Alternatives to Egg Products
It is hard to imagine that the boiled egg that we consider part of
a traditional breakfast could, in a foreseeable time, be produced
without the actual laying hen being necessary.
However, the situation looks completely different
with products like egg white powder and egg yolk powder, which are
used in making pasta, mayonnaise and in industrial baking. Here it
is realistic and it makes sense to develop alternatives.
Snowballs, which are a kind of confectionary
filled with white sticky foam, are a good example of how absurd the
present use of egg white powder is:
- Laying hens are bred in hatcheries. Half of the birds that hatch
are male chickens. This breed of chicken grows slowly, making them
unsuitable for meat production. So, the male chicks, because they
can not lay eggs, are gassed or put through a shredding machine
directly after they have hatched.
- The remaining female birds are put into small rearing cages where
they are fed for nearly half a year until they are mature enough
to lay eggs.
- Following this the hens spend 12 to 14 months in a battery cage
where they very inefficiently turn feed into eggs. Much of the feed
is used for the bird’s metabolism, which in turn becomes excrement,
which, of course, must be disposed of.
- A percentage of the eggs produced will be broken in the process
and a percentage of the hens will die before their egg laying time
is over. The breeding of these birds simply does not pay off.
- After the laying period the hens are taken to the slaughter house.
Their meat is unpopular compared to meat from broiler chickens.
- An expensive infrastructure is needed for hatching, rearing,
keeping in battery cages and finally for the slaughtering of these
animals. Far more expense is involved than for the production of
non-animal/vegetarian foods.
- To produce granular egg white needed for confectionary like snowballs
countless eggs need to be broken and then the white needs to be
separated from the yolk. Then the egg white must be pasteurised
and have the sugar removed. Following this, the egg white needs
to be concentrated via an evaporation process, and then at 170°C
the product is spray dried. Finally we have a product that can be
used as a basic ingredient for making snowballs.
- Can we say for sure that after such an extensive processing method
that the danger of salmonella can be ruled out? Broken packages
of liquid-egg for example, are regarded as particularly biologically
sensitive.
Such a process is crying out to be improved upon,
by producing the egg products directly i.e. leaving out the chicken.
It would seem plausible that there must be a more hygienic, animal-friendly,
environmentally-friendly and cholesterol-free method; preferably,
of course, animal-free.
A subsidiary of Unilever “Alleggra Foods”
has developed an egg replacement called „Alleggra“
which is available in liquid or powder form. The paradox is though,
that alongside soya, vegetable oil and whey protein the product includes
egg white. This is an improvement in terms of reducing the animal
ingredients in a product, but, not a complete alternative to chicken
eggs.
Another new egg-replacer brand line for the industry has been introduced
in 2008 by Gum Technology.
General Links
Existing egg replacement products. It is interesting to note
the listed ingredients:
Various
British egg replacement products
Gum
Technology - 3 lines of egg-replacements for the industry
Ener-G
Egg Replacer
Orgran
- Egg replacer "no egg" and egg free cake and muffin mixes
Ideas for replacing eggs when you cook at home:
Englisch,
Pioneerthinking
German,
Vegan.at
German,
SWR
