--- title: Eggs Bird Flu: How Europe Will Help Ease America's Egg Crisis description: With the avian flu outbreak, America has an egg crisis. Here's how Europe is helping—and why you won't taste the difference canonical: https://time.com/3917560/dutch-america-egg-crisis/ author: Jacob Koffler article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-11T17:03:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:05:10.157Z article:section: Health og:title: How Europe Will Help Ease America's Egg Crisis og:description: Here's why you probably won't be able to taste the difference og:url: https://time.com/3917560/dutch-america-egg-crisis/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Europe Will Help Ease America's Egg Crisis twitter:description: Here's why you probably won't be able to taste the difference twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # How Europe Will Help Ease America's Egg Crisis > Sponsored content. 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Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=18b8d4d1-bcfd-4e6b-8357-6d8512905747&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Truth About Fat [Watch (HLS stream): The Truth About Fat](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uYGhfNfS.m3u8) (5:15)  _Published 2014-06-12. When you want to lose weight or get healthy, what is the first thing you would normally cut from your diet? If you said fat, you're not alone_ by [Jacob Koffler](https://time.com/author/jacob-koffler/) ## Jacob Koffler Jun 11, 2015 5:03 PM UTC by [Jacob Koffler](https://time.com/author/jacob-koffler/) ## Jacob Koffler Jun 11, 2015 5:03 PM UTC America has an egg crisis. The [avian flu (H5N2) outbreak](http://time.com/3857283/bird-flu-outbreak-usda/) has killed or fatally infected more than 10 percent of domestic egg-laying hens—35 million in all. That has sent the price of a carton of eggs skyrocketing 120% in the past month, according to commodity market research firm Urner Barry. The epidemic has opened the door to the first European egg imports in more than a decade, [courtesy of the Netherlands](http://time.com/3913599/bird-flu-dutch-eggs/) and Germany. The first shipment of between 7 and 8.5 million eggs is already en route from Germany and will arrive in the U.S. next week. It’s part of an initial contract between the U.S. and Germany for up to 28 million German eggs, and a contract for another 28 million is “in the works,” Rick Brown, senior vice president of Urner Barry, told TIME. However, you probably won’t taste the difference in the German and Dutch eggs, because so far the U.S. is only importing eggs that will be used in products—egg whites or yolks in liquid or powdered form—not sold as fresh eggs. “The fresh eggs for the supermarkets need to be real fresh,” Hubert Andela, the chairman of the Dutch Association of Egg Packers ([ANEVEI](http://www.mvonederland.nl/organisatie/anevei)), told TIME. “Transporting them by ship from the Netherlands to the \[U.S.\] takes too long and flying them is very expensive.” Eggs sold in cartons at the supermarket need to be kept frozen or in a dry, cold environment, making the transportation process complicated and costly. This means that the imports, which Andela said this week were “about to get started” from the Netherlands, are limited to egg products. That will likely result in a lot of egg white powder crossing the Atlantic, Andela said, noting that the protein is the most desired component of eggs for American consumers (who might actually be getting [too](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jessica-jones-ms-rd/protein-diet%5Fb%5F1882372.html) [much](http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/too-much-protein-could-lead-to-early-death-study-says/2014/03/04/0af0603e-a3b5-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9%5Fstory.html)), and that domestic yolk remains cheap in the U.S. Contrary to popular belief, egg whites have more protein than egg yolks; the whites of one large egg contain [3.6 grams](http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/113?fgcd=&manu=&lfacet=&format=&count=&max=35&offset=&sort=&qlookup=01124), while the yolk contains only [2.4 grams](http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/114?fgcd=&manu=&lfacet=&format=&count=&max=35&offset=&sort=&qlookup=01125). Most of the egg flavor comes from the yolk, according to Andela, so American consumers will almost certainly not notice a change in taste. Flavor is also “influenced by the feed for the laying hens and this can differ from one farm to another,” so different tastes can be found among domestic producers as it is. This is the first time in more than three decades that American egg producers have been hit with such a large avian flu outbreak. Between 1983 and 1984, an outbreak in Pennsylvania killed 17 million hens. To keep eggs flowing onto Americans’ plates during the current bird flu epidemic, the U.S. has [approved egg imports from seven countries](http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2015/06/08/us-to-import-egg-products-from-netherlands-to-ease-shortage)—Chile, Argentina, France, Spain and Portugal, in addition to the Netherlands and Germany—after the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) has found that their safety standards were [equivalent](http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/home/!ut/p/a1/04%5FSj9CPykssy0xPLMnMz0vMAfGjzOINAg3MDC2dDbwsfDxdDDz9AtyMgnyMDf3dDIAKIkEKcABHA0L6w%5FWjUJX4Wxq6AZWEBfp7OzsbWPgZwxTgtqIgN8Ig01FREQBCfym8/?1dmy&page=gov.usda.fsis.internet.topics&urile=wcm%3Apath%3A%2FFSIS-Content%2Finternet%2Fmain%2Fnewsroom%2Fmeetings%2Fnewsletters%2Fconstituent-updates%2Farchive%2F2015%2FConstUpdate060115) to those in the U.S. While the European egg shipments will be a welcome addition to the American market, they will likely not be enough to make up for all the hens that were lost to the bird flu. Brown, from Urner Barry, estimated that the 35 million hens affected by the bird flu had produced 28 million eggs per day; by comparison, the U.S. will likely be importing a maximum of 28 million eggs per month from Germany. The Dutch will also help, sending what Andela predicted would be the whites of several hundred million eggs per year. But even that will not be sufficient. “We’ve lost a lot more than we could possibly import,” Brown said. