I love eggs.
And I love chickens.
I've had hobby chickens for years myself, and I've always lovingly eaten their eggs. For me, that's the most beautiful thing there is: fresher, purer, closer to nature. But the older I get, the more often I ask myself: how healthy is an egg, really? Not just for our bodies, but also for nature.
Because if I'm to believe some accounts, like Medical Medium's, then eggs are carriers of disease, bacteria, and misery. And if you dig deeper, you suddenly come across something completely different: eggs playing a role in making some vaccines. Then I think: how does that work exactly? Is something really grown in eggs? And what does that say about the egg itself?
A few years ago, I was in Africa with Shai, my son. He suddenly became very ill, right before we were supposed to see the Great Migration. That was a huge disappointment. He was so sick that he didn't get to see any of the beautiful animals.
I didn't have any problems myself. Once back in the Netherlands, I took him to Jan de Vries. Measurements showed that it was salmonella. So I had it too, but apparently, I didn't suffer from it.
On the morning Shai fell ill, we had both eaten eggs: I had a boiled egg and Shai had scrambled eggs.
Recently, news reports have also emerged that chickens are being vaccinated. Not with mRNA vaccines, as far as I could find, but in some cases, it is mandatory to vaccinate chickens against certain diseases. They often receive genetically modified feed, and many chickens do not have a 3-star 'Beter Leven' (Better Life) quality mark, meaning they can experience a lot of stress during their lives. This also raises questions for me about what these conditions ultimately mean for the quality of the egg.
With my insecure attachment, my theme is that nobody can be trusted easily. Fortunately, I am aware of this theme, and when I feel distrust, I can often still put it into perspective. I developed a great deal of distrust after news reports first came out about vaccinating chickens, and then the news that hobby eggs were supposedly unhealthy. Initially, I didn't believe a word of it, but I delved into it and found out that it is indeed true that a lot of PFAS can be present in hobby eggs. This PFAS comes from our garden soil, where the chickens happily forage and eat worms. It is precisely through these worms that they ingest a lot of PFAS.
For me, this primarily raises the question: how clean is the air we breathe then? If that PFAS is in my garden, am I not also inhaling it? Then perhaps it's also in the milk of the cows that eat grass there, and in the meat? Why do we pay so much attention to PFAS in eggs, but much less to cows?
I am a person driven by feeling, and it strikes me that lately, I prefer to bypass the eggs in the supermarket. I no longer eat soft egg yolks, and I don't really fancy eggs much anymore anyway. When I do eat an egg, I often feel a sort of gag reflex afterward. Perhaps it's all in my head. I know I've always eaten a lot of eggs and considered them a superfood. Because honestly, an egg also has a lot of good in it. It's full of protein and contains vitamins and minerals like vitamin B12, B2, vitamin D, selenium, choline, iron, and phosphorus. Perhaps that's also why I've always seen eggs as a kind of superfood: so small, yet so nutritious.
For this blog, I also looked into the impact on nature. In the Netherlands alone, there are approximately 33 million laying hens. I found that number truly absurd. An egg suddenly no longer feels like something small or simple, but as part of an enormous system. Of course, the footprint of an egg is lower than that of a steak, but an egg also requires land, feed, water, and energy. So even if something seems healthy, the question remains: what does it actually cost nature?
Fajah
