egg have a lot in common with milk , butter , and cheese : They ’re often snowy ( and yellow ) , they come up from farms , and they ’re usually celebrate in a food market store’sdairy section . All things considered , it ’s no marvel that so many multitude assumeeggsthemselves are dairy . But are they ?

What is dairy?

No , bollock are not dairy . The accurate definition ofdairydepends on the context . loosely talk , itdescribesany merchandise derived from the milk of a domesticated animal ( and that milk itself ) . This category includes cheese , ice ointment , yogurt , butter , saturnine ointment , and so onward . The USDA has slimly dissimilar parameters that factor in the nutritional content of these items . bastioned soja milk , for example , fall under the USDA ’s dairy umbrella because it “ hold Ca , vitamin vitamin D , and vitamin A in amounts standardised to cow ’s milk , ” per theUSDA . However , the organizationexcludescream high mallow , sour cream , ointment , butter , and other foods “ that have petty calcium and a high - fatty tissue content . ”

Eggs , however , do n’t fit in either pail . They ’re not made from milk ; the ones we use up are unfertilised offspring of chickens ( or other bird ) . Nor are eggs nutritionally similar to milk ; they ’re protein . Because eggs come from domesticise fowl , the USDA sort them as a domestic fowl product . But since the wordpoultryoften refers specifically to meat from domesticated fowl — and eggs are n’t pith — that categorization is n’t universally agreed upon . AsMickey Rubin , executive director of the American Egg Board ’s Egg Nutrition Center , toldTODAY.com , “ testis are neither dairy nor poultry ; egg are … eggs . ” Even the USDA seemingly acknowledges the grey area by call the relevant section on its website “ Poultry & Eggs , ” rather than just listing eggs as a subdivision of poultry .

All that enounce , it would be more accurate to call egg a poultry Cartesian product than a dairy one , since domesticated fowl are imply and Milk River is n’t .

Not dairy.

Why are eggs in the dairy section?

As Paradeexplains , testicle may have end up in the dairy gangway in part because there are hard-and-fast nutrient safety road map regarding their infrigidation ( the USDA advises 40 ° farad or below ) . So it ’s logical that grocery store computer memory would group them with other refrigerated foods , many of which are dairy . Not to mention that it used to be more common for farm to sell milk and bollock to foodstuff stores together . Plus , they ’re two of our principal culinary staples . As Rubin summed it up neatly to Parade , “ It is likely that eggs are frequently grouped adjacent to dairy products in the refrigerated case at the market store for contrivance , as these product are all considered household staples and require infrigidation . ”

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