Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

No. The answer is to stop consuming eggs. Better for yourself, the animals and the planet.

Vegan diets are only OK if very, very well calibrated for macro and micro nutrients.

What is nutritionally wrong with eggs?

This rhetoric is old. You can thrive on a vegan diet very easily without this careful calibration you speak of. The same could be said for common western diets with poor nutrition.

With “it’s better for yourself” I’m not just referring to nutrition. Animal agriculture is devastating for the world, including the environment around you.

Also I think for most (dare I say ‘well informed’) people it would be an ethical relieve to stop consuming eggs and other animal products.

And yes: there are (nutritional) concerns around eggs; for example concerning salmonella, cholesterol and saturated fats. Although I should mention science is not unanimous regarding all of those subjects.

But science is clear about one thing: bird flu is not to take lightly.

It’s true that you can’t just go plant based by just ditching the animal based components: you have to substitute them. But that’s an increasingly easy thing to do these days.

From my perspective, your point can be regarded as a myth.

But even if it wasn’t mostly a myth: I rather spend a little more effort on balanced nutrition than contributing to the immensely violent system that animal agriculture is.

Eggs have obvious health benefits. Land encroachment + emissions is modest, and notwithstanding, that's just something to manage, not avoid altogether. Everything we demand for ourselves encroaches on land.

Modest egg consumption has a negligible impact on cholesterol. Most blood cholesterol is produced by your liver, impacted far more by other variables. Eggs are also not that high in fat.

It doesn't take much of a search to find many strong contra arguments to your reply. https://www.peta.org/features/egg-industry-cruelty/

As I said: science is not unanimous regarding that, but I think my other arguments are more important. And personally I don't care about the debate around the nutritional value of eggs. I just avoid animal products because I don't want to contribute to the hell that animal agriculture is.

Judging from the headline (I'm not going to read PETA), this is about the issues pertaining to the wellbeing of chickens, not the other externalities I actually mentioned.

Land use for animal agriculture has shrunk over time in the US. Methane is highest for cows, not that high with chickens. With the right practices (admittedly, they aren't migrating the clocks to fertilize land) this could be carbon-neutral, but notwithstanding, methane does not persist in the atmosphere nearly as long as CO2 does.

You mentioned it, so I addressed it.

Personally I am just choosy about where I purchase my animal products. You can visit some farms yourself. Of course if you're of a certain disposition, you won't want to do that anyway.

It's a clickbaity title indeed. But a pretty complete picture. Not a pleasant read of course. I'm sure you can find other sources yourself that offend you less than Peta does.

PETA is full of shit, to the point where you could probably safely take on the opposite of their position on any given issue and presume to be correct, generally.

Eggs may be full of shit... but Peta? That's too easy to say. Don't kill the messenger.

“Some farms”. That’s the crux. I would not believe the "small family farm is OK" myth. If only people would be exposed to what’s really going on anywhere else in enormous & secretive animal industry - not just some cherry picked farms, it would paint a completely different picture.

Gp is not saying that every farm exactly like the small family farm. In fact they are saying the opposite. You need to look at them individually, because they are not all the same as you are suggesting, any more than the passionate open source developer making a small living on donations is the same as a giant tech Corp making billions on vacuuming up people's data and "monetizing" it.

I think the bulk of the animal industry and farming industry are despicable and cruel. I think they essentially low-grade poison our food in order to squeeze unnatural levels of production out of goods. Without a doubt, they torture animals in order to increase yield and maximize it to the space. This is grotesque and awful in my opinion.

But there are people who are trying to do it a good way. If you believe that any sort of animal husbandry is evil, then go ahead and lump all the farms in together. But if you aren't that extreme, then there is a huge difference between some of the players.

I did not say small farms are inherently kosher. Please engage in good faith or don't engage at all.

No, eggs are not full of shit, PETA is. It's a hateful organization that does not give a flying fuck about animals, only about fundraising.

I will dig into the meta a bit here, because both it, and one of your points is interesting.

When I read things like "animal agriculture being devastating for the world including the environment", it rings true, and makes me want to dig further, support this any way I can etc. The conflation with the (IMO hella sus) health arguments makes me question the judgment and intent of the writer, and second-guess my initial agreement.

I would find it easier to sympathize with the main purpose, if it was left to stand on its own. Trust is an important concept in human interactions.

*Reading further posts in this thread, I'm going to double down and add my own frustration: I really want to support this cause and perspective, but I hesitate because I consistently get signals that the people who promote it are arguing in bad faith.

What is wrong about raising chickens in your own backyard and giving them a full eventful life?

You lost all credibility by linking to PETA imo

A portion of dietary cholesterol is directly absorbed and increases your serum LDL-c. Especially an issue if you have the Lp-a mutation that increases this turnover.

Though I think it's more useful to consider what you could replace it with if you did want to do the optimization.

I've been fiber-maxing and ApoB-minimizing for years and my breakfast lately is usually a large bowl oats + mix-ins, a tofu scramble, or a tempeh dish. According to cronometer, they have similar nutrition and calorie profile of six eggs, except they have fiber and other perks.

The downside is that it took quite a bit of motivated behavioral change to end up with new dietary staples having grown up in our egg-heavy culture.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'll consider your point. Although, just like a few other responses here it has the smell of a red herring to it, by shifting the focus from a inconvenient message to the form of that message.