prove that your countries chicks do not have salmonella, then the EU allows you to ban import chicks from countries that cannot make the same guarantees. This frees Danish poultry farmers from competing with German or eastern European farmers. The same laws applies to eggs, so throwing huge investments into figthing salmonella pays of in the long run.

Food safety in Denmark, and the rest of Scandinavia is a huge deal, but it's expensive.

http://sciencenordic.com/no-more-salmonella-danish-poultry

How it's actually ensured: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2014/03/contamina...

> If you can prove that your countries chicks do not have salmonella, then the EU allows you to ban import chicks from countries that cannot make the same guarantees. This frees Danish poultry farmers from competing with German or eastern European farmers. The same laws applies to eggs, so throwing huge investments into figthing salmonella pays of in the long run.

That is a very clever, possibly even devious, way of fighting salmonella. Shield the ones who do it right from competitions by the ones who do it wrong. Maybe we should do that in more industries to get everybody to step up their game.

No refrigeration of eggs in stores in Ireland. When we get them home the leprechauns immediately steal them from the shopping bags so we have no idea whether we'd keep them in the fridge or not, pesky leprechauns.

Where have you seen non-refrigerated eggs in Denmark? I have never seen that.

For some background, egg production briefly became a political football in the UK in the 1980s. A government minister correctly but unwisely said that a majority of eggs were infected with salmonella. She promptly lost her job, but behind the scenes, egg production was transformed. So this subject has probably been addressed here in the UK with much greater scrutiny than it may have been elsewhere.

I knew this already, but when I heard this I was amazed about the eggs being washed in the US. I heard this at a factory which creates egg-sorting-machines (If you want to see awesome egg handling machines: check this [1].)

For the US they created a special module to wash the eggs. In the Netherlands (where I live) this is unheard off. Even at moba they where like WTF :)

Another fun fact is: our eggs are stored outside the fridge in the stores, but in many house holds the eggs are stored in the refrigerator. Most refrigerators have those plastic containers for eggs. Same goes for cheese. Cheese shops store the cheese outside the refrigerator, a lot of households put it in the refrigerator again.

What also strikes me, is the fact that in big parts of europe, having so many chickens on a m2 is not allowed anymore. Instead of laying houses we have free-range systems. It's quite funny technology (like washing eggs) has to solve a problem which didn't exist if we respected nature just a bit more.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=moba+egg

In the UK I believe a good amount of people do keep eggs in the fridge when they get them home from the supermarket. Like yours, our fridges have the plastic containers for eggs.

Similar in New Zealand: refrigerated at home, not in the supermarket.

Just a note: cheese shops store hard unsliced cheese outside the refrigerator. Sliced and soft cheese is refrigerated pretty much everywhere.

(and I prefer to think about the chicken thing more as respect for other sentients, not "nature". But that's just a nitpick).

EDIT: oh, and back in Poland people also store bought eggs in the refrigerator.

EDIT: also, after reading contradictory statements from Belgians: by Netherlands I mean Noord-Holland, by Poland I mean, um, Warsaw. Though I think it's by regulation in Poland.

In Germany, I haven't seen any refrigerated eggs in supermarkets. But they do have two dates, one after which they should be refrigerated, and one "best before" date. (And like in the UK, they aren't washed).

So it seems that refrigeration isn't necessary for the first two weeks or so of an egg's life time, at least if not washed.

I usually check them in water[1] rather than look at "best before" date.

[1] http://www.tammileetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Good-...

In Norway we refrigerate them. And often eat them months after expiration date.

The outside temperature in India is roughly double that of any European country. India - the fifth largest producer of eggs in the world doesnt use refrigeration because... well, there is none.

And inspite of all that, there is very little spoilage - nature designed them well.

Unfortunately all the comments erupted into an argument as to the definition of Europe. I live in London, and guess what, London happens to be in Europe. Therefore the English are European.

The article is written for a US audience, and does not need to distinguish every European country, but they still did:

"It seems that different egg storage conditions come down to the different ways that eggs are farmed and processed in the U.S. compared to the U.K. and other European nations.

As for the eggs, I don't remember ever seeing unrefrigerated eggs in Slovenia, Italy, Bosnia, Croatia, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Germany and France, but I haven't been in the UK yet.

