Eggs, we now know, are a rich source of protein, vitamins, minerals, controversy and – I should warn any readers of a sophisticated disposition – puns. The controversies around cholesterol and caged birds are now depressingly familiar, but were something of a novelty in 1973 when the New York Times reported on a row between the egg industry and health bodies, with a Humpty-Dumpty inspired pronouncement that “the egg has fallen on hard times”. In the late 1990s, I worked with someone who was trying to sell low-cholesterol eggs, but he was swimming against the tide. Even committed ovotarians sighed that the cholesterol would wreck your cardiovascular health, if the salmonella hadn’t already got to you. Headline writers were overjoyed in 1988 when “Eggwina” Currie fried the egg industry with her announcement that “most of the egg production in this country, sadly, is now affected with salmonella”. Those fragile egg sales plummeted by 60 per cent over a few weeks. Although the then junior minister for health had somewhat overboiled her claim, it seems that there were significant problems with salmonella in laying flocks. The industry cracked, cleaned up its chickens and its act, and announced the red “British Lion” stamp of food safety, supported (some time later) by Mrs Egg Currie herself.
Until the 1930s, salmonella across a whole, year-round industry would have been unheard of. Hens naturally lay only in warmer, lighter months and egg-free winters were part of human and bird life. Fertilised eggs were off-menu in spring, to enable the flock to regenerate. This was revolutionised by American businesses in the 1930s that separated birds for meat and for eggs, and set us on the road to the enormous, egg-first industry we have today. It really got going in the 1950s, in a UK hungry for fresh food after the rationing of the Second World War, when most chickens were slaughtered, leaving enough for one fresh egg per person per week.
In a show of support, in 1942 America started sending war-torn Brits dried egg powder for baking, scrambling, French-toasting, pancaking, toad-in-the-holing, omeletting, souffléing and any other eggy delight you could think of – so long as you didn’t expect it to taste like egg. It was universally loathed. We might soon be in a position to repay the debt; America is facing an egg shortage thanks to avian-flu-incubating, high-density chicken farms. Around one quarter of British eggs are laid by hens in cages, however. If compassion doesn’t make us mandate cage-free hens, as other European countries have done, perhaps the economics of slaughtering millions of fluey hens will.
We’re eating eggs like never before. We brunch on eggs Benedict (and royale and Florentine cousins). Devilled eggs have had a restaurant-level rebrand since their 1970s heyday. There are cafés devoted to all-day breakfasts, with spicy shakshuka, egg burgers, or egg and toast soldiers with truffle. Eggs are cheap and full of that magic compound: protein. Those twin virtues, in our cash-squeezed, muscle-squeezing world, have eclipsed the (supposed) vice of cholesterol in the public understanding. My niece fuels her way through her medical degree, and busy sporting and social life, on half a dozen a day. In fact, gram for gram, eggs have less protein than meat, fish and cheese, because they have a comparably high-water content. Think of overcooked scrambled eggs, when the water has leached out of the rubbery egg, to have a sense of how much the protein and water work well together, so long as the cook treats them reverently.
The ubiquity of eggs is what lends them to puns; the brain instantly lands on the double meaning, as in the café names Eggbreak or the Good Egg. If puns are a sign of what is going on in our collective mind, egg puns are revealingly – and disastrously – empty of the chickens who produce them. Avian flu has made it painfully obvious that an egg-first industry doesn’t guarantee an endless supply of eggs. It’s time to put the chicken – her health and happiness – first.
Pen Vogler is the author of “Stuffed: A History of Good Food and Hard Times in Britain” (Atlantic)
[See also: Adolescence isn’t shocking]
Content from our partners
This article appears in the 26 Mar 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Putin’s Endgame