In baking, 1/4 cup plain yogurt substitutes for one egg.

[Sogo]

The egg industry price gouging could come back to bite them.

There are many other egg substitutes out there, as well.

And many people are investigating becoming vegan....

My point is, we can learn to get by without eggs.

[MineralMan]

1. Not if you're baking an angel food cake.

Yogurt is not a direct substitute for eggs. It can be used in some cases, but not all. You can't make a meringue with yogurt, either.

Nothing wrong with vegan food, but there are not direct substitutes for some things.

[Sogo]

4. Sure, but eggs can be substituted more times than not.

...

[Ms. Toad]

21. Yogurt is not vegan.

And yogurt is a substitute for whole eggs in most baking, not a substitute for egg whites.

Aquafaba (the liquid drained off of canned chick-peas or other beans) is an egg white substitute.

[Bettie]

55. Oh, I can't imagine that the taste would be at all the same

or even similar.

Even at $6 a dozen eggs are less than most other protein sources.

[Ms. Toad]

66. I was just responding to the suggestion that there wasn't a substitution

for eggs (really for egg whites) in angel food cake or meringue. Not suggesting there was a need to find a substitute.

I don't remember if I've tried it (when my daughter was eating vegan) - but reportedly it has almost no taste, except at the very end of the bite and then just a very slight chickpea taste.

I can't imagine it would make much (if any) difference in angel food cake. I'm more suspicious about the taste in meringue.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

2. The price hikes are due to the culling of many millions of egg-laying hens.

Basic economic laws of supply and demand.

But do go on.

[Sogo]

5. OK.

https://apnews.com/article/inflation-commodity-markets-jack-reed-business-1b32cb587f20a8d44eaf707f72635e70

Soaring egg prices prompt demands for price-gouging probe


https://www.today.com/video/is-price-gouging-behind-the-rising-cost-of-eggs-161683525785

Is price gouging behind the rising cost of eggs?


https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/high-egg-prices-should-be-investigated-us-farm-group-says-2023-01-20/

High egg prices should be investigated, U.S. farm group says

[Just A Box Of Rain]

8. I'm aware that the far-left group "Farm Action" is feeding a conspiracy theory.

That doesn't mean it passes the basic "sniff test."

Come on people!

[Torchlight]

11. What evidence is refutable that the organization supplying?

And/or what faulty data provided denies its conclusions?

'Go on people!'

[Just A Box Of Rain]

13. More than 40 million laying hens were culled.

A lack of supply causes prices to increase.

But let's pretend the laws of economic don't apply and instead adopt conspiracy theories.

Really?

This is presumed to be a "reality-based community."

[druidity33]

41. In 2019, in Iowa alone...

there were 58 million egg-laying hens. They were at the top with 15% of egg-laying hens. My very rough calculation puts the amount of egg-laying hens in the US at around 430 million. Does losing 10% of your production capacity create price increases of over 50%? I know i have a neighbor down the road who had to euthanize his 65 hens. He was heartbroken. This avian flu is real. But i do not think it precludes price gouging by corporations. I work in a grocery store btw. A Food Coop where we sell many different local farmers eggs. Our cheapest eggs right now are $7.49 a dozen. They are a brand we do not normally carry. But they were available.

[Sogo]

42. Thank you for this insight.

The operative sentence from your post is: "Does losing 10% of your production capacity create price increases of over 50%?"

Perhaps Just a Box of Rain will get around to seeing, as you have cited, that the numbers don't add up, and that doesn't equal a "conspiracy theory!"

[Just A Box Of Rain]

44. 2021 figures indicate the population of egg-laying hens in the USA at 389 million.

So yes, a cull of over 40 million would cause exactly the sorts of price increases we've seen in regions where the outbreak has been bad.

And demand for eggs remains high (with an inelastic supply curve) for a number of reasons:

1) The historically cheap price of eggs makes them a particularly high-value protein source, even with a price rise.

2) There are really no close substitutes, and not ones that tend to be price competitive or acceptable to consumer tastes.

3) The cost of eggs, while rising ion percentage terms, are expenditures constitute only a small portion of average the consumer’s income.

For this reason, eggs are a fairly "inelastic" commodity, so demand remains high even when the supply falls, and therefore prices rise.

Basic economics.

[leftstreet]

12. Farm Action isn't a "far-left group"

Jesus

[Emile]

14. Far Left? Anytime you don't agree do you call them far left?

Here's a link to their website: https://farmaction.us/about-us/

[Just A Box Of Rain]

15. Do you prefer a group that denies the basic economic reality of the avian flu epidemic and inserts

a conspiracy theory in its place to be called something else?

Do you prefer "left" to "far-left" as a descriptor in this case?

