You don’t need to refrigerate eggs

You don’t need to refrigerate your eggs.

I discovered this when I walked into my first supermarket in Germany.

I went to go buy eggs for the first time after I moved there. In the section where you pick up eggs, they are all just sitting on a table. Out in the open. Not in a refrigerator.

This concerned me a bit.

Not enough to not purchase eggs, but I was a bit concerned they weren’t in a refrigerator.

I assumed they would be bad. I would get salmonella.

After a bit of research, it turns out eggs don’t have to be refrigerated.

If, and only if, you don’t wash them.

Washing them removes a natural protective membrane on the eggs.

But, if your eggs are super dirty, you have to wash them. And, eggs get super dirty when chickens are kept in cages.

So, if you remove chickens from cages, making them cage-free, you no longer have to wash your eggs.

Then, you don’t have to refrigerate them.

What’s surprising here, is that if you tell egg producers they cannot wash the eggs before selling them, because of this protective membrane, they are forced to have cage free chickens.

And, we know that cage free chickens are more humane.

This brings me to a concept by Jim Collins called the flywheel.

The premise is, we do actions that force us to do a subsequent action that is desirable.

He explains this by saying, if I do action A, I can’t help but do action B. If I do action B, I can’t help but do action C. This scenario begins to gain momentum slowly, because a flywheel is difficult to get started. But, once it gains momentum, it starts to move itself.

In the flywheel scenario, we begin to choose our actions more strategically. We try to understand why we do something. And, does it build momentum that moves us in the right direction.

It is like deciding we are not going to wash our eggs.

What tiny action can you do with a positive subsequent action?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *