3w ago

Rising egg prices and high demand are prompting consumers to rent or buy chickens, but experts warn the move may not cut costs

www.cbsnews.com Rising egg prices and high demand are prompting consumers to rent or buy chickens, but experts warn the move may not cut costs

As the bird flu outbreak impacts egg shortages and prices, some people are turning to renting or buying backyard chickens.

A Boring Dystopia @lemmy.world

return2ozma @lemmy.world

3w ago

Rising egg prices and high demand are prompting consumers to rent or buy chickens, but experts warn the move may not cut costs

www.cbsnews.com /news/bird-flu-egg-prices-demand-consumers-buy-chickens/

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Can someone explain why eggs are so fucking important for Americans?
Do you eat pancakes everyday?
- you need eggs to make any box mix desserts, and eggs are in a lot of recipes, baked goods etc. eggs have also always been a relatively cheap and healthy source of protein.
- The average American eats about 270-290 eggs per year, across all foods. It's a cheap, versatile ingredient.
  The U.S. isn't even that far out of the ordinary among other nations, 19th out of this list of 185 (if you include Hong Kong and Macau as their own jurisdictions). Seems like most of Asia and South America eats more eggs than most of Europe, but it's not like there aren't European countries in the top 20.
  The reason why there's a lot of coverage of eggs isn't because of the high number of eggs in an American diet or the high proportion of a household budget spent on eggs, but it's just that it's a commodity that happened to spike in price, more than triple what it cost 4 years ago.
  
  Exactly this. That’s not even a lot really. Less than one egg per day, or a single meal of eggs (assuming 3 eggs) twice a week.
  The big issue is the price hike of a previously cheap meal and protein source.
  It’s weird all the anti-egg stuff in this thread, it’s not about the eggs per se. Various beans have gone up in price in recent years, various meats are much more expensive than they were prior to the pandemic, and in recent years now eggs have gone way up.
  For people on tight budgets, it’s brutal. What do you do when there are no more cheap meals you can make to maintain your budget? Then you have to make cuts elsewhere, if that’s even possible.
  I make low six figures now and keep my costs low, but in recent years even I’ve started bulk shopping via Sam’s Club to save money because going to the normal supermarket has me paying $500 a trip for two weeks of food for just me and my wife, and that didn’t include small supplemental trips.
  Going bulk and being selective has cut that down to $600-$700 every 5+ weeks. But poor folks on tight budgets generally can’t throw that much on a single trip and will get nickel and dimed by this crap. I’ve been there; being poor is fucking expensive, and there’s a lot of shit in place to keep you that way.
- It's not just that everyday American families eat eggs for breakfast every day. It's that eggs are essential ingredients in a lot of basic foods. Pasta, meatballs, breading...
  A good comparison would be to bread prices and the riots that occurred due o rises in bread prices during the great depression and other times of instability in various countries across the centuries.
  If the lowest ingredient prices go up, that makes everything go up, and impacts everyone. This causes panic and chaos in lower classes and eventual revolts against leadership.
  This is more than just eggs
- Eggs are used all over cooking... baking, many recipes call for egg, and yes, breakfast.
- do you eat pancakes everyday?
  Have you not seen us?
  Seriously we probably eat way more breakfast confections than you would expect. That's the vast majority of us are not making them scratch theyr getting them out of a box
  The main thing at play right now is that the political stance of our right-wing fascist dictators was that grocery prices would come down and egg prices were artificially high with the last guy.
  It was campaign after campaign on eggs being so expensive for no reason.
  Their base was so big on why did Biden let eggs get so expensive It was honestly annoying as f. Now that their guy is in they're breaking open the textbooks and explaining to us that it's bird flu and a lot of the birds are dying and eggs are more expensive
  The problem is, the last time this happened there was a great shortage of eggs. You could hardly find them the prices were high.
  Now every store you go into is running over with eggs and the prices are twice as high as they were back then.
  Ensure, sorry for the annoyance eggs being a dollar a piece is not the end of the world for us by far but it's an indicator that something is going wrong. And it's a nice distraction from all the Nazi salutes on our mainstream news
- Sudden scarcity causes fomo. Demand is up for no rational reason.
- Because bacon and eggs for breakfast is ingrained in American culture through a massive advertising campaign:
  https://americantable.org/articles/how-bacon-and-eggs-became-the-american-breakfast/
- Eggs used to be $1.99/dozen. Now, even the cheap grocery stores they're $9.99
  Here's Aldi:
  
  I know that eggs are very expensive in US recently. However, I can very easily do without eggs in my usual diet and I know nobody who buys eggs in such quantities as Americans seem to do.
  So what do you all eat? Pancakes every morning? Or fried egg? Or do you love baking so much? I'm just curious btw.
  
  Yeah man, as an American, I don't fucking get it either.
  I think it's just an extension of the "American exceptionalism" bullshit. When a food staple supply decreases for whatever legitimate reason, instead of simply adjusting their diet (even if temporarily) to account for it, they refuse to change.
  Because this is America, and it costs $1.99 for a dozen eggs GODDAMN IT, and it's my god-given right as an American to pay no more than that, regardless of actual material conditions
- My breakfast is an over easy egg on homemade toast every morning. It's relatively low calorie and contains a good amount of protein to give me a feeling of fullness. Eggs are great sources of protein and aren't as damaging to the environment as something like bacon, ham, or sausage.
  It's been built into the culinary culture of the United States. Just as much as beans for breakfast in the UK or pasta in Italy. Hell, even carbonara was born in Italy during the second world war because Americans asked italians to make hearty american meals with pasta and eggs. Its probably because America was/is so large that many households used to raise chickens for an easy source of protein when meat wasn't as easily transported in the 1800s and early 1900s. All you needed was a backyard, a coop to keep them safe from raccoons/foxes/hawks/etc., and food. Its not as common now but maggots are an excellent food source for chickens and it's super simple to build a "maggot farm" with compost. Plus you would get free dirt for the garden out of it.

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