No Yolk: Egg Substitutes Are Booming

Booming sales of egg substitutes are giving egg producers something to crow about after years of declining egg consumption.

In the past three years, the market for egg substitutes has tripled, growing to more than $100 million in sales a year, says Donald Wanack, manager of the St. Louis plant that makes Fleishmann's Egg Beaters, the nation's leading egg substitute.

Egg substitutes - most of them made from egg whites - are riding a tidal wave of consumer concern about cholesterol and fat in the diet. The American Heart Association recommends eating no more than four egg yolks a week because yolks are a concentrated sources of cholesterol. The plan puts no limit on egg whites, which are almost pure protein.

With no yolks, egg substitutes have no cholesterol and little or no fat. Most are lower in calories than whole eggs. Frozen or liquid substitutes can be served almost any way except sunny-side up.

Fleishmann's Egg Beaters is the undisputed market leader, accounting for nearly two-thirds of egg substitute sales last year, Wanack said.

Nabisco Brands Inc., the food subsidiary of RJR Nabisco Inc., markets Fleishmann's Egg Beaters, a frozen product that is 99 percent egg whites. The company adds color for appearance. Tiny amounts of calcium, vitamins and minerals give Egg Beaters the same nutritional value as whole eggs, minus the fat and cholesterol.

Nabisco receives pasteurized, refrigerated egg whites in bulk tankers. The company re-pasteurizes the whites, adds the other ingredients and packages Egg Beaters.

Egg Beaters are a St. Louis invention dating from 1972, Wanack said. In 1973, Standard Brands Co. began making the product for sale to older adults who liked eggs but could do without the 5 grams of fat in each yolk. Nabisco merged with Standard Brands in 1981.

Until 1986, Nabisco sold about 10 million to 13 million pounds of Egg Beaters a year, Wanack said. But as cholesterol became a major health concern for many Americans, sales took a great leap forward.

Wanack says sales of Egg Beaters have grown about 35 percent a year since 1986. The plant produced more than 46 million pounds of Egg Beaters last year, most sold in packs of two 8-ounce cartons. Sales this year should approach the plant's capacity of 60 million pounds.

The St. Louis plant's payroll has nearly doubled in the last four years, Wanack said. The plant has 72 employees, and Nabisco is building a 15,000-square-foot addition to the current plant.

Wanack doesn't expect to add jobs immediately. Nabisco hired many of the new employees late last summer when the company introduced an Egg Beaters vegetable omelet. Wanack said the omelet was an instant success, grabbing a 13 percent share of the egg-substitute market within a few months.

Egg Beaters with Cheez, an older product that contains imitation cheese, has been less successful than the omelet, Wanack said. But sales of quart-size packages of regular Egg Beaters are growing as restaurants, hotels and hospitals add it to their menus, he said.

Egg Beaters' success has prompted other companies to develop competing products or expand distribution of substitutes developed long ago. Scramblers is a frozen egg substitute marketed by Morningstar Farms. Like

Egg Beaters, Scramblers uses egg whites as its main ingredient. But Scramblers has more fat and calories than Egg Beaters because it contains corn or soybean oil. A spokesman for Worthington Foods, the parent company for Morningstar Farms, did not return a reporter's telephone calls.

Avocet Food Corp. has sold Second Nature, a refrigerated substitute made from egg whites, since the early 1970s, said Paula Sperry, manager of sales administration for Avocet in Pleasanton, Calif. But until last year, the company sold the product mainly on the West Coast. In 1989, Avocet decided to expand Second Nature's distribution nationwide because of the rising public concern about cholesterol, Sperry said. Second Nature is sold now in almost every state.

Sperry said the product is popular because of its taste and because it doesn't have to be thawed before use. Second Nature also sells next to eggs in the dairy case, a position that could give it an edge over frozen substitutes.

Another beneficiary of cholesterol phobia is Ener-G Egg Replacer, a dry egg substitute developed for people with egg allergies or other medical problems. Ener-G Foods Inc. of Seattle has been making Egg Replacer since the mid-1960s, said Sam Wylde, president. The product, a combination of starches, gums and baking powder, is designed to replace eggs in baked goods.

Egg substitutes haven't turned the ebbing tide of U.S. egg consumption so far, said Mark Weimar, an economist with the U.S. Agriculture Department. Americans consumed 235.6 eggs a person last year, the lowest number ever. But production of egg whites has shown steady growth since egg substitutes first became popular in the 1970s, he said. Last year, egg companies separated and sold 377.8 million pounds of whites, up from 200 million pounds in the mid-1970s.

The price of egg whites has leapfrogged past yolks, too, Weimar said. Egg whites cost an average 57.1 cents a pound last year, up from 32.8 cents in 1988. Part of the price increase was due to a 3.5 percent cut in total egg production.

Yolk prices weren't available, but Weimar and other sources said the market for yolks is declining. The yolks go into dog food, pasta, salad dressing and mayonnaise.

Monsanto's Simplesse fat substitute could whip prices and sales of egg whites even higher, said Dan Gardner, who runs Milton G. Waldbaum Co., a major egg producer and processor in Wakefield, Neb. Egg whites and milk protein are the two main ingredients in Simplesse.