[Emile]

16. I prefer backing a group that is on the side of everyone, not just

a handful of powerful corporations.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

17. Or one could side with reason and the basic laws of economics when they come into conflict

with ideologically-based (and wholly false) conspiracy theories.

I know my choice. That's why I'm a liberal Democrat.

[Emile]

19. The side of reason is on the side of everyone who

are victims to Predatory Capitalism!

[Just A Box Of Rain]

20. I decline the Kool-Aid.

[Emile]

23. I know you think you are not insulting. . .

Kool-Aid seriously?

[Just A Box Of Rain]

24. Absolutely. In no reasonable world does the culling of 40 million egg-laying hens

due to a terrible avian flu epidemic not result in a decrease in the egg supply.

It is a drag to read totally baseless conspiracy theories that seem to have clear ideological agendas substituted for plain reason here in a "reality-based community."

[Emile]

25. Do you always believe what powerful corporations tell you for their

reasons to jack up prices?

[Just A Box Of Rain]

26. Are you going to deny that millions of egg-laying hens have been culled due to the avian flu

epidemic?

Or are you stuck?

[Emile]

27. How many millions of hens do they lose every year?

[Just A Box Of Rain]

28. Not 40 million in a few months due to one of the worst avian flu outbreaks ever.

Think this through.

[Emile]

30. You really don't know do you

[Sogo]

46. It's a drag to read economic theories that are not

based in reason or basic math.

You claim that I have an ideological agenda, but instead, I'm looking at the basic math....

See druidity33's post #41 above....

[Just A Box Of Rain]

49. I did. It explains the situation perfectly.

Read my reply.

Eggs have a pretty inelastic demand curve.

Perhaps your egg substitute can help remedy the lack of practical substitutions, although I'm not convinced of the "economy" of this substitute or how well consumers might accept it.

[Sogo]

51. "Does losing 10% of your production capacity create price increases of over 50%?"

The math doesn't add up.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

52. Sure it does. That's what happens with low cost high-demand products with few viable subsitutes

and, therefore, an inelastic demand curve.

It is precisely what one would expect to happen in the market.

[Sogo]

18. Your toss out "conspiracy theory" and "far left" to dismiss any evidence

contrary to your argument. Are you afraid of an investigation that might indicate otherwise?

[Just A Box Of Rain]

22. Yes, because the rise in egg prices is fully predictable by the laws of economics.

Feel free to "investigate" all you want. It will prove the reality of a catastrophic culling of millions of egg-laying hens on the supply of eggs.

What possible alternative might one expect?

[leftstreet]

29. The OP posted a helpful tip for members

Let it go

[Just A Box Of Rain]

34. The original OP included this:

The egg industry price gouging could come back to bite them.

FYI.

[leftstreet]

35. I've said that. My neighbor says that

I heard people on the interwebs say it, and maybe even overheard a similar sentiment at the haircut place recently

LOL

[Just A Box Of Rain]

38. Which proves the widespread problem.

When we replace reality and the basic laws of economics with conspiracy theorism, the basic precepts of liberal Democracy are threatened.

Liberalism relies on an affinity to reason.

[leftstreet]

39. LOL

Well you've got your work cut out for you. Bitching about price gouging is American as apple pie innit?

Do you think I should worry the OP is secretly representing the yogurt industry?

[Just A Box Of Rain]

40. No. Two both questions.

There are reason-based alternative to both these positions.

Especially in the recent case of egg prices going up due to the massive cull of egg-laying hens due to the avian flu epidemic.

Using one's mind and ability to reason is fundamental if we hope to preserve American liberalism from the irrational alternatives.

[Johnny2X2X]

3. Eggs have always been really cheap

They're still a lot of protein for the price. So they're 30 cents an egg rather than 12 cents, at least around where I live. Still not unaffordable if you eat a lot of them or bake with them.

Doesn't mean that there isn't gouging going on, but just that eggs are still not budget busters.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

6. We've raised backyard flocks (sadly none at the moment) and I know the cost of housing,

feeding, and supplying laying hens with bedding is far more expensive than buying eggs (even at today's prices) and that w/o adding in one's cost of labor.

The "gouging" narrative is wildly off-base.

Just another example of conspiracy theorism running wild here on DU when the reality of basic economics of a devastating bird flu epidemic describe what's actually going on.

[hunter]

31. When I was kid my parents had loosely managed flocks of free range chickens...

... flocks that would occasionally be wiped out by the coyotes if the family dogs were caught off guard. Coyotes are sneaky, sometimes damned near invisible.

Then we'd do without eggs, buying chicks to replenish the flocks.

