Unreplaceable egg: is there a substitute?

I was recently invited by the International Egg Commission (IEC) to speak at their annual conference, the largest global event of the egg industry, the IEC Business Conference Monte Carlo 2019. And I was challenged to cover the topic Unreplaceable egg: there is no substitute. I definitely got flattered and humbled by the invitation, especially because it happened after I had told them about my decision to leave WWF and that I wouldn’t be with the organization anymore by the time of the conference at April 9. They said they were inviting me as a professional and as a leader in food sustainability, nothing else. At the same time, I was puzzled by the topic, so I set on a journey first to understand why it would be important for the egg industry at this moment and second, could I stand behind it and talk about it?

I started my research by focusing first on what external stakeholders to the egg industry are talking about eggs. It was impossible not to stumble on a growing movement, at least in the western world, against animal proteins in general, not only connected to animal welfare and ethical reasons anymore, but also linking them to the destruction of the planet, to environmental issues. The most graphic case I could find that exemplify well this movement was the “Million Dollar Vegan: Fight Climate Change with Diet Change” campaign, founded by Matthew Glover, starry by 12 year old activist and TEDx speaker Genesis Butler and supported by over 600 thousand people on Change.org and several athletes, celebrities, musicians and millionaires like Paul McCartney, Joaquin Phoenix, Kate Mara, Lewis Hamilton, Jane Goodall, Woody Harrelson, Mena Suvari and Moby, just to mention a few. They initiated this long-term campaign by challenging people to go vegan for Lent, starting with the Pope: “For the sake of animals, all people, our future, and this planet, we are calling on Pope Francis to demonstrate leadership on these issues by trying vegan for Lent”. And they offered the Pope $1 million dollars in donation to any institution of his wish if he accepted the challenge.

I also learned that the modern Egg Industry is already familiar to this match between Good and Evil, that more recently has become more and more polarized like almost any topic nowadays (would it be because of social media?). In the last six decades they went through at least 5 big shifts from one side to another that had big impacts on the image and on the consumption of eggs: 1st - the “Go to Work on an Egg” phase in the 1960’s starting in UK that marked the growth in the use of eggs around the world for breakfast. 2nd - The Cholesterol Issue brought by the American Heart Association in the 1970’s wrongly concluding that eggs had a negative impact on people’s health (later was found the carbs have the worst impacts). 3rd - Salmonella Poisoning cases in the 1980’s that had a huge negative impact on the perception of eggs. 4th - In the early 2000’s, a series of Large Studies proved that Eggs have not risk to Cholesterol if consumed by no more than 3 eggs a day. Egg consumption gradually regains a steady path of consumption growth. 5th - Animal Activist Campaigns against eggs because of the use of cages in the late 2000’s and trough 2010’s put a lot of pressure on the egg industry. The issue is still unfolding especially in the US and in the developing world. So, what’s next? Would the egg industry be facing another negative phase where the eggs will be now villainized because of their environmental impacts?

Depending of the EAT Lancet Commission and their recent report the answer is YES. Eating less, much less eggs and other animal proteins could help us avoid environmental catastrophe, according to this report. For this international commission of 37 scientists, the way we eat and produce food has become so destructive to the environment and our health that it now threatens the long-term survival of the human species. We now have so many interconnected food-related crises — climate change, pollution, and food waste, not to mention malnutrition and obesity — that it will be impossible to feed the 10 billion people expected by 2050 unless we make dramatic changes to our diets and farming practices, the researchers argue. The report acknowledges that animal agriculture can be beneficial to ecosystems in some contexts. But “plant-based foods cause fewer adverse environmental effects” than animal products by every metric. Feeding everyone within planetary boundaries will also mean changing agricultural practices and reducing food loss. “But we estimated that changes in food production practices could reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 by only 10 percent, whereas increased consumption of plant-based diets could reduce emissions by 80 percent,” it says. So, we could help limit the climate and pollution mess by scaling back meat, eggs and dairy and scaling up grains, legumes, and nuts. The researchers also call for a global treaty to limit the political influence of the food industry — modeled on the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

What’s needed, according to the report, titled “Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems,” is a new philosophy for how to eat on planet Earth. They call for a 50 percent reduction in global consumption of red meat and sugar, and an over 100 percent increase in nuts, fruits, vegetables, and legumes, by 2050. Eggs are practically non-existent on the diet. It recommends no more than a half an ounce per day, or fewer than two eggs total in a week.