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] There's something we all enjoy about staying for dinner. You ever thought why? What was on your dinner table when you were younger? Chances are it had a lot to do with, what your doctor was telling you is healthy. Building a strong healthy body is like building a strong, beautiful building. If the foundation is weak, the whole building will be weak. It takes five fingers to point the way to healthful eating habits. Well, here we go. For years, the government published dietary guidelines. Meant to keep Americans healthy. There's a great deal to learn. Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. The body needs certain substances to live and grow. And remember, your body isn't just like an automobile. For years, the key measures of those guidelines were the same, cut fat from your diet. The committee's original report urged Americans to reduce their risk of heart attack. By reducing their intake of cholesterol down to the equivalent of about one egg a day. And those guidelines had an effect. From 1977 to 2012, per capita consumption of eggs fell by 9 %, beef by 37 %, whole milk by 72 %. Calories from saturated fat fell, while calories from supposedly safe carbohydrates increased. As one expert put it, it was a vast nutritional experiment. With nearly a million American's a year dropping dead from heart disease in the mid 80s, we had to try something. Nearly four decades later results are in. The experiment was a failure. Americans are sicker than they've ever been before. The prevalence of diabetes has gone up 157 % from 1980 to 2011. Nearly one in ten Americans now has the disease. Causing the public health system $ 245 billion a year. Heart disease is still the number one killer in the country. Americans are as obese as ever. So, what went wrong? Good old granola. Great for taste but loaded with fat. It doesn't take much of imagine a leap to assume that fat would make us fat, clog our arteries and raise the risk of heart disease. It turns out that saturated fat is a lot more complicated than we think. Carbohydrates and fats are nutrients. Like man, you need nutrients to live and grow. [ MUSIC ] Firstly, there are two kinds of cholesterol. LDL which is linked to heart disease and HDL which can be protective. Fats that course through the blood are known as triglycerides and high levels of those are linked to heart disease. Saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol but also raises HDL. Moving LDL buildup on arterial walls. So raising both, makes saturated fat a cardio wash. One key piece of information is that LDL seems to come in two forms. Large and fluffy, small and dense. Those smaller particles are linked to heart disease, while the larger ones are mostly benign. Saturated fat increases the number of large particles. The opposite happens with carbs. I don't get it. Researchers have long since discovered the kind of fats found in olives and in fish like salmon. Are actually heart protective. Now it turns out the fats found in meat and dairy, aren't as bad as we feared before. So that means by focusing so much on fats. We may actually have been making ourselves sicker. So, she brings up the subject of reduced- fat cheese. It's a fat- free [ UNKNOWN ]. Fat- free, cholesterol free. Low- fat granola. Reduced- fat Kettle chips. Reduced- fat Chips Ahoy. Lowfat cottage cheese. Non- fat yogurt is the perfect example. The thinking for consumers was simple. Fat was dangerous. This product had no fat. Therefore, it must be healthy. It's non- fat, which means less calories. [ MUSIC ] But amid the confusion about fat, we end up replacing it in our diets with sugars and carbohydrates, which meant our calorie intake was actually going up. When carbs and things like corn and white bread are ingested into your body, their converted into sugars. Those sugars convert to insulin cuz it's fat cells go into storage overdrive, leading to weight gain. Since fewer calories are then left to fill the body, you begin to feel hungry it means our metabolism begins to slow down in effort to save energy, we eat more and we gain more weight, never quite feeling full. As this process repeats, our cells become more resistant to insulin, which causes us to gain more weight, which increases insulin resistance in a vicious circle. Cut calories, and people just get hungrier. Obesity, diabetes, high triglycerides and low HDL cholesterol can all follow. Study after study has found it's very difficult to lose weight on a very low- fat diet. Possibly because fat and meat can produce a sense of satiety, that's hard to achieve with carbs, making it easier to simply stop eating. But it isn't just the increase in carbs that affects us. These processed, low saturated fat alternatives, come loaded with sugars, salt, preservatives, and even some unhealthy fats. So what's the real alternative? As one extra puts it, the cold hard truth about diet is that the only way to eat well, is to eat well. You'll be happier and you'll be healthier, if you focus on real whole foods, whether they have fat or not. Got it. 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