There's no shortage of eggs to choose from when you go to the grocery store.
You'll find white and brown, organic and free-range.
However, they all have one thing in common: a set of numbers on the side of the carton.
But what do these mysterious digits actually mean?
The most obvious of these numbers is the "best by" date, which is substituted in some states
with a "sell by" date.
Checking this number is the easiest way of ensuring that your eggs are fresh and that
there will be no surprises when you open the carton.
But the "best by" date isn't the only way to tell how old your eggs are.
The next time you have a carton, take a closer look and you'll see additional numbers near
the "best by" or "sell by" date.
This three-digit sequence, somewhere between 001 and 365, refers to the specific date in
a 365-day calendar year that your eggs were packaged.
So, January 1st would be represented by the digits 001 and December 31st would be 365.
Things get slightly tricky if it happens to be a leap year.
Then your calculations will be thrown off by a day.
Of course, those extra 24 hours won't matter to most people, unless you're on a quest for
eggs so fresh you'll want to sing about them.
"Eggs!
Eggs!
Eggs, bomp, bomp.
Eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs!"
"Oh my god."
"Bomp. Bomp."
If you don't want to be stuck in the refrigerated section of a grocery store trying to figure
out what day of the year 137 is, the USDA offers a simple Egg Stamp Pocket Guide that
does all the work for you.
It can be downloaded from their website and kept on your phone for easy reference.
Yes, it's a little bit nerdy, but you might want to keep this guide handy if you're super
serious about your eggs.
"I still have to go home and fill out my egg diary."
Another reason to check out this code is that eggs are good for up to five weeks after being
packaged when they're properly refrigerated.
And while we're talking about refrigeration, here's a quick tip from the folks at Eggland's
Best: For maximum freshness, you should always keep your eggs in the coldest section of your
fridge and not in the door.
Besides the "best by" and packaging dates, you might notice some additional numbers on
your egg carton This isn't some secret code for industry insiders, it's actually been
put in place by the USDA as a form of transparency.
Although some people don't give much thought about where their eggs actually come from,
this code provides consumers with a bit more information and refers to the processing plant
that packaged the eggs.
The code usually starts with a "P" and is followed by a series of four digits, which
is the plant's ID number.
For true egg fanatics who want even more details, the USDA has an online database where you
can enter the code and find the exact location of where your eggs were processed.
The most important benefit of the plant code is in the event of a recall.
You've probably seen news segments about Salmonella outbreaks or other food-borne illnesses involving eggs.
These stories should include the ID number of the processing plant where the questionable
eggs originated.
With this info, you can easily check the plant code on your carton to see if they are safe
to eat or if they need to be thrown out.
Of course, there are always other uses for bad eggs but we would never condone such activities,
no matter how awesome it looks.
The reason all these dates and codes are so essential, is because an egg's shell is far
from an indestructible force field, and as the days roll into weeks, that egg will start
to go downhill fast.
According to Taste of Home, over time, eggs start to lose moisture and carbon dioxide,
making the whites thinner and the yolk more susceptible to breaking.
In addition to not tasting great, they'll eventually become unsafe to eat.
So, if you grab a carton of eggs out of your fridge on December 1st that has a "best by"
date of September 1st, your eggs won't be all they're cracked up to be and you never
know what surprises they could have in store for you.
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