Many are calling it a virtuous rebrand of the Mediterranean diet—a characterization they might agree with. The study’s lead author has been accused of pushing outdated nutritional science—in particular, recommending a diet low in saturated fats, which the report calls for in the form of less beef, eggs, and dairy. That’s pissed off the animal agriculture industry, and dietitians and paleo freaks aren’t having it either. Others have accused the authors of misunderstanding available resources for agriculture and sustainable food production, and called the funders out-of-touch, hypocritical Norwegian billionaires (by the way, the funding for the initiative came from the Wellcome Trust in the UK and the EAT Foundation, the private foundation of Norwegian billionaires Gunhild and Petter Stordalen).

So it’s no shocker that there’s been some pushback to the report, and not just from the usual suspects in the meat industry, who seem to feel increasingly threatened by modest increases in flexitarianism, veganism, and good old-fashioned vegetarianism. A few researchers, politicians and doctors have also quibbled with some of the details in the dietary advice, and whether we really know what a healthy diet for all humans looks like. Let’s take a look of what some of them said.

According to Stanford meta-researcher John Loannidis, nutrition science hasn’t yet been able to prove if there is a single set of nutritional guidelines as specific as the ones in the Lancet report for all humans to follow. The problem, he says, is that the nutrition studies provided by the researchers to back up this “healthy” diet are observational, which means they can’t actually tell us whether one thing caused another thing to happen — only that two things are associated. “Much has never been tested in randomized trials and they continue to promote it as if it is solid knowledge“, he told Vox.

He went on to explain that the only component of the EAT-Lancet diet that has been evaluated with large randomized trials is unsaturated versus saturated fats: “There is indeed a small/modest observed benefit for cardiovascular events but even this seems to be driven mostly by the trials that are not adequately controlled. Sugars and added sugars have been assessed in small randomized trials with mostly unimpressive results.”

In a piece for Psychology Today, Georgia Ede, a psychiatrist and nutrition consultant, writes that “animal foods are essential to optimal human health” and describes the various ways she thinks the EAT-Lancet Commission authors fail to provide adequate scientific evidence for the nutritional value of a plant-based diet. “For those of us with insulin resistance (aka ‘pre-diabetes’) whose insulin levels tend to run too high, the Commission’s high-carbohydrate diet — based on up to 60 percent of calories from whole grains, in addition to fruits and starchy vegetables — is potentially dangerous,” Ede notes.

What about all the people who are malnourished or don’t eat much animal proteins at all? As shown by World Resources Institute animal products’ consumption varies greatly by country. And even the EAT Lancet report notes that many of the 1 billion of the world’s population who are malnourished need more animal products in their diet, not less. “In some places, like rural sub-Saharan Africa, and rural South Asia, people don’t get enough animal products to get their growth cognitive needs,” said Jessica Fanzo, associate professor at Johns Hopkins and a Lancet co-author. Stunting in kids, for instance, is sometimes associated with low consumption of animal products and other protein-rich foods.

In fact the report generated reactions in the developing world too. For Gebregziabher Gebreyohannes, Ethiopia Ministry of Agriculture, the report is certainly a step in the right direction, but it is not as global in its outlook as it could be. For example, he notes the potential of eggs to reduce stunting and asserts that many Africans, might benefit from more “animal source protein.” “It could say more about how, in the developing world, milk, meat and eggs are necessary ingredients in the sustainable, healthy diets that we all strive for, and that they support the livelihoods of millions, across Africa and Asia.”

Shenggen Fan, Director General for the International Food Policy Research Institute, was born in a poor village in Jiangsu province, China, where they were hungry all the time and lacked basic things – electricity, roads and food. “The Chinese think that part of the reason why they are shorter than other nationalities is a lack of access to milk and eggs. If you drink a cup of milk a day, or have an egg a day, you will get taller. There is good evidence that animal-source foods reduce stunting. When I grew up I never, ever had them. I only saw fresh milk for instance when I went to college.”

