The Disgusting Reason To Avoid This Breakfast Food On Cruises (& What To Eat Instead)

A cruise affords passengers the opportunity to live out their dream vacation, traveling the world port by port and seeing beautiful vistas along the way. But between those experiences, the central theme often running through it all is the seemingly endless great food. With mass buffets, room service, and restaurants, the always walkable food options are everywhere at nearly all hours of the day — whether you want them or not. And while breakfast is often cited as the most important meal, it's at the massive breakfast buffets where you might want to take a bit of caution, especially around the scrambled eggs.

The issue is that, in many cases, that heaping mound of scrambled eggs tends to be lower quality because it's made from powdered eggs. It's not entirely surprising. When you're making scrambled eggs at home, it's often for just one or a few people, and many of us would never consider using powdered eggs since we'd never hear the end of it. But on cruise ships, they're often dealing with thousands of people and need enormous batches of scrambled eggs. The powdered version can be more easily stored, transported, and cooked compared to the real thing.

Any meal that begins in powdered form tends to not bode well for the final product, but with scrambled eggs, it's even more pronounced. In the process of rehydrating and cooking them, they often end up wet and runny, with a taste that seems a bit off, as many have attested. It also doesn't help that they've likely been sitting on the warmer for hours on end, not that this helps any food (which is why food poisoning is more common on cruises). You might not automatically detect that the scrambled eggs started off as powder in a package, but the thought might occur to you while chewing them, and that usually isn't a good sign.

None of this means you need to completely stay away from eggs or egg-related dishes on a cruise ship; many have actual eggs in cartons on board, sometimes up to tens of thousands of them. You can find those eggs by seeking out dishes that are freshly prepared, like at the omelet station or at any of the made-to-order options at the onboard restaurants. If you decide to order scrambled eggs, feel free to play it extra safe by requesting the non-powder version.