Egg squeeze in vegetarian or non-vegetarian category?

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Meeshika Sharma
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Egg is popularly considered a non-vegetarian food, but there are many facts that do not entirely support this statement.

Unlike the birds' eggs that you see hatching into chicks, the eggs that you eat do not contain a developing embryo. In fact, these eggs almost never contain even the potential for life. As such, eggs are typically considered safe on most vegetarian diets.

  • If we go by the definition that those who eat flesh are non-vegetarians, egg is indeed vegetarian as it has no flesh or life.
  • Eggs contain three parts- the shell, the albumen (white) and the yolk. The egg white is a suspension of the protein albumen in water. It contains no animal cell. Hence, egg whites are vegetarian and all products containing egg whites are, technically, vegetarian.
  • Most of the yolk is a suspension of fat, cholesterol and protein in water, but since the gamete cells cannot completely be demarcated from the yellow portion, the yolk is non-veg.
  • Eggs come from chicken, but they are not obtained by killing chicken, like caviar or fish eggs are obtained. Not every product that comes out of animal is non-vegetarian, the best example being milk.
  • Most eggs available in the market are unfertilized ones, so there is hardly a possibility that a chick could have come out of it, had you spared that egg!
  • Chicken eggs are two kinds, fertile and infertile. Most of the eggs that are consumed are infertile.
  • The eggs that we consume on almost a daily basis do not have embryos. This means that the eggs probably have not developed enough to be at the stage where one would be eating an actual animal/bird.

 

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