I was in the grocery store getting some eggs and going through my routine of checking the eggs for breakage. I do this by opening the carton and scanning the tops and sides of the eggs.
I then lift each egg out and look the bottom and the sides I did not initially see before moving on to the next egg.
I make sure to check all twelve of the eggs and if I find one cracked egg I will move on to a new carton. This means I may spend about two minutes checking at times before I find an unblemished carton but it is worth it as I do not want to purchase any cracked eggs.
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One lady stopped me and said she just grabs a carton and goes away and if she finds any cracked or broken eggs when she is ready to use them then she just throws them away. She said it not worth it to check the eggs since a carton is less than a dollar.
Wow.
I totally disagree because the thing I hate the most is to find a broken egg that has to be thrown away. With something so fragile WHY would you not check it before you bought it. I have found cartons where there were five or more broken eggs out of a set of twelve. That means if you just grabbed that carton you would be throwing away almost half of the eggs you bought because they could not be used.
I eat eggs every other day so it adds up over time and I just do not see the point of NOT checking and avoiding immediate wastage of my eggs.
Do YOU check your eggs?
Lulu – I do the same thing. I pick each egg up and do a quick scan to make sure there are no cracks or bad eggs. I’m usually pretty good with not finding any bad eggs in the carton but I don’t eat eggs very often so I’m not buying them all of the time.
I can’t believe that other people don’t check them before buying them though.
I only knew ONE other person (and now you) who checks all the eggs. What I usually see is most people just pick up a carton and take off. I rarely see them even check the expiry date on the box!!!!
I would just be VERY annoyed if I grabbed a carton and then got home only to find half my eggs were cracked and needed to be thrown out right away.
I will check my eggs but I have never lifted them up and out of the package. Only rarely have I had any issue with that problem. Usually it is because my refrigerator is too cold and the egg has frozen to the carton.
I am kinda in the middle on this one. I open the carton and to a scan, but I don’t pick up each egg.
This is what I do too, just a basic check. I also briefly check other things I buy like canned goods, or things in jars. I have bought some canned fruit only to find one end that isn’t facing out of the shelf is leaking out, and who knows how old they are then…..
I will open the carton and look around for any obvious cracks or leaks, but taking every egg out individually seems too much like that scene in Clerks 🙂
I open the carton and check the tops, but do not check each egg individually. Assuming an average of 1 cracked egg/cartoon and a cost of $0.08 per egg, the savings really doesn’t seem worth the time if it takes you 2 minutes each time. That works out to a savings of $2.40 for an hours worth of work over 30 cartons. Of course the savings are more if you spend more than $1.00/dozen on eggs, such as when buying organic, free range, etc. Since the broken egg will be wasted whether I buy it or someone else does, my dislike for wasting food isn’t really applicable in this situation.
It does not take me two minutes every time I check the eggs. It might take up to that long if I had to go through multiple cartons to find totally blemish free eggs. What I usually do is if I find one cracked egg I pull out another egg from a different carton and swap it out. (yeah that is a bad thing to do!)
I didn’t mean to imply that you were wasting time by checking the eggs. I just like to provide a different way of looking at a situation. The less time you spend checking the eggs and the more you pay for eggs the bigger the payoff is. Also, for anyone who has more time than money it probably makes sense to maximize any savings they can even if it doesn’t work out to a high dollar per hour rate. I imagine that for some people it is a very good activity, while for others it probably isn’t.
I like numbers and I like Jonathan’s math. It is a matter of time consumed vs $ saved. What you could do to save time when checking the eggs, LuLu, is to switch bad eggs from a carton with good eggs from another, which I see you do.
So that can’t take more than 30 sec and I do think it’s worth it since the discomfort created when you find some cracked eggs in a carton and the inconvenience when you actually need those eggs for something (like a recipe) is bigger. Imagine you think you bought eggs only to find some cracked ones. Now you have to spend more time to go out and buy eggs and that translates into more than $1 in time spend. So even if a carton of eggs is only $1 you actually save time and money by checking them.
Enough about eggs, my head hurts now 🙂
See you later,
Emily
I really overestimated the time it took for me to check the eggs and I don’t think I have really taken 2 whole minutes to check different cartons. In any case I go shopping on Sunday after church..I am not in a rush and I can play as long as I want…er I mean SHOP as long as I want. 🙂
I too check every single one of the eggs. We go through a lot of them, so we need them all. I twist each egg in the carton and this enables me to check to see if they are cracked pretty quickly. I am surprised though as I figured everyone checked all of their eggs before they purchase.
I do check my eggs! In my opinion, a wise consumer checks everything before she buys a thing. Life for example, checking the expiration date of the product. We can’t just pick something and then go to cashier and pay it immediately and go home. Then when we reach home, we’ll find out that what we just bought is expired. Thanks for sharing this one. Love your post and will definitely check your blog whenever I have time.
Hi LuLuGal,
Our eggs in Spain comes in open 24 eggs boxes so you can see everybody together and do not have to touch them. I have never had a cracked or broken egg in years.
Oh, it’s a good idea to check the eggs one by one before you buy the carton. I wonder whether or not the shop assistant will frown at you, haha.
They better not, no sense in paying for broken eggs!
I also agree with you, why the hell we are gonna pay for something when it is broken and one thing I love eggs..lol
Yea, I cannot understand how that woman can not bother to check either. I also check each egg individually and don’t mind spending that extra time. Apart from the waste, it can be a mess also if it spills over when I try to dispose of a broken one. And like you said, if you eat eggs daily, the cost of broken eggs can add up to quite a lot over a month’s time.
Totally agree with you that I have to check every egg in the carton as well! Who would pay for a cracked egg???
I definitely do open the carton to check the eggs. Although my method is simpler in that I just do a quick scan at the top, and look around to see if there is anything suspicious. The method generally works pretty good for myself.
-Jean
Well I don’t usually eat eggs, but when I buy a few I certainly check them, after all who wants to buy 12 eggs and when he open the carton find out that half of them are broken
Regards Kostas