The golden rule that we have been following is that brown is always better, when it comes to food items. Be it brown bread, wheat pasta, or whole wheat crackers, all are considered healthier in comparison to their white counterparts.
What about brown eggs?
Is it really the colour of the skin and shell that matters, or the yolk and white decide the health quotient? For a layman, it is only the price which makes brown eggs more special. Afterall, most of us are governed by the psychology that all expensive things are good!
Are brown eggs packed with more nutrients than the white ones? And do they actually justify the price that they bear? What is the real difference in the calories between the two? And do they really taste different? Let’s take a look at their nutritional profile.
According to a research fellow at Cornell University, “There is no real difference in nutritional value between brown and white eggs.”(as quoted by a popular daily).
“Brown eggs however have more Omega-3 fatty acids but the difference is negligible”, he adds. White eggs are laid by white-feathered chickens while the brown ones are laid by brown-feathered chickens. The reason behind why there are more white eggs than brown ones in the market is that breeding and raising white-feathered chickens is much cheaper.
They don’t need to be fed as much as brown feathered chickens. Brown feathered chickens have more appetite and also they are a bit bigger in size. These brown feathered chickens eat more and hence are expensive to keep. Nutritionists and experts have always differed on the point of health quotients related to white and brown eggs. Brown and white eggs do taste different but that has nothing to do with quality or nutritional profile of the egg but more with the diet of the chicken that laid it.
It is the quality of the chicken feed that impacts the taste of the eggs. So if you were to feed a brown chicken and a white chicken the same kind of food, the difference in taste would go unnoticed.
The colour of the yolk in brown eggs is darker. But that’s because brown hens are fed a lot of corn at times. Some people believe that there is a slight difference between the shells of brown and white eggs but there really isn’t. The only thing you might factor in, is that younger hens lay eggs with harder shells. But this applies to both white and brown chickens. So next time when you go shopping remember the above points before picking eggs for your breakfast.