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alwaysfaithfulterriblelizard:

this egg fucking froze because our fridge is too cold

o-bellaciao:

Why would you keep the eggs on the fridge?

alwaysfaithfulterriblelizard:

we keep our eggs in the fridge…so they don’t denature? do you not refrigerate your eggs?

nanner:

Because of the way our eggs are processed and the prevalence of salmonella in american chickens, americans have to fridge their eggs.

http://io9.com/americans-why-do-you-keep-refrigerating-your-eggs-1465309529

colorschanging:

Wait, they don’t refrigerate eggs in other countries?

ladyoflate:

wait what people in other countries dont refrigerate eggs???

wewishyouamurphychristmas:

wait a second eggs in other countries aren’t refrigerated?????????

agathaheterodyne:

Waht.

slepaulica:

yeah, we don’t refrigerate them here. they keep like a month or two, even in summer, just crack it into a cup in case it’s accidentally taken you too long to use those eggs, give it a whiff, if it smells okay you’re good to go even if it’s really old.  don’t use the float test — that turns up a lot of false positives and sometimes you end up throwing away perfectly good eggs, which is not cheap. just turn your eggs upside down every now and then to help keep them fresh and yeah.

also chicken eggs do not look anything like those things you see on american tv shows. they have brown shells and the yolks are orange.

triplash:

Americans refrigerate their eggs.. 

America..

slepaulica:

if you read the link though, there’s actually a reason for why they have to do it, a reason that doesn’t apply anywhere else in the world.

slepaulica:

we should organise a charity drive to mail european eggs to americans. we can send them uht milk too, i read on the internet that they only have the kind of milk that has to be refrigerated

brin-bellway:

Canadians refrigerate eggs too. And re: colour, every Canadian grocery store I have ever been in carried multiple brands of eggs, some of which were white and some which were brown. (We usually buy the brown: the last time I bought white it was because we realised at the last moment we were out of eggs and Mom sent me to the white-egg-only convenience store to get a dozen to tide us over.)

Who told you Americans don’t have UHT milk? I don’t know about big ones, but there are definitely single-serving ones that I think are intended for kids’ lunches. I used to go through multiple single-serving boxes* of Parmelat chocolate milk a day when I was a kid.

(Come to think of it, did they say “no room-temperature milk” or “no UHT milk”? Because while I’ve drunk well over a thousand cartons* of milk (all bought in America) that appear to fit with the definition of “UHT milk” I just looked up, I had never heard the term before.)

*The Canadian term for this is the genericised trademark “tetra pak”, but since I’m talking about my experiences as an American in America I figured I ought to use the terminology I would’ve used at the time, despite its relative lack of precision.

P.S. Maybe I should look into the possibility of larger tetras of milk, considering I just had refrigerated milk go lumpy nine days before its sell-by date (beating the previous record of six days). Bagged milksounds like a neat idea, but it’s terrible for preservation, and the manufacturers won’t even admit it.

slepaulica:

i don’t remember where i saw it. but it was an article on the internet and someone was saying that for a limited time they had uht milk available in the cardboard box things but it didnt catch on with americans because it was too weird that it could be stored unrefrigerated or something and they didnt sell well so it was taken off the market and it was a shame because they were really useful for people like university students who didnt have a fridge.

actually, i remember reading that they do have uht milk in the us, but they don’t sell it in the cardboard boxes but they sell it in the transparent gallon containers, and part of what gives the milk the shelf life of like a year and the need to not be refrigerated is keeping it from exposure to light, and so even though the milk is treated with an ultra high temperature to pasteurise it, it doesn’t have the 9 months-1 year shelf life because of exposure to light, so they have to keep it refrigerated anyway.

it is possible that the author of the article lived in a specific region of the us and was overgeneralising to the availability in the rest of their country.

do any other americans want to weigh in? can you go to the supermarket and buy a cardboard box of milk that is not in the refrigerated section of the store and it does not need to be refrigerated until opened? maybe i am wrong?

winterwhitewitch:

No we cannot, at least not where I live. (near San Francisco, CA) I didn’t even know what uht milk was until I googled it. All the milk I have ever encountered needs to be refrigerated, and I am actually shocked this isn’t a rule. 
Our milk choices range from non fat, low fat, regular, half and half (ughhhh), and there’s the vegan milk stuff. My dad drinks almond milk, which is an abomination. 
And I thought bagged milk was weird…

slepaulica:

Thank you for weighing in! UHT milk doesn’t have any preservatives in it. The shelf life is due to the combination of: sterile packaging, opaque packaging, and the high temperature at which it is pasteurised. once you open your box of milk, you have to drink it within a few days, and it does have to be refrigerated once opened because the packaging is no longer sealed and germs can get in, but the packages are 1 litre or a half litre, which isn’t all that much milk, so even without refrigeration, you can plan around using the entire thing before it goes bad.

a friend of mine without refrigeration would just reboil it every time she wanted to drink some, but in the summer months i just try to use it all up as soon as i open it, and in winter months it’s easier because i can just leave it outside and use it slowly over the course of a few days.

but the advantages are: not needing to refrigerate the trucks it is shipped in, not needing to refrigerate it at the store, and you can use it as an emergency food. you can stock up on it effectively without worrying about it going bad (within reason, 6-9 month shelf life) because it only starts going bad once opened.

sophus-b:

No we cannot, at least not where I live. (near San Francisco, CA)

You can definitely get shelf-stable milk in the Bay Area! I looked it up, and it says there’s some in stock in stock for every Whole Foods I checked, and at least half of the Safeways and Walmarts, too. And Costco has store brand shelf-stable chocolate milk, at least.

They’ve probably just hidden it away on some obscure back shelf because it’s not a popular product.

Additionally, you can get shelf-stable cream at any Trader Joe’s! (Source: I have one on my shelf right now.)

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