It promises to be a grim Easter this April with egg prices already over $6 a dozen, Elon Musk running the country and no redemption in sight for our immortal souls.
But calm down. Sure, we appear to be heading into the Apocalypse. But don’t blame the egg.
Eggs are still an incredible bargain—now hear me out. Harvard Health Publishing reports that eggs contain healthy nutrients including lutein and zeaxanthin for eye health and choline for the brain and vitamins A and B and D. One large egg contains 6 grams of protein and is the basis for the US Department of Agriculture’s standard for daily protein requirement (that is, when we used to have a USDA). The publication also points out that the cholesterol in one or two eggs eaten daily does not endanger heart health, reporting, “…research has shown that most of the cholesterol in our body is made by our liver—it doesn’t come from cholesterol we eat.”
Sure, egg prices are currently soaring because of the avian flu (and, okay, some price gouging) but look at the history of the cost of eggs. In 1980, a dozen eggs cost 84 cents. Adjusting for inflation, that translates to $2.78. Ten years later, in 1990, eggs cost $1.10. Adjusting for inflation, that is just $2.39 a dozen. What other product can you think of that shows that kind of market stability?
Because of the bird flu epidemic, more than 166 million chickens have been slaughtered to contain the virus, amounting to about a 12 percent reduction nationwide. Egg prices are high now because of supply and demand. If that seems shocking, look at egg prices during the “gold rush”. Back in 1849, miners in the California gold fields didn’t have grocery stores or even railroads supplying food and other goods to those outlying areas.
An egg—that is ONE egg cost $3. Adjusting for inflation, that’s a whopping $83.94! For one egg. (Eight bucks for a dozen eggs at the Hy-Vee doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?) Also, a pound of cheese was $25 ($699.53), five pounds of flour was $13 ($363.76) and a shovel was $36 ($1,007.33). The current price of $7 for a dozen eggs in Iowa City figures out to 58 cents for one egg. (It’s cheaper than cat food.) An adult could literally survive on one egg a day, probably for months.
Be honest, what else could you live on for 58 cents a day?
Americans love to fix problems. We are eager to fix the egg crisis and we want to do something about that meteor that is whiz- zing toward Earth. The planet-killer meteor, named 2024 YR4 is definitely coming our way. NASA (now renamed Musk National Exploding Rockets) had calculated the odds of it hitting Earth at around three percent.
They have since re-calculate the risk to be less than one percent. Well, all right. I guess we’re safe from eggs and meteors for now. There’s got to be something else to worry about.