Nobody disagrees that Animal Proteins, in average, tend to have higher environmental impacts than Vegetable Proteins. “What concerns me the most is that, while livestock has an impact, the report makes it sound as if it was the leading source of the impacts. By far the use of fossil fuels are the leading source of carbon emissions”, said Frank M. Mitloehner, a renowned professor and researcher at UC Davis in Livestock Life Cycle Analyses (technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life). He also disagrees with the method used by the council to determine the amount of greenhouse gases produced by livestock and believes that their conclusions are mostly driven by the human health assumptions they selected rather than by environmental impacts.

For Jason Clay, Sr. Vice President of Markets for WWF, “Switching from animal proteins to other proteins is not a panacea — for people or nature. Not all proteins are equal—equally nutritious or impactful. All food production has impacts. We need to avoid top-down assumptions about shifting between food groups, particularly when calculating global need”. He goes on to say that proteins like seafood, tree nuts, milk and soy or other pulses all come with potential negative environmental impacts. “Almonds, and all tree nuts, take enormous amounts of water and will be hard to adapt to shifting weather conditions. Soy and pulses are the second largest driver of deforestation and grassland conversion globally.”

Align with Jason’s remarks are the results of a study published on Nature in 2017 comparing the environmental impact of omnivorous, ovo-lacto-vegetarian, and vegan diets. It was the first-time environmental impacts of three dietary regimens were evaluated using individual real and recorded dietary intakes rather than hypothetical diet or diets averaged over a population like the EAT Lancet report did. The omnivorous choice in fact generated worse carbon, water and ecological footprints than other diets but not by a huge difference. No differences were found for the environmental impacts of ovo-lacto-vegetarians and vegans, which also had diets more adherent to the Mediterranean pattern. A high inter-individual variability was observed through principal component analysis, showing that some vegetarians and vegans have higher environmental impacts than those of some omnivores.

Paper and power points can hypothetically accept anything, but are the conclusions and recommendations of the EAT Lancet report even practical? That’s exactly the question Sam Bloch, a trending young journalist who has been writing about food, arts and culture for many publications including The New York Times and L.A. Weekly, had in mind when he decided to follow the diet for a week. His conclusions: “To follow the diet, eaters have to forgo packaged foods in nearly every aisle of the supermarket and any food from restaurants and there’s not a chance that would happen in America, where only 15 percent of people say they love to cook.” He concluded that it’s almost impossible to define what exactly those foods or dishes have and by how much. “All the ingredients you typically see in processed foods, like partially hydrogenated oils, refined grains, and various salts and preservatives, according to the report, are environmentally unsustainable. A diet free of additives and preservatives also makes it practically impossible to switch to substitutes or alternatives that are theoretically good for the planet, because their formulations can be too complicated.”

That was the case with an egg replacement Sam found in the grocery store, a legume-based egg substitute extolled as good for the planet. “For a moment, browsing the aisles of the grocery, I thought about buying it. But what about the 16 ingredients in the product? The label said the product “contains less than 2% of” various additives and preservatives. If I was keeping track of how much of each food group I was consuming, I’d assume the rest was water, legumes, and canola oil. But there’s no way to break that down into constituent parts, to know just how many legumes I would be eating in a single serving of “protein isolate.” The exact formulation is proprietary. Yet here, too, the plant-based options have an Achilles heel. Their heavily processed, lengthy ingredient list is out-of-step with consumer demand for whole, natural products.”

He also observed that soy protein is often the favored ingredient for plant-based manufacturers attempting to mimic the texture of animal proteins. However, the extrusion process through which the protein is separated from oil involves heavy processing with industrial chemicals. The final products are also very often high in salt, added sugars, and flavoring in order to make them palatable. When you consider that 69 percent of consumers prefer their food be free from artificial ingredients, plant-based foods have a clear weakness. For him, the EAT Lancet diet not only is unpractical but it’s also more expensive: “To feed two people for a week, I spent $259.54 on groceries. That’s on the higher end of the cost spectrum. The USDA-recommended “moderate” grocery plan for a two-person household is $141.30 a week, according to recent figures.”