And markets in Slovenia must have eggs refrigerated.

Translated from http://www.uradni-list.si/1/content?id=45033 "Eggs must be cooled under 5C, except during transportation when they can be at more than 5C, but no more than 24 hours."

I live in the UK now, and coming from Slovenia I still keep my eggs in the fridge when I bring them home. They are not friged in the store though.

I've never seen eggs in the UK refrigerated. I used to live in NZ and Australia and don't remember seeing eggs in the fridge in either of those places either. I'm pretty positive they don't keep their eggs in the fridge.

You're wrong about Portugal at least. All supermarket chains I can think of keep the eggs in unrefrigerated shelves - usually near the milk "tetrapack" shelves which are also unrefrigerated.

I have not seen refrigerated eggs in any supermarket here in Spain

The headline obscures the real point of the article. In the UK we don't need to refrigerate our eggs at the point of production (or spray them with chemicals) because our chickens and eggs are much healthier due to superior and more sanitory production methods than those prevalent in the USA. And so eggs are almost always sold at room temperature and usually refrigerated at home. And, as others have noted, the UK is not synonymous with Europe.

UK chicken product at sale: about 5% salmonella and about 50% campylobacter.

http://multimedia.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/campsalmsurvey...

That doesn't feel particularly low risk to me.

UK chickens are not clean, which is why there are strict laws for commercial handling of raw meats and a lot of advice for domestic handling of raw meat, especially chicken.

It was a surprise for me when I moved to London from Croatia, when I saw that eggs are not refrigerated in the shops, and most people keep it that way at home too. Back home they are always kept in fridges both in shops and at home, and fridges regularly come with specially designed egg-holders that are sometimes even built into the doors and can't be removed.

Oh, damn. I guess I missed that memo from the Council of Things All Europeans Must Do. Does this mean I'm not a proper european?

I'm English and never refrigerate my eggs. I'm an avid cook and I find eggs stored at room temperature are easier to work with - beating egg whites is easier, fewer broken eggs when frying/poaching (as there is a smaller change in temperature), and cold eggs can make batters and mixtures appear lumpy where the cold makes the fat harden

The ONLY reason I've ever put eggs in the fridge is because my fridge has an egg tray...

I tend to put my shopping in similar places as where the supermarket had put them, so things I buy out of the fridge go in the fridge at home, and things I buy at room temperature go into my pantry at home... except for the eggs, they go into the egg tray in the fridge!

In Hungary we either refrigerate them or not. In most houses there is a "cool room" ("kamra" in hungarian) where we keep food which are not so sensitive to the lack of refrigeration. In the dorm we don't have that so I just put the eggs in the fridge.

See also this article from a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5325540

"Why American Eggs Would Be Illegal in a European Supermarket (and vice versa)"

It would be nice if the article included a comparison of the number of instances of salmonella food poisoning with one system versus the other system.

You can describe and argue why one method might be better than the other, but nothing beats hard numbers.

In Finland, eggs are not refrigerated in stores but in the fridges at home, there's usually a specific tray for eggs. People seem to store their eggs at home in the fridge. I sometimes do, sometimes don't.

I'd really like to know the incidence of salmonella poisoning per capita, normalised by the number of fresh eggs sold, to compare how these policies actually affect the thing we're concerned about.

From the article, it looks like we're talking about two very different systems. Specifically, [1] refrigeration, [2] free-range versus laying houses and [2] mandatory vaccinations. You would likely need data from a range of countries to even begin to see which policies are most effective by data analysis.

Cambodia here, nobody refrigerates eggs. I've hard boiled eggs that have been sitting out for a week or two -- I can't tell any difference.

Croatia 100% refrigerated. From what I've seen in Austria and Slovakia also are refrigerated ...

We refrigerate them in Belgium as well. What a shit article.

Just a few comments above yours:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8029979

"Belgium also no refrigeration..."

Insert joke about Belgian unity here.

It is amazing how many comments in this thread say "we do x in y" based on solely personal experience - HN crowd should now better than that, no? (please check my comment in response to thomholwerda https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8030089 - Belgians do both)

In Italy some supermarkets refrigerate them, some not. I personally refrigerate them at home.

Shouldn't "Europeans" in the title be renamed to "Brits"?

In Poland we keep eggs in the fridge, be it home or market.

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