FOOD NEWS
Are Eggs Actually Considered Dairy?
By Jasmine Hanner
As eggs are sold with dairy products and excluded from the vegan diet, it’s easy to mentally connect eggs with dairy products, but dairy products are defined as products that are made from milk. You may wonder which food group eggs belong to, and as it turns out, the answer might depend on your cultural outlook.
For Judaism’s dietary guidelines, the three food groups are fleishig (meat), milchig (dairy), and pareve (not-meat-or-dairy). Eggs fall under the pareve group, which is the largest of these groups, but it’s only acceptable to eat eggs if the animal itself is deemed okay to eat and are rendered unkosher if they contain a minimum of one blood spot.
Islam also has its own dietary guidelines, and only eggs from halal animals are considered halal. When it comes to Hinduism, the stance of eating eggs may be a controversial one as some Lacto-vegetarian followers of Hindu place eggs in the “meat” category, rather than a dairy-based one.