It's true indeed that most dietary guidelines around the world do recommend a higher consumption of plant-based foods in relation to animal-based foods, in average 2/3 versus 1/3, what’s much more balanced than what the EAT Lancet report commends. It’s also true that in developed countries the total consumption of proteins, in particular the average consumption of animal proteins, is much higher than what’s recommended both in absolute terms and in proportion to the amount of vegetable proteins. In the developing world is quite the opposite, with most of Asia, Africa and some Latin America countries not consuming enough animal proteins per capita as already mentioned above.

There are a series of market researches showing that the population in developed countries are becoming aware of that reality and some have already been trying to increase the amount of vegetables in their diets. A 2017 research done by Nielsen in US for example showed that 39% of Americans are actively trying to incorporate more plant-based foods in their diets. In another research done by Ipsos at the end of 2017, 54% of adult Americans said that they are trying to consume fewer animal-based foods (meats, dairy and eggs) and more plant based foods (fruits, grains, beans and vegetables). In fact the sales data on plant based foods are confirming that trend as shown on the graph below from US.

Milk has been by far the most affected animal protein by its vegetable replacements. They also started to compete much earlier with fluid milk than other animal protein replacements. Now, several decades later, milk makers are starting to catch on. Value-added milks, like ultra-filtered Fairlife, A2 milk, and Amazon’s new Happy Belly brand, are easier on the stomach for those who suffer discomfort when drinking regular milk. This category, along with organic and grass-fed milks, are the only products bucking the current downward trend in milk consumption (or at least not shrinking as quickly). Unfortunately, it’s too late for fluid milk to completely regain the lost ground. Plant-based milks are expected to add another $1 billion to their market share in 2019, whereas sales of dairy milk are expected to drop another $2 billion by 2020. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than half of U.S. dairy farms have closed since 2000, dropping from more than 83,000 to less than 40,000. A case of concern for the egg industry?

When asked why, consumers list their health (with losing weight and feeling better as key components of that), environmental and animal welfare reasons for their decision of eating plant-based foods more often, in that order of importance (with the health issues in a strong first position). That can be exemplified by this market research done by Mattson in 2017.

 Not only consumers are pressuring companies and looking for more sustainable food (with the observation that the health and well being of society is one of the pillars of sustainability, along with environmental responsibility and economic viability). Investors (financial institutions, stock holders, hedge funds, pension funds, banks) are a growing voice, concerned about the long-term value of their portfolios, especially in connection to reputational risks, disruptions in their companies’ supply chains and obviously erosion of sales due to consumer changes in preference. Many are also truly concerned about the health of the planet and its population, especially for future generations. Blackrock CEO Larry Fink may have best summed up the shift toward the importance of establishing the context of an organization’s sustainability efforts when he wrote, in a 2018 letter to CEOs: “Purpose is not the sole pursuit of profits but the animating force for achieving them.” BlackRock is today the world's largest asset manager with $5.98 trillion in assets under management as of December 2018. Only US and China are bigger than that. BlackRock operates globally with 70 offices in 30 countries and clients in 100 countries. Due to its power and the sheer size and scope of its financial assets and activities, BlackRock has been called the world's largest shadow bank.

All that pressure is resulting in more companies becoming more concerned about their sustainability and becoming in consequence more transparent about it. Research from the Governance & Accountability (G&A) Institute and Greenbiz has found that 85 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 Index published sustainability or corporate responsibility reports in 2017. That’s a significant change from 2011, when G&A’s researchers found just under 20 percent of S&P 500 companies publishing such reports.

Way upstream, that pressure has been reaching the farmers, who have growing concerns about where things are going. The more progressive instead of fighting it, are embracing sustainability and becoming more transparent, measuring their impacts and developing improvement plans, changing their practices, adopting new technologies (or revitalizing old ones like cover crops) and joining sustainability programs along with their pears, suppliers, buyers and even retailers. A recent research done in US by Farm Journal with farmers shows that almost half of them believe that their operation will be affected by consumer pressure for sustainable food within one to ten years.

