The Incredible Egg

I was going to include eggs on the list in today's 'toon but it was too dang complicated. Here's the deal:

Freshly-laid eggs can be safely left unrefrigerated for about two weeks. This is because they have a natural barrier against bacteria. Most countries in the world consume eggs in this fashion. (It's said these eggs are better to cook with, too.)

However, America, along with Japan and Australia, washes its eggs until they're all nice and squeaky clean, sometimes giving them a squirt of oil to give them a consumer-friendly sheen. Unfortunately, this cleansing process strips the bacterial shield from the eggs and so they must thereafter be kept refrigerated. An egg of this sort left on the kitchen counter for as short a time as two hours can begin to deteriorate.

So I could have said "eggs" versus "refrigerated eggs" but that would have sounded, you know, unnatural.

=Lefty=