The price of eggs

Walden Green on the specter (and reality) of food insecurity in the political imagination.

“$.50 per egg surcharge due to rise in costs.” If you live in the United States, you’ve probably seen that sign, or a variation of it, taped, pinned, or tacked to the corner of your preferred local breakfast establishment in the last month.

Writing about “Treatlerites” for Dirt last month, I included an X post that satirically implied escalating DoorDash delivery fees had decided the 2024 U.S. presidential election, but the only appeal of such reasoning is that it provides an easy enemy. Eggs, on the other hand, don’t discriminate. According to a 2023 NPR report, the average American eats about 280 a year. “Most important goddamn meal of the goddamn day, right?” says dockworker Ziggy Sobotka in a scene from The Wire, as his coworkers crack raw eggs directly into their morning beers.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say Donald Trump’s path back to the White House was paved with broken shells. The cost of eggs began to spike (for the second time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic) due to an outbreak of Avian flu in the early months of 2024, with Trump promising throughout his campaign that “prices will come down.” Any economist worth their salt could tell you it’s far from that simple, but food—and, especially, food insecurity—remains a powerful motivator, tapping into a primal, deeply fearful part of our brains. 

Hunger is also used as a weapon against civilians, from the British Whig party stifling proactive government intervention during the Irish Potato Famine to Israel’s ongoing starvation of the Gaza Strip, which has been blockaded from receiving aid for a month now. French Revolutionary philosopher Rousseau is famously quoted as saying “When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.” But vague categories like “the people” and “the rich” are easily exploited and misconstrued, so before signing on, you might want to be sure of where you fall.

BBC miniseries Utopia aired for two six-episode seasons in 2013 and 2014, and later received a short-lived and poorly timed American revival in 2020. Set in an alternative present England, the series (spoilers ahead) centers on several ordinary people who, thanks to their shared interest in an underground graphic novel, become caught in the machinations of an extra-judicial, extra-governmental secret organization known as “The Network.” The show is brutal to the point of black comedy; in the first episode alone, characters get framed for sexual assault and pedophilia, have their eyes scooped out with a spoon, and are blackmailed over an affair with a sex worker. The latter is the fate that befalls Michael Dugdale (Paul Higgins), the assistant to Britain’s Health Secretary, who must orchestrate the purchase of mass quantities of a vaccine for the dubious “Russian flu.”

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