Where do the eggs fit in all of this? Obviously, it is an animal protein, so it has been already impacted by health, animal welfare and environmental issues as mentioned above. But eggs have characteristics and benefits that I found particularly unique and very relevant for this discussion and they should be analyzed in a holistic way (the nexus of their nutritional value, affordability, environmental and social impacts).

Because eggs have all that it takes to produce one chick, they are very rich in all the nutrients we humans also need: they are an excellent nutrient-dense food that packs six grams of protein, a bit of vitamin B-12, vitamin E, riboflavin, folic acid, calcium, zinc, iron, and essential fatty acids into a mere 75 calories. Second to the lactalbumin protein in human milk, eggs have the highest quality protein of any food.

Since a genetic improved hen normally produces over 300 eggs per year (0.8 per day) and has a productive life of 2 years in average, their environmental impacts and costs are diluted over a lot of production in comparison to her body weight. That, along with one of the best feed efficiencies among livestock, makes the egg the most efficient animal protein out there. Without mentioning that at the end of the hen life she can become food. As demonstrated on this paper by WRI, the eggs have both the highest transformation efficiency for proteins as for calories. Which means that they produce more edible nutrients taking less from nature in comparison to all the other animal sources. That allows eggs to be classified as a low impact source of protein to climate change, belonging to the same group of wheat, lentils, soy, nuts and rice, but with a higher aminoacidic profile and higher digestibility than all the other vegetable sources.

That was confirmed by Michael Clark and David Tilman from University of Minnesota in 2017, who found that eggs have, in average, a GHG emissions impact of 24.4 grams of Co2 equivalent per gram of protein, just a little above rice with 21.2gCO2e/g of protein, below all the other animal proteins and even below fresh produce (37.2gCO2e/g of protein). Looking across multiple environmental impacts, they compared the burdens of different food types, methods of food production, and levels of agricultural input-use efficiency. What is novel about their meta-analysis is its breadth and depth—to many, a life cycle environmental impact data set of this size has not yet been compiled and compared. Their analysis provides information for current decision-makers in many roles throughout the food system, from individual consumers to national governments. They also demonstrated that eggs have a low impact on land use, with 0.049 square meters per gram of protein. That’s comparable to 0.035 m2/g of protein for wheat and beef needs 1.04 m2 to produce one gram of protein.

In the case of water, the footprint of eggs also proved to be small and comparable to vegetal sources of proteins. The data used by WRI is from Mekonnen and Hoekstra and show eggs with a total water footprint of 29 liters of water per gram of protein. The average for all vegetables is 26L/g of protein and for cereals 21L/g of protein. Nuts use 139L/g of protein, even bigger than beef with 112L/g of protein.

When it comes to affordability the eggs also have a very nice story to tell. Because of the hen’s efficiency and economies of scale, it’s one of the most affordable proteins out there. If we could quantify the cost per unit of high-quality protein digested by us humans, the eggs would be the front runners. For me it’s even shocking to go to the grocery store in US and buy a dozen of eggs for only 98 cents of dollar. That puts each egg at 8 cents of a dollar, 8 cents! A bag of candies, more or less the same weight, in the same grocery store, costs almost 500% more! That’s for empty calories and not much more.

On the social and economic arena eggs also have a very important role to play. Without mentioning all the jobs it generates in the developed world, the egg can also be, in the developing world, a magnificent tool for social and economic development. There are in fact many development initiatives already using the power of the egg. But why the egg is unique in that sense? Here are a few reasons:

·        Provide an stable source of nutrients and/or income to smallholders and farmers as they have eggs every day of the year to sell;

·        Egg production is cheaper and easier to implement and to manage than large animals’;

·        Adaptability to different circumstances due to genetics, management and facilities;

·        Natural long-term shelf of eggs in comparison to other foods – and it can be further enhanced with boiling and other technics;

·        Rich source of nutrients for people’s diets;

·        Natural enhancer of the immune system. Especially important for kids;

·        Lower use of natural resources than other proteins to be produced, including water;

·        Chickens are an asset but also a food by the end;

·        Versatility in the use of different sources of feed;

·        Manure can be an important source of biological nutrients to the soil.

