Our principles
Traditional scrambled egg uses the entire egg, white and yolk. So we compare against a whole egg, never a protein-only slice of it.
Where a range exists, we pick the cautious end, so the real impact is likely larger than we claim, not smaller.
Every coefficient links to a source and a date. When better data arrives, the number changes in the open.
The functional unit
We express everything per whole egg replaced. One portion of scramble is defined as 2 whole eggs. From a weekly habit we scale up:
The counter is an arithmetic equivalence: it translates portions into eggs, hens and nitrogen. It is not a prediction of market outcomes; one egg not bought does not mechanically mean one egg not produced.
Hens and animal lives spared
A commercial laying hen produces roughly 300 eggs per year and is slaughtered after one laying cycle. So the eggs you no longer buy translate directly into hens no longer kept and killed. Historically, about one male layer chick is culled at hatch for every hen, which we count as a second spared life.
animal_lives = hens_spared × (1 + 1)
3 portions/week → 3 × 2 × 52 = 312 eggs/year → 312 / 300 = ~1.0 hens → with the male chicks, ~2 animal lives spared per year.
Note: culling male layer chicks is no longer permitted in chains producing table eggs for the Dutch and German market, and a growing share of EU laying hens now hatches from in-ovo sexed eggs. Chains producing eggs for industrial use, exactly the segment our products replace, still fall outside those rules. So we keep the male-chick term for now, and will retire it as in-ovo sexing reaches that segment too.
Reactive nitrogen saved
This is the part we treat most carefully. We compare the reactive nitrogen (Nr) lost to air and water per whole egg against the same for its lupin-scramble equivalent, using a life-cycle approach. The egg side carries losses the lupin side simply does not have:
- Synthetic fertiliser on feed crops
- Imported soy, with embedded N
- Feed conversion loss: most N fed to the hen never ends up in the egg
- Ammonia from housing and manure
- Nitrate leaching and nitrous oxide
- Fixes its own N from the air, so little or no fertiliser
- No animal, so no excretion or housing losses
- Grown at home, no imported feed
- Leaves residual N in the soil, a credit for the next crop
N_saved_year = eggs_per_year × N_saved_per_egg
Lupin also leaves residual nitrogen in the soil as a credit for the next crop. That benefit is real, but it is not an avoided emission, so we report it separately and do not add it to the saved figure.
Using a placeholder of ~3.0 g Nr saved per whole egg, 312 eggs/year → ~0.9 kg reactive nitrogen per year. This coefficient is exactly what we are verifying with the Louis Bolk Institute before it goes public as fact.
The coefficients
Every number the counter uses, its current value, source and status.
Sources
- Louis Bolk Institute & Lekker Lupine, Lupin Cultivation Manual (2025).
- Louis Bolk Institute, Lupin for Innovative Arable Farmers; Green Deal Protein-Rich Crops (Bean Deal).
- Statistics Netherlands (CBS, 2023), Sustainability of Agriculture, Part II: Emissions.
- Wageningen University & Research, laying-hen productivity and feed data.
- FAOSTAT / Agri-footprint, feed composition and nitrogen emission factors.
- Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Western Australia, Lupins: less than 4% of world lupin production is eaten as human food (accessed 2026).
We would rather be corrected than be wrong. Tell us and we will update the numbers in the open.