I mean, I pay more for eggs. That’s it.

We eat fewer eggs.

That seems like nothing but eggs are an insanely cheap and fast way to get a decent meal quickly in the morning or to beef up, pun intended, a bowl of grits or oatmeal or something.

When we run out of eggs we don’t just not eat, we may make something that’s less filling or healthy or may spend more on breakfast because there just isn’t time to make breakfast and the only time permissive option is to pay 8-13 dollars for fast food on the way to work or eat peanuts and coke from a gas station.

So the egg price has knock on effects for us that are pretty big.

I’m gonna spend a little time and express something that isn’t being said in the comments:

people’s purchases don’t exist in a vacuum and the meaning of the price of an inexpensive source of protein like eggs nearly doubling in the span of a year or two isn’t just that it costs more.

Often, people shop. That sounds like a stupid thing to say, but the effect of the piggly wiggly implementing barcode scanners is impossible to deny. Shopping is where you go into a store with some goal, like a list, and some budget like the actual cash you have in your possession and try to make those two things match up.

If you’re like me you grew up going on these excursions maybe once a week or more with your parents and understood innately that if you can get something in the cart early, maybe pudding cups or that peanut butter with the chocolate mixed into it, there’s better chance of you enjoying that treat than if you wait till the end.

As adults you probably recognize that it’s because as a person progresses through the store they’re keeping a tally (my grandmother used a literal calculator) of how much of their budget they’ve run through. It’s a toss up weather they’ll be under enough to afford a very cost ineffective piece of candy from the shelf next to the checkout counter so getting that treat in the cart early means the person shopping has the chance to make little adjustments to make up for its price. I never understood the relationship between relatively expensive sugar added peanut butter and the type of green beans we ate that week but that’s one way it manifested. Cut versus French cut was a price difference and we’d eat the cheaper one to make up for some dalliance in the previous isles.

Eggs are in the dairy cooler section. Most stores have these all in one place at first because it was cheaper to run the wiring for them and then because of food safety practices and finally nowadays because everyone expects it. For reasons I’m not sure of, people tend to hit those isles last. It might be to get cold stuff in the cart last so those items don’t warm up in the store as long.

When you’re at the end of your trip to the store, on the last isle, trying to fit the list to your cash, the price of eggs is what determines your choices. If you put back that box of pop tarts you can get two dozen eggs and a loaf of bread. That’s breakfast for a family of four for a week in a pinch. If you swap the stoufers lasagna for a six pack of ramen noodles, a can of beans and some eggs you have a cheaper dinner for four plus some left over.

If you want to have nicer things to eat and can’t afford to buy them but do have plenty of time, eggs are an ingredient that’s hard to replace in baking. There are substitutes but they’re sometimes more expensive and involve being able to learn a new recipe or do some experimenting which just isn’t in the cards for plenty of people. If eggs cost more it means less brownies, cakes, noodles and a bunch of other stuff because suddenly the recipe costs more.

Eggs are the gateway to making your grocery trip work for a lot of people and so when you might not know the price of that can of beans off the top of your head, you absolutely know what eggs cost and make adjustments accordingly. Maybe you buy lower grade eggs like “a” instead of “aa” or you buy more eggs and less meat.

The price of eggs is the backstop to being poor and healthy while maintaining whatever position on the 5d chessboard of equipment, time, money, calories and experience that you occupy or want to be in.

A lot of the posts and comments I’ve seen that specifically reference eggs have a sneering tone or are either denying the price changes or downplaying their effect. I personally think that expressing such sentiments makes you at best inexperienced and ignorant and at worst a bad person, but opinion aside, those kinds of sentiments aren’t helping anyone to understand who you are unless you just want to be seen as an out of touch elite.

To go a little further, the price of eggs is an undeniable metric that shows wages haven’t risen with inflation+cpi+externalities. It means there’s a problem in a way that can’t be denied or misdirected from.

If eggs were 50-100% more expensive and wages had risen across the board by that same 50-100% then no one would be complaining except old timers in the rocking chairs in front of the gas station.

That’s not what’s happening and now the things that let poor people keep living and not quite poor people buy all their groceries are 50-100% more expensive. If that isn’t alarming to you it should be.

I’m becoming an inveg – involuntary vegan

I scramble to make eggs meet

Ive always spent a bit extra for a certain brand of eggs, which I prefer, so I haven’t noticed a great deal of difference if I’m honest.

Can’t be skimping on good egg.

A little bit yeah. Really just all food is a lot more expensive.

I used to not have to check my bank account. Now my savings account is slowly shrinking. And it’s almost entirely because of the cost of food.

Inflation sent me from adding to savings each month to pulling from it instead. Just hope my wife or I get a decent promotion before the savings run out I guess.

Checkmate I’m vegan so I don’t have to worry about that. My spouse used to work in a winery that had a chicken coop and bring home many boxes of eggs for free before I went vegan, and you could keep them on the counter. Room temperature fresh eggs beat grocery store eggs by a million years for cooking with, go to a farm and buy a few boxes, they keep a very long time, and learn how to make Frank Prisinzano’s crispy egg recipe.

It is impacting my life a lot. It affect my meal plan, the balance of my meals, my overall food budget, my snaking possibilities. It also ruined my mood whenever a see how quickly the money I spend on eggs adds up to the cost of owning a hen!
Also eggs retail have consentrate most of today retail malpractice.

I’m not from the USA btw.

Since I have no idea what the price of eggs currently is or how it has changed … I’d say not at all.

They still cost 2 euro for 8 eggs, right?

Does my country being destroyed because of other dipshits freaking out about them count as impacting my life?

The cumulative price increases are noticeable. Grocery receipts feel like they are $25-50 more expensive for the same stuff.

We buy a dozen eggs every other week, so that specifically isn’t impacting us much, but in the store I usually take note, and say damn under my breath when I see the $7+ ones.

Not at all. The only eggs I get are from a local chicken enclosure where my family helps out by feeding them once a week.

I’m not buying eggs for $17 a dozen. I got a flat for $33 that breaks down to $7 a dozen, my kids got real excited about it and ate them all in about a week and a half. They are teens so, they tend to eat everything in the fridge pretty quickly. Anyway. I’m thinking maybe I never buy eggs again. maybe I’ll buy a chicken.

It’s made me a lot more smug about having our own quail.