Reddit Is Utterly Worried About These Cracked Eggs

Even during times of food inflation, eggs are among the household ingredients that consistently remain stocked in our fridges. Like salt, oil, and flour, eggs are a versatile and widely used ingredient that humans have enjoyed for 6 million years. A nutrient-dense food, eggs offer a wide range of health benefits that can boost daily protein intake, reduce the risk of stroke, and increase "good" HDL cholesterol levels, per Healthline. However, when not properly handled, eggs can cause foodborne illnesses like salmonella, a grueling and potentially life-threatening condition, according to the CDC.

In addition to the threat of salmonella, even just the look of raw eggs can be off-putting. For lack of a more appealing description, raw eggs are mucus-like and, in many cases, unappetizing in their uncooked state. So when you crack open an egg to fry and find a transparent veil surrounding its yolk, as one Reddit user did, you'd likely go running for answers regarding its safety.

Cloudy egg whites signal freshness

A concerned Reddit chef took to the subreddit r/Eggs to post a photo of his murky egg yolks with the caption, "What's wrong with these two eggs?" In the photo, five freshly cracked eggs sit in a mixing bowl, three of them unremarkable in appearance and two of them shrouded in an almost opaque white film. While one person cheekily commented, "Leave them alone, they're in their own bubble," another, more well-informed user provided a legitimate answer for why the egg whites were so hazy: "Very, VERY fresh eggs will have opaque albumen dude to a high concentration of CO2 that hasn't leeched out through the shell." As it turns out, they were right!

According to Nutritional Outlook, egg whites develop a cloudy appearance "due to carbon dioxide that hasn't yet escaped through the egg shell." The older an egg gets, the more gas escapes and the clearer the white becomes. So if your stomach churns when you see a cloud around your egg yolk, rejoice knowing that you're actually enjoying the luxury of fresh ingredients.