Are Brown Eggs Healthier Than White Eggs? 🥚 The Truth About Egg Color
Ever stared at a carton of eggs and wondered, “Why are these brown? Why are some eggs white? And why are some even … blue?!”
Let’s crack the mystery. 🥚😉
Here’s the scoop:
All eggs start out white.
Yup, every egg begins as plain calcium carbonate inside the hen.
The color?
It’s painted on at the very end (in the shell gland, the last part of the hen’s oviduct).
Brown eggs get their hue from a pigment called protoporphyrin. The amount and pattern of protoporphyrin determine how dark or light the brown eggshell is, and sometimes it creates speckles or spots.
Blue or green eggs get their color from a pigment called oocyanin.
And white eggs?
Nada. No pigment. Hens like White Leghorns just don’t have the genes to add color, and that’s totally fine!
There’s a common misconception (thanks to decades of false marketing) that brown eggs are somehow healthier than white eggs. But this is not true. The color of an eggshell is simply determined by the breed of the hen. It doesn’t affect the nutrients, flavor, or quality of the egg itself!
And here’s a fun fact: the color of a hen’s earlobe can (not always) give you a hint about the color of the eggs she’ll lay.
Red or pink earlobes (like Rhode Island Reds and Orpingtons) → usually brown eggs.
White earlobes (Whie Leg Horns) → usually white eggs.
Blue or turquoise earlobes (Ameraucanas and Araucanas, not as common) → usually blue eggs.
The egg shell color doesn’t affect the nutritional content, flavor, or quality of the egg: it’s purely cosmetic!
Even hens of the same breed won’t lay eggs in exactly the same shade.
Think of it like freckles: some hens just make more pigment than others.
Add pasture sunshine, fresh forage, and a happy, free-range life, and you get a beautiful rainbow of natural, unique eggs.
That’s why you’ll often notice a beautiful color variation in our truly pasture-raised eggs. In contrast, uniform-color eggs in the store usually come from highly controlled factory conditions.
We don’t cram our hens into double- or triple-decker confinement barns. Instead, our eggs come from a partnership of small regenerative farmers in our Co-Op, raising slightly different breeds, each living naturally on pasture.
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Have you spotted white eggs in one of your Angel Acres egg boxes?
That’s actually something pretty egg-citing! 🥚✨
Those eggs come from our parent flock: the birds who hatch the next generation of chickens for our farm partners. By keeping this lifecycle in-house, we reduce reliance on industrial hatcheries and help build a truly alternative food system from the ground up.
Thanks for being a part of that mission with us! 😃
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Note: I do not intend for you to walk away from this blog post thinking that conventional white eggs from the grocery store are “good” options.
But chances are, the brown eggs right next to them were raised in the same style of confinement barns and fed similar feed.
Main point: brown doesn’t automatically mean better.
The eggshell color is simply determined by the hen’s breed.
What really matters for the health and quality of the egg is how the chicken was raised and what it ate: pasture access, fresh forage, and a natural diet make all the difference, not the shell color.
So, next time you crack open one of our farm-fresh eggs, take a moment to appreciate its story: the breed, the hen, and her best life out on pasture. 🐔🌿
