Tidbit #18 - April 13, 2011

I don't know about you, but I find eggs to be an excellent food. They're just so good-tasting however they're made: scrambled, hard-boiled, sunny-side up, they're still the same delicious eggs. They can also be divided into subcategories, which is what we're taking a look into today. What I wanna know is:

Question: What's the difference between brown and white eggs??


Answer: Well, at first, I thought that brown chickens laid brown eggs. (Bear with me on this, I was 7 or 8 when I had this theory.) Then, several months ago, I discovered something at the store: it seemed that the only eggs that were organic were brown. Although I didn't go checking every egg in the store, I thought that was it for awhile, and until I searched the answer, I still thought it. I found a good answer, though, titled and everything!

The Difference Between White Eggs and Brown Eggs

The first and obvious difference is their color, the second is the type of chicken it comes out of, personally I haven't tasted any difference between the two. 
Nutritionally there is no difference, various breeds lay different colors. White eggs are popular with grocery stores visually (clean and fresh looking) and one of the best laying breeds happens to lay white eggs. Restaurants often prefer brown eggs as it is easier to see bits of shell when they fall in the food being prepared. A tiny white bit of shell in a pound of flour is hard to find until somebody crunches it. Yolk color is adjusted by feed contents. 
Really, the only true difference is the one you mentioned, the color. They taste the same, have the same amount of nutrients, everything. The only difference is the genetics of the chicken that laid the egg. 


Note - Many people do not know this, but technically, brown eggs and white eggs have the same shell color - white. The brown you see is an "overlay" of color. Hence, both eggs have white shells - but the brown has an "overlay" of color that makes it a brown color.
Note 2- White eggs are the product of chickens with white ears and chickens with red ears lay other colors including Blue and green. The quality of the egg depends on if you get the egg from a grocery store that has mass produced eggs or from a farmer that lets the eggs run freely. 
The reason you see more white eggs in the stores is because the mass producers will normally use the Leghorn chicken one of the best egg producers it is also a smaller chicken and not as often used as a eating chicken. These chickens have white ears.

(Re: wiki.answers.com Question)

If you just skipped that giant wall of text, let me summarize it for you:

Strictly speaking, there is no difference between them besides, obviously, the color. They taste the same, they have the same nutritional value, everything. I guess the only difference is the type of chicken that lays the egg; in general, chickens with white ears lay white eggs, while chickens with red ears lay different color eggs.

As an added note, my dad told me that whenever he bought brown eggs, he told me he felt a tougher shell. Don't know is this is true, but you never know, right?

So, as a condensed answer (and mind you, this is very condensed) is:

Strictly speaking, the only difference between the two types of eggs is the color and the type of chicken that lays them.