We had a rooster who would follow me around when I was mowing. Sometimes I'd disrupt a mouse nest and he'd eat the baby mice and call his hens over to eat any baby mice left when he was satiated. A miniature Tyrannosaurus Rex he was. He got taken by a coyote in his fourth year.

One of our current dogs was a notorious chicken thief. She's just damned lucky animal control caught her and we adopted her before some farmer shot her. She's still a thief, sneaky as a coyote. Don't leave any meaty food unattended. She'll look you straight in the eye and say "What smoked salmon was that? I didn't see any smoked salmon around here."

The dogs and cats in our family mostly eat chickens "retired" from the egg industry in the form of kibble.

It's possible I don't think chickens are all that important to my own diet but I don't expect the domestic cats and dogs of in our family to be vegetarians. Maybe in the future they could be insectivores but that insectivore pet food is EXPENSIVE.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

32. We lost our last flock to a racoon attack. Someone (and I believe it was me) failed to

securely latch a door on our coop one night. It was a horror show.

[hunter]

43. Our dogs hate coyotes and raccoons. Skunks too.

I'm certain our feral creature dog sees them as competition.

They always raise alarm.

A younger brother, eleven years old, failed to secure the latch one night...

... and the day after may have been when I decided chicken-keeping wasn't for me.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

48. Our dog too.

Unfortunately, we all went out of town for a get-away weekend.

I set up the auto-feeder and auto-water and cleaned the coop just before we pulled out.

I'm afraid I failed to properly latch one of the doors to the coop.

Had el pero been around, he'd have warned us.

It wasn't a nice scene to come home to.

[hunter]

7. Yogurt isn't vegan.

Flax seed is.

I occasionally find myself cooking for vegans.

Myself, I'm mostly vegetarian, in hopes of reducing my environmental footprint.

[Sogo]

9. I never made the point that yogurt is vegan.

I certainly know the difference.

But vegetarians often don't eat eggs (myself included), and many people are taking the further step to become vegan, which eliminates anything that comes from animals or other living creatures (even honey).

[hunter]

36. I'm mostly vegetarian approaching vegan most days of the week.

My wife and maybe half my extended family are vegetarian approaching vegan, if not vegan.

I can cook for anyone.

For me it's mostly about reducing the size of my environmental footprint.

I haven't been a hunter in the twenty first century because this planet is far too small to support eight billion human hunters.

In the twentieth century I ate a lot of animals I'd seen alive.

[brooklynite]

10. Hint: neither are eggs.

[Happy Hoosier]

33. People are hugely overreacting

I just did the math based on local prices. That‘d save me a dime per egg. And that‘s if I bought the huge yogurt.

Maybe a dime makes a difference for some folks? Just seems blown all out of proportion.

[VGNonly]

37. For every "productive" female chicken,

a male chicken is gassed with CO2 or suffocated in plastic bags. A majority are macerated, that is shredded while still alive.

[hunter]

47. Dog and cat food. Chicken soup.

Reality of life on earth.

I can minimize my own environmental footprint, but I can't make it go away.

[48656c6c6f20]

45. Many people are saying that they're investigating

Cannibalism.

[hunter]

50. I've posted such on DU.

There's probably a genetic marker for that.

Were your ancestors prone to cannibalism?

[48656c6c6f20]

53. My ancestors weren't many people, just a few people.

[Marthe48]

54. I made a small batch of mushroom souffle

1 egg, about 1/4 cup of mayo. used to use 3 eggs for the same size batch. Tastes fine with fewer eggs and the mayo.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

56. Mayo is made from eggs (and oil).

[Marthe48]

57. Yep

I have some cookbooks that list mayo as a substitute for eggs. Sometimes, if I don't want need a whole egg, I'll use mayo.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

58. When eggs return to normal prices,

it can be fun to make homemade mayo.

[Marthe48]

59. I made it once when I was a teenager

Came out runny. My Mom loved it. My daughter made some and it was the perfect texture. Maybe the difference between kitchen gadgets?

[Just A Box Of Rain]

60. So much easier using a food processor vs using a whisk.

The latter takes a lot of human energy and some culinary skills.

The former is nearly foolproof.

[Marthe48]

62. Do you make it often?

I don't think I have the patience. I remember the recipe I followed saying add oil drop by drop

[Just A Box Of Rain]

63. Not often. Not because it is hard anymore, rather it just doesn't keep as long as bottled mayo.

The "drop by drop" rule was valid when one had to hand whisk.

One can use a much steadier stream with a food processor.

With a good oil, homemade mayo is pretty luxurious tasting.

Fun to do on occasion (or if one is "stuck" ).

[pecosbob]

64. Flax seed

[eleny]

65. How many weeks before a chick matures into a laying hen?

I think it could be up to 4 months. So we'll see what the egg prices will be when we reach that time. It could be soon.