Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Everyone knows brown eggs are more natural than white eggs right? Except that's not true. In reality there is zero difference because it's just a genetic variation. Listen in to learn more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and we're about to take you on a ride through a chicken's overduck. At some point in this episode and why we're doing that is to explain why chicken eggs have different colors in some cases. And we're going to get really into the weeds it, and it's going to be great. That's right. And for this episode, we're gonna pretend that eggs are not super expensive, because we're gonna talk about buying eggs and, you know, stuff like that. And that's just a fact of life. Eggs are really expensive right now.

So let's just put that to the side for a moment. Well, we also have to presume that you can even find the eggs to buy. Yeah, that's a solid point. This came about because I just went on our annual, fifth annual rather, Frigid Fiesta, which is my buddies and I try to get together and go to my camp on the coldest, one of the coldest days of the year. I make an MVC, Most Valuable Camper trophy. I earned that trophy for the first time this year. I'm very proud to say.

Congratulations, wow. Thank you. What'd you do to earn it? I sous vide some Wagyu steaks. I provided the camp. I think it finally dawned on everyone that that was kind of a big deal. I partied in just the right way to impress everybody. Nice.

And some other things. And that's generally how you win it. You kind of go above and beyond. My comedy was on point. I was just on fire with the jokes. Wow. And DJing. Like, yeah, I kind of had it in the bag.

But long way of saying, my buddy Justin, whom you know from London, England, who raises chickens. Oh, I didn't know. He always supplies the eggs. And he showed up with some olive eggs, some brown speckled eggs, a couple of sort of light tan eggs. And I just started wondering about it. And now I know, and I told Justin the deal as well, why his chickens are making different eggs.

Did he want to know that? Yeah, he was very curious. Okay, good. Well, Chuck, one of the things that I think immediately pops up that we can't forget about is that you're a very, very talented person. You're a very talented person. You're a very talented person. You're a very talented person.

You're a very talented person. You're a very talented person. You're a very talented person. You're a very talented person. You're a very talented person. You're a very talented person. You're a very talented person. You're a very talented person. You're a very talented person. You're a very talented that? Yeah, he was very curious. Okay, good. Well, Chuck, one of the things that I think

immediately pops up that we can't possibly get past without mentioning first is that regardless of the color of the eggs, I really hope this is true. One is not necessarily more nutritious than the other. No, those brown eggs, you gotta get those brown eggs are natural, Josh, they don't bleach them. You're thinking of rice or flour. Oh.

Non-brown chicken eggs are not bleached, that is not true, that would be a really bad thing to do to an egg. The white eggs that you see that make up the vast majority of the eggs that you buy in the United States. They come from leghorn chickens, as in froghorn leghorn, but he was a rooster. But the hens of his breed lay white eggs.

They're not leached, they just come out that way. Yeah, and most eggs in the commercial egg industry in the United States are from leghorns, so most are white. So when you see like a fancy brown egg, it's the same egg. Well, that's if it's, you know, not, you know, the pasture raised into the stuff that are, were already expensive. That's the one distinction really.

Yeah, and we'll talk about that later. But a white egg is the same as a brown egg, nutritionally speaking. They come from the leghorns, Orphingtons and Plymouth Rocks. Those are varieties of chickens. They're going to lay the browns. There's a chicken called an Americana, and not Americana because it has an A-U in there. That is a breed which gives the, it permeates, that pigment goes all the way through. And so the inside color of the egg is bluish as well as the outside, which is a pretty cool fact. Yeah, we need to shout out a University of Georgia poultry scientist named, get this, Justin Fowler.

Amazing. It is amazing. And so he provided a lot of the insight on how all of this works, and he basically said it's genetics. But you don't have to run a chicken's genome to figure out what color eggs it's going to produce. It's much easier than that. You can at least distinguish colored egg layers, not necessarily the color, but whether they're going to lay an egg that has some sort of tint to it,

versus ones that are going to lay just white eggs based on their earlobes. A couple of things about this. I didn't know that you could judge the color of a chicken's eggs by looking at its earlobes. I also didn't know that chickens had earlobes. I knew you were going to say that, because you know what, I told Justin that he has chickens and he said the same thing. Yeah, I mean, I've seen them a million times. They're like, they almost look like mutton chops, like meatloaf from Rocky Horror Picture Show. But they're on chickens' faces instead.

Those are their earlobes. Can you imagine if his name was Greg Fowler? Why? Well, he'd have the name Egg in his name too. Oh, yeah. He could go by GR Egg Fowler. Why? He'd have the name egg in his name too. Oh, yeah. He could go by GR Egg Fowler. Anyway, if you got a white chicken, it's going to lay a white egg because they probably have white earlobes or generally lighter earlobes or lighter feathers.

If they have colored feathers and colored earlobes, they're gonna have colored eggs. Yeah, but again, not necessarily like the same color as that. But it just means that they're producing more pigment than other chickens and they like to really show off by laying some of that pigment on the eggs. And I say we take a break and we come back and we take that trip down the Oviduct when we return. All right, let's do it.

MUSIC MUSIC Okay, Chuck, get your miner's cap on. Turn on the light. Yup. Maybe don some gloves. Yeah. And we're going to go in the oviduct of a chicken, a hen. And when you go in there, we're going to see the ova.

That is the chicken yolk. And it forms in the chicken's ovaries, and an ovum leaves the ovary, and it gets deposited in the oviduct. And it's almost like a cartoony conveyor belt. Like, I can almost see, like, mechanical, gloved hands shaping things along the way. Yeah, for sure.

In the oviduct, on that conveyor belt, there are going to be five different sort of in-order, because it's a conveyor belt, segments that they're going to go through, that yolk is going to go through, or the ovum. And it's in the fourth one of those five where that shell is formed. It's a calcium carbonate shell that comes from the shell gland, and that is where the shell forms around the ovum, and that is where the shell forms around the ovum, and that's where it gets pigmented. Right. That's Greg Fowler's middle name. Shell gland.

