While signing in today someone had posed this very question. Their bottom line answer was there is no difference other than shell color. This is complete bullshit . The research department must have spent about 5 minutes researching this subject. My in-laws raised chickens for years and there is no comparison of taste between a brown and white shelled egg. I won’t eat white shelled eggs. My in-laws are now very old and and long past fighting off snakes, owls and hawks to save their hens. So, now I only buy cage free range fed eggs and they are quite a delight. The yolks are a brilliant gold, yet very fragile. So you had better be careful frying one. Cecil and his cronies don’t always know what they’re talking about.
Nope. No difference that I could tell. Depends on the breed. My grandmother in Poland lived on a farm with free range hens. White shelled eggs, brown shelled eggs – it didn’t matter. All were delicious and very “eggy.”
And I’ve bought eggs from farmer’s markets (and have friends who raise chickens) with various colors of shells. The shell color tells me nothing about the taste of the egg.
There is no difference as to which is more healthy. Difference in taste can be attributed to diet.
I’ll take Cecil and his cronie’s opinion. And there are a lot of experts who have the same opinion.
Like this article:
This is the biggest factor, in my experience. At any grocery store, you can find both brown and white shelled eggs. I don’t believe for a second you can taste the difference between one or the other given a blind taste test. They taste exactly the same: the same ol’ bland factory-farmed eggs you’re used to.
You gentlemen don’t know your eggs.
From the SD Archives: What’s the difference between white eggs and brown eggs? - The Straight Dope
We’ve raised chickens and found no difference in taste in our eggs, and they were all kept together so had identical diets. Shell color simply came down to the breed.
It’s not really a question of color, but of diet. This is my fault. I didn’t explain the difference. Free range eggs are much better. Don’t believe me, try it for yourself.
This seems like quite a turnaround from “I won’t eat white shelled eggs”?
Your experience is tricking you. Different feeds and different breeds give different quality eggs. Because the premier fast laying, efficient feed converter chicken lays white eggs, that is the color of cheap supermarket eggs, and because of this again a lot of “cage free range fed” egg producers will stay away from even quality egg producing hens if they have white eggs.
So someone with experience with only a limited range off egg producers can fool themselves into thinking there’s a one to one correspondence between shell color and quality, when in reality it’s only a slight correlation due to market perception.
I just had some absolutely great eggs with a white shell from free range animals. Those where duck eggs though, but I wouldn’t have much trouble getting a top notch white chicken egg if I wanted to. Just find some from a good breed.
Yes. Yes, we do.
And now you’re backtracking to say “it’s not really a question of color, but of diet”? That’s not at all what you said in the title or the OP. And that is exactly what the first two respondents to your posts said: it’s not egg color, but diet. Yet you respond with “you gentlemen don’t know your eggs.” :dubious:
^^Beat me to it.
I wish poster pullet was still here, as our resident veterinarian who specialized in chickens.
Having raised chickens at times and consumed both free range and factory eggs all my life, I too found flavor and color of the yolk to be due to diet, and to have nothing to do with shell coloration. I’ve had tasteless brown eggs and delicious white ones over the decades.
The recent authoritative summary of all things eggy, Egg Science & Technology, 4th edition 2017 states in its section about “shell quality” that there is no correlation between shell color and interior quality characteristics. That, combined with my own experience, settles the question for me.
They’re a lot harder to color for Easter
Nonsense. They’re pre-colored, as long as you’re OK with pastel shades of beige and taupe.
The OP is expressing eggism, pure and simple.
I actually do remember dying white eggs brown with onion skins for Easter as a kid.
Now duck eggs, on the other hand, are miles ahead of chicken eggs in taste no matter what the color. The success of a trip to my local farmers market is always determined by the (increasingly infrequent) availability of duck eggs.
The organic eggs my wife gets certainly have thinker shells that the mass market white eggs. I think that tells me something about their diet and how they’re treated. Not sure I notice a taste difference though.
OK, OK. I’ve been shamed. I made the mistake of equating brown eggs to free range fed eggs. In my experience, free range eggs have all been brown or green, never white. But there is a difference between white store bought eggs and brown free range eggs.