 One final and key element for the sustainability and irreplaceability of eggs are the enormous opportunities that exist for continuous improvement in different areas. Just to mention a few:

·        Feed: the majority of the environmental footprints of eggs are embedded in the feed ingredients it uses to feed the hens, so everything that can be done to reduce their impacts will also reduce the impacts of the eggs downstream. So, key things to be done here: first make sure that they are not causing natural habitat conversion to be produced (the risk for instance of the soy produced in the Cerrado, Chaco and Amazon or corn and wheat produced in the northern great plains of US); second, the use of regenerative production practices focused on soil health like crop rotation with other vegetables and livestock, no till, cover crops; the use of varieties and genetic improved seeds for higher efficiencies and lower footprints; the use of agriculture by-products, food waste and even insects in the feed.

·        Animal Welfare: the male pullets euthanasia needs addressing (could CRISPR be an opportunity to produce only females?) and the cage use issue must be resolved, guided by the best scientific direction possible holistically speaking (looking together at the optimum level of animal welfare with environmental impacts, economic viability and social responsibility).

·        Gut Health: Use of enzymes, natural additives, amino acids and probiotics for better feed efficiency (again, feed has the highest impact so reducing its use improves greatly the total sustainability of eggs) and general health improvements, including reduction or even elimination in the use of antibiotics.

·        Manure use: how to avoid run off and wasting of nutrients when using manure, maximizing its use and making it more valuable? There’s interesting research and development being done in the area of nutrient separation.

·        Extension of good practices, especially to developing countries. There’s still a huge gap to be fulfill between productivity levels in developed countries versus in developing countries. One of the examples here is the number of eggs per hen. Indigenous breeds, the majority in many Asian and European countries, produce in average only 40 to 50 eggs per year. Genetically improved breeds for those regions (also maintaining levels of adaptability) can go up to 150 to 180 eggs/year and commercial genetically improved hybrids can go up to 300 eggs/year or even more.

·        Transparency: use of technology (blockchain, traceability, bar codes, etc) to show consumers where and how their food is produced all the way through the value chain.

·        Innovation: how to leverage the low environmental impact, low cost and overall sustainability of the eggs to maximize the egg adoption in replacement of proteins with higher impacts? How to make eggs part of more diets and food eating moments?

Last year, for instance, Kraft Heinz’s big launch was Just Crack an Egg, a microwaveable egg scramble in a cup that contains fresh vegetables, Ore-Ida potatoes, Kraft cheese and Oscar Mayer meat (but not an egg; consumers use their own). The product lives alongside eggs in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, giving the company a foot in the fresh-food perimeter of the store where customers are spending an increasing amount of their time. Developed in concert with the consumer insights and strategy team, marketing and research and development, Just Crack an Egg aimed to solve a breakfast problem highlighted by survey data: people want portable, portion-controlled protein in the morning to help them feel sated and give them energy to start their day, but many don’t have time to cook before work, Ross said. And people love eggs but normally reserve them for the weekends because of the preparation and cleaning time. Ready in less than two minutes, Just Crack an Egg “brings the weekend occasion into the workweek,” Ross said. To prove the point, the culinary team timed it against how long it takes to make a fresh egg scramble, and found the packaged meal was ready by the time the skillet was just heating up. Just Crack an Egg, which launched in February 2018 and is carried in nearly 74 percent of the market in US, sold 21.7 million cups last year for $50.7 million in sales, “vastly exceeding expectations,” a spokesman said.

So, what will be the next chapter in the history of the egg industry? Will the egg be able to prove itself to society as the most sustainable and unreplaceable source of protein, addressing the trending demands of humans? I conclude that there are more than enough facts and opportunities for the egg industry to do just that, it’s just a matter of deciding to embrace them or not.

By the way, at this time Pope Francis refused to go vegan for lent. But for how long?

PS: The IEC Journal published later this article about my talk: