‘I’m a Food Safety Expert, and I’m Begging You to Stop Making This Mistake With Your Eggs’
Whether you’re coming home from the grocery store or farmer’s market, you likely wash your fruits and veggies before eating them. But what about eggs? After all, who knows how many hands have been on those eggs—especially because dirt and germs spread easily when packing them with other foods in your tote bags.
The fear is real: fresh, uncracked eggs may contain the Salmonella bacteria that cause food poisoning, per the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about one in six Americans get sick from contaminated food or beverages each year, and 3,000 lose their life due to foodborne illnesses. So, should you wash eggs? Find out what a food safety expert says.
Should you wash eggs before cooking them?
Although your intentions to follow safety practices and avoid foodborne illnesses come from a good place, you’re actually better off skipping this step entirely. Here’s why: “They’re already washed. Usually in commercial washing facilities, they use sterilizing agents to wash the eggs, which isn’t something that you’re normally going to do at home. It doesn’t hurt to wash them, but it doesn’t help either,” says Bryan Quoc Le, PhD, a food scientist and food science consultant.
That said, it’s hotly debated whether you should wash farm-fresh eggs. Unlike store-bought eggs from the grocery, farm-fresh eggs have a protective coating that allows them to stay at room temperature for several weeks, Dr. Quoc Le says. “Here in the U.S., we have decided that washing farm-fresh eggs mitigates a lot of risks, but the problem with washing them is that it removes the cuticle—the protective coating—so it makes them susceptible to spoilage. So if you do wash your eggs, you have to refrigerate them,” he explains.
