Thanks, Euty, for your eggspert opinion. Someone had to say it.
The Report in question. [sub]Someone had to say that, too.[/sub]
When I read this report, I immediately remembered reading some smart aleck’s comment: “When I see a brown egg, I don’t wonder if it’s more nutritious, I just wonder what path it took through the chicken.”
Does anyone out there know what smart aleck said this? I really think it was someone famous and widely-revered, like Mark Twain or Cecil Adams. If it turns out that it was just me, I will be very much surprised. Anybody?
How common are brown eggs where you are? They used to have an advertising campaign in Boston the tagline of which was “Brown eggs are local eggs, and local eggs are fresh!”. It was run by the New England Egg Board, or somesuch body. Also, I noticed the three brown-egg laying breeds of chicken mentioned in the article would seem to have New England roots: Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire, and Plymouth Rock.
I would guess that brown eggs make up at least half the eggs sold in most supermarkets around here, but I rarely saw them when I was growing up in New York.
Do you see a lot of brown eggs where you are?
Not since I moved away from Boston, and I wonder if the original question-asker wasn’t referring to the same ad campaign. I don’t know how accurate the campaign was (i.e. if ALL eggs layed in the New England area were from red-beaked locally-developed varieties), but if they are, then the Staff Report in question should have addressed this:
How far are eggs shipped on average, and how does their taste/nutritional value change en route?
I have noticed that brown eggs seem to have a tougher inner membrane when compared to white eggs. I don’t know the significance of this.
BTW, bird eggshell and fossil dinosaur eggshell have identical structures under electron microscopy.
Friends of ours keep chickens, and they share the eggs with us. The shells are usually brown, but the yolks are dark rich orange because the chickens get to run around outside and eat bugs. They taste better too.
When I was a kid, my Mom bought eggs from a local chicken-keeping lady. Those eggshells were white, but the yolks were that same deep fluorescent orange free-range color.
So the color of the shell doesn’t determine the quality of the egg.
The egg yolk colour can be changed quite easily, by food additives in the chicken’s diet. Two of my uncles in New Zealand kept hens, and one of the food manufacturers had two main variants of the food. One produced eggs with the standard lighter yellow yolk, for the New Zealand market. The other produced yolks so orange they were almost red, and these were sent to Japan. The egg shell didn’t change colour at all.
However, if you did have the type of hen that laid brown eggs, you could vary how brown the shell was by what they were fed.
DancingFool
I’m wondering why every cooking show chef uses brown eggs. Do they just do it to try to act superior to the masses who overwhelmingly use white eggs, or do they know something the rest of us don’t?
Yeah they probably know the same thing I do. Much easier to spot a brown eggshell if you accidentally mess up and drop some in while cooking. I am forever trying to crack an egg over a skillet and not get any eggshell in it. If it is brown it is much easier to spot if it lands the right way, and it usually does. 
Curse you Lagomorphatar! I just read the column this morning and hopped on to the SDMB specifically to post about that very ad campaign! 
Until fairly recently, the men’s bathroom at the Trinity Brewhouse in Providence had some prominent graffiti that read, iirc, “Brown beer / is local beer / and local beer is fresh!”, which seemed so incongruous and funny that it really stuck in my mind.
It’s amazing how catchy the jingle is, considering it has none of the usual rhyming or metric properties you’d expect. But now it’s going to be running through my brain all day…
ANYway, to get back on-topic, I definitely see lots and lots of brown eggs at the store here in Providence, and I usually buy them. The more "chain"y the grocery store, the lower the percentage of brown eggs, which (to me) speaks volumes about their distribution networks and just how old those eggs might be.
Another regionalism I noticed when I moved here is that everyone seems to use white American cheese. At the sandwich shops or at home. I’d never even seen it before, growing up in the Chicago area; now that I’m used to it, though, when I go home to visit my parents, the unnatural yellow colour of the American cheese is just downright disturbing.
Ah, New England…
Here in New Jersey, the health food stores and natural food stores seem to have more brown eggs than white eggs, although they carry both. Often, the organic eggs (containing carbon compounds?) tend to be brown rather than white, but I’m sure you can get either variety with the organic or free range modifier.
So, they are available outside of New England.
in this area of the us, the grocery stores seem to only sell white eggs, but if you buy directly from a local farmer they are brown. i hadn’t noticed much difference between them tho
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, indrico, glad to have you with us.
What kind of structures does electron microscopy show? I’da thunk that dinosaur eggs, being fossilized, would be mostly stone while chicken eggs wouldn’t?
Is it so uncommon to see brown eggs in the U.S.? Over here in The Netherlands you mostly see brown eggs; those freaky white eggs are available in stores but are a small minority.
Oh, forgot to add:
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In my personal experience white eggs seem to have a more fragile shell. This need not be inherently related to the color, though.
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To Dex: I’d expect dinosaur eggs to be like chicken eggs, consisting entirely out of chalk, which doesn’t change at all when being buried for millions of years.
I can attest that intensely colored yolks, with lots of flavor, come from free range poultry who can gobble up whatever takes their fancy. Even if they’re not chickens.
At the barn where I board my horse, there are a couple of guinea hens roaming free, and one of them has taken to laying eggs in the rafters. I’ve snagged a few of the eggs (no mean feat; Ms. GH attacks intruders) and hard-boiled them. They were delicious! Though a scant repast – guinea hen eggs are smaller than chicken eggs; they’re a lot more pointed at the pointy end; and the shell is really REALLY hard. The membrane is thicker, too, and takes away a fair amount of the white when you try to peel it.
Which raises this question – are/have been chickens bred to have thinner shells/membranes than other poultry who aren’t raised for eggs? I haven’t noticed that much difference between white and brown chicken eggs. Of course, being a new Englander, I’m always buying brown eggs anyway.
In Puerto Rico, from what I remember, brown eggs tend to be local eggs, imported eggs tend to be imported. They also tend to be smaller in size.
Hence, my family mostly consumed brown eggs.
From the U.S. south, and almost exclusively encounter white eggs in supermarkets. Not that I shop for eggs often.
Imported eggs tend to be white, that should be…