Greg's shell gland Fowler. Or his fraternity nickname. But they all start white, right? Yeah, because they're made of calcium carbonate, and that is white. In nature, it's so all chickens' eggs are white. Right? Yeah, because they're made of calcium carbonate and that is white in nature. And so all chickens' eggs are white. That's all you really need to know, except for everything else that's about to follow.

And that is that once the egg is formed, and it's a white egg, some kinds of chickens deposit a pigment on it. Yeah. Again, like leghorn, white Earlobe, no pigment deposit. But other kinds, like you said, Plymouth Rocks, Orphingtons, Rhode Island Reds, they all put a little bit of pigment, I guess, just to kind of make the world a slightly brighter place. I can't think of any other reason for this, evolutionarily speaking, but we have narrowed it down to two distinct pigments that are responsible for the galaxy of colors.

Maybe not galaxy, but the wide array of colors that chicken eggs come in. Yeah, and do you know, by the way, I heard a recording of the actual sound. They got a microphone inside a chicken. The sound of the pigment being placed on it is kind of like this. Pssst. Hey, let me try another take just in case. Yeah. Does it come out of like a pastry frosting bag? Well, sure.

You can call it that. Gross. All right, so back to, sorry about that. 12-year-old Chuck showed up for a minute. Those two pigments that, like you said, are the ones responsible for the different shades are Biliverdin? I like Biliverdin. And Protoporphyrin.

Or Protoporphiron. Porphyrin. Or protoporphyrin. Porphyrin. That's it. Yeah, that is. Those two make the whole thing. The greens and blues are the Billy Verdon. And the protoporphyrin make the reddish browns. That's right.

And it's not just chickens that this happens with. You know, Robbins lay Tiffany Box Blue eggs. Yeah, look at you. I think it's usually described as Robin's egg blue. But that's from the same process. It makes that same sound. Can we hear it again?

Yeah. There's also a bird called the common ur, and they have a blue egg that sometimes is speckled. I think all of this is so wonderful, but really there's nothing that can compare to an Easter egg that's been dipped in a vinegar food dye dip or blend and held by that little wire thing

that you kind of bring it out with and then you mark, or no, you start with the crayon and then you dye it. Like let's see a chicken do that. Make a chevron pattern on your egg naturally, chicken. You can't do it. I totally agree. And here's the thing, we talked about nutrition earlier and you said it's all the same and that's true. The inside of a white egg is the same as the inside of

a brown egg. If you get like, you know, the really, now they're super expensive. Not the free range, because, you know, I worked in the chicken industry and I've tried to dispel that myth that generally if it says free range, that just means that the door is open to the barn, but they're not really out there. Same with cage-free too. raised chicken, they can actually be more nutritious. If they're foraging on greens and eating insects and things that just a better variety of stuff that even the cage-free and the free range aren't getting, if you get those really, really expensive pasture raised ones, they may have slightly higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins.

Yeah, and be forewarned because in the United States at least, the term pasture-raised is not regulated. You could slap that on any egg you wanted. But luckily, there are some certification groups that go through and actually certify these are pasture-raised. So you want to look for certifications like certified humane is a legitimate one. That means that that chicken actually was walking around

Pecking at the ground not in like some big metal shed with a trillion other chickens Yeah, and I'm gonna recommend especially now the eggs are so expensive like try and source them locally there guarantee you in your town There is a farmers market with some stinky hippie That's gonna sell you some eggs in a funny-looking container, or at the very least a used egg carton from somewhere else. Or if you have a friend like I do, that, you know, they'll give us eggs. Because those used to be like, oh gosh, they're so pricey. But their prices aren't jacked up because they're not, you know,

the locals aren't suffering from the commercial egg industry's woes. So now some of those are cheaper than grocery store eggs. Yeah. And you know where they're coming from. And they're walking around eating insects and grass. Yeah, but there's some things that you need to know about this if you're eating locally sourced eggs. One is that they probably haven't been washed,

which is fine. That they don't normally come washed unless you're buying the commercially produced eggs in Australia, the US, Japan, you have to wash them. The problem with washing an egg though is that it removes the little waxy coating that the egg is naturally encased in that keeps bacteria out of the shell. As hard as the shell seems, it's actually kind of porous and bacteria can make it right into the egg

and kill you and everyone you love. But that waxy coating keeps that from happening. The problem with all this is, and this is the reason why the United States and Japan and Australia require their commercially produced eggs to be washed, is that coating really hangs on to things like salmonella and chicken yard poop and all this stuff. So you kind of have to balance the two.

Do you want salmonella or do you want E. coli? Which one do you want? So if you get locally sourced eggs, it makes sense to keep them unwashed until you want to eat them. Then you wash it, use a little bit of Dawn, some water, wash that off, and then you eat it, washed. I would not recommend using Dawn, but that's just me. Why, what's wrong with Dawn?

I love Dawn. Great. They have a free and clear, it's got a little duck on it, it's totally natural. Yeah, I'm sure it's free and clear. It is. The good thing though about getting eggs from your friends or someone that doesn't wash their eggs is you can just leave them out.

They don't need to be refrigerated. True that. But once you do wash them, you need to refrigerate them because again, bacteria can invade them pretty easily. Yeah, but I'll tell you, I've eaten dozens and dozens of those eggs from Justin. Never washed them, never had a problem. Really?

Oh yeah. Did you get a little poop in your eggs? No, they're great. Cool. Well there, there you go. Everything you need to know about locally sourced eggs from your friend Chuck B. That's right.

Chuck said that's right, and that means that obviously the short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.