Why So Many Store-Bought Eggs Are White Instead Of Brown

Chicken eggs came in an entire rainbow of colors, from pale bluish to green to dark brown, but the majority of eggs you'll pick up in the grocery store in America are white. Besides the fact that Americans are the black sheep of the world because we refrigerate our eggs, we're also the odd ones out in that our eggs are primarily colorless. Many European countries prefer brown eggs, Chinese consumers opt for pink eggs, so why do Americans go for white eggs?

It comes down to several generations of selective breeding of the Leghorn chicken, which lays pure white eggs. When a white Leghorn chicken took home the gold in a 1868 New York show, breeders began paying attention not only to how aesthetically pleasing the Leghorn looked, but its sheer capacity as an egg layer. Today, white Leghorn chickens are preferred in the poultry industry because of the minimal effort it takes to sustain them and the rate at which they lay eggs. Meaning, poultry farmers are making more money faster with Leghorns than with other breeds of chicken that lay other colored eggs, hence why white eggs are so prevalent in American kitchens (here's our ranking of the 13 best egg brands).

There are technically two kinds of Leghorn chickens: The white chickens used in industrial poultry farming, and a brown species more commonly found on non-commercial farms. White Leghorns were crossbred with the Minorca chicken in the early 1900s to change the size, though it retained the once-beloved long, white tailfeathers and bright red comb, much different from the Ayam Cemani, the rare black chickens with mystical ties. Industrial Leghorn chickens can lay hundreds of eggs per year, beginning as early as four and a half months old. While both the brown and white Leghorn chickens are high egg-yielding, white Leghorn chickens (with white eggs) beat their counterparts by a noticeable difference.

While Americans have favored white eggs for decades, there's been a recent shift back towards a desire for brown eggs. There's a public perception that brown eggs are healthier or better tasting, and while the taste thing might boil down to personal opinion, science tells us that there is no nutritional difference between brown and white eggs. The simple difference between brown and white eggs boils down to the species of chicken that lays the egg and the level of pigment in the eggshell– that's it. So, if you're going to search around for a carton of brown eggs amid a sea of white eggs, don't expect any dietary perks.