I’m on my way to work soon, having breakfast as I type. When I go diving I need a good breakfast to get me going. It’s a high energy job that gives your entire body a workout. My usual diving day breakfast is a couple of eggs over medium, and a bowl of oatmeal. Lunch is often a ham n cheese sandwich and a snack.

I’m dropping an egg into the skillet this morning, and the yolk is barely as big as a quarter, the white didn’t spread very far either! WTF? I’ve had Banty* eggs that were bigger. So, this got me to wondering who, and how the hell, do they grade eggs anyway? Well, I used our monopolized friend Google to investigate.

Eggs are graded not by size, as one might assume. But by weight per dozen. Of course one will make the other, but I did not know this.

Also as it turns out, USDA has a standard for “wholesomeness and safety.” (how and what exactly makes an egg wholesome?) While grading of size is, get this, voluntary! Unless your package has a USDA shield on it, the eggs within were “voluntarily” graded for size. With the USDA shield, that means the company paid to have USDA oversee the grading process. The carton my eggs came in actually does have a USDA shield, and labeled Grade A, Large.

But, I still got to say, I have a funny feeling someone is voluntarily taking my money for what is actually a medium egg, that is packaged and priced, as large. And they have been doing it as long as I can remember. I also remember when Big Macs were big, when Reeses peanut butter cups seemed to be over 2.5″ across, when a bar of soap was 30% bigger than it is now, and when just about everything we bought and consumed was of a larger size than we see today. But those things AFAIK, aren’t regulated, as eggs presumably are.

I don’t have a scale in the range for testing this theory, but I’ll be looking for one. Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps my suspicious nature is acting up. But something here doesn’t seem right. Wal Mart is the business from which these eggs were acquired. That alone does nothing to alleviate my suspicions. In fact that makes it worse. When I find a suitable scale, I’ll investigate and update.

There is another store in town that sells eggs that do not have the USDA shield on the package, and we will get our eggs there more often, because when you look them over, they certainly seem to be larger eggs, and consistently so. Having the USDA shield on the package is apparently not the be-all, end-all way to determine the size of the eggs inside. I’ve been complaining about Wal Mart’s Banty eggs for a long time, but never thought to look into this and see if I can figure out what’s going on.

Sizing Up Eggs

I’m heading out, wish me luck. What was supposed to be a N wind @ 5-10 turned into a N wind @ 15+ yesterday. Resulting in me getting blown off the lake. My next internet investigation will be why the hell can’t the forecast get the wind right?

*A Banty, or Bantam, is a small chicken.

** I’m aware that bird flu has devastated egg production, but that does not mean I’m ok with medium eggs in a large container.