I’m a frugal nerd, and I regularly write responses to YouTube videos or comments on the videos…then hit the back button and discard. Not really frugal advice is what gets me riled up. But nobody ever won anybody over in the comments section on YouTube. So I just use my blog to get it all out.
Eggs vs. Chicken…Which came first: the chicken or the egg…or the myth that eggs are cheaper than chicken?
Question from a comment on a YouTube frugal grocery budget post:
“I could be wrong but even though eggs are expensive these days they are cheaper protein than chicken or beef. You could have 3 eggs a day for 4 days at .94 cents per day. Walmart eggs $3.77 dozen.”
All Day Mom answer:
Eggs are cheaper than chicken if you can get eggs for free, but large eggs weigh (without shell) about 1.8 oz each. That’s 5.4 oz eggs for 3. The protein in 3 eggs is 18 g; calories in 3 eggs 210. Chicken breast for 5.4 oz (weight of 3 eggs) is 47 g protein, 253 calories. Boneless, skinless chicken breast has 261% more protein than eggs per ounce, but if you’re pitting eggs against chicken based on price only (which would be a weird contest as chicken has almost 3x the protein of eggs…it would be like pitting a 2nd grader against a university freshman wrestler as 7 years old times 2.6 is 18.2 years old), a dozen eggs weighs approximately 21.6 oz.
If eggs are $3.77/dozen (my Walmart’s price as of 9/2024), eggs cost 18 cents per ounce.
Chicken at 18 cents per ounce would cost $2.88 per pound (boneless, skinless).
*With bone-in, skin-on chicken, you lose half the weight for useable meat, so if you use bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, breasts, legs, quarters, or a whole chicken, that would be the same price [as the $3.77 per dozen eggs] at $1.44 per pound of bone-in chicken.
How Much Chicken Meat is on a Whole Chicken? Whole Chicken Meat Yield
In my area, eggs are rarely on sale at their normal price (pre-2023) of less than $1 per dozen, and not many people keep chickens because of Phoenix’s extremely hot weather from May through September, but bone-in chicken is $0.99 per lb at at least one grocery store almost every week, and boneless, skinless chicken breast is on sale once a month for less than $2 per lb.
So, for a versatile, animal-based protein source, chicken is the winner over eggs.
You can plug in your own numbers using prices in your area to see how it works out for you. The formula is:
- Dozen eggs price
- divided by
- 21.6
- multiplied by
- 16 to get equivalent boneless, skinless chicken breast price per pound.
- Divide that answer by 2 to get equivalent bone-in, skin-on chicken price.
Again, chicken breast has 2.6 times more protein than eggs if there seems to be a tie in price by weight.
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