Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors

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 https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 0:39Josh Clark?

  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 oviduct. 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 on it and it's going to be great.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  That's right. And for this episode, we're going to pretend that eggs are not super expensive because we're going to talk about buying eggs and, you know, stuff like that.

• 1:10Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:15Josh Clark?

  Well, we also have to presume that you can even find the eggs to buy.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:35Josh Clark?

  Thanks.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  I make an MVC, Most Valuable Camper Trophy. I earned that trophy for the first time this year. I'm very proud to say.

• 1:42Josh Clark?

  Congratulations. Wow.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:43Josh Clark?

  What'd you do to earn it?

• 1:45Speaker 02

  I sous vied some Wagyu steaks. I provided the camp. I think it finally dawned on everyone that, that was kind of a big deal.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  I, you know, I partied in just the right way to impress everybody.

• 1:59Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  And, you know, some other things. And that's generally how you win it. You kind of go above and beyond and my comedy was on point. I was just on fire with the jokes.

• 2:08Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  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.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  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.

• 2:36Josh Clark?

  Did he want to know that?

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was very curious.

• 2:39Josh Clark?

  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.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  No, those brown eggs, you gotta get those brown eggs are natural, Josh. They don't bleach them.

• 3:02Josh Clark?

  You're thinking of rice or flour.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 3:05Josh Clark?

  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 Foghorn, Leghorn. But he was a rooster. But the hens of his breed lay white eggs. They're not bleached. They just come out that way.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  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 and the stuff that are, were already expensive.

• 3:52Josh Clark?

  That's the one distinction, really.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we'll talk about that later. But a white egg is the same as a brown egg, nutritional, nutritionally speaking, they come from the Leghorns, Orpingtons and Plymouth Rocks. Those are varieties of chickens. They're going to lay the browns. There's a chicken called an Amerocana, and not Americana, because it has an Au 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.

• 4:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we need to shout out a University of Georgia poultry scientist named, get this, Justin Fowler.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 4:35Josh Clark?

  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. And see, 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. 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.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  I know you're gonna say that. Because you know what? I told Justin that. He has chickens and he said the same thing.

• 5:20Josh Clark?

  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.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Can you imagine if his name was Greg Fowler?

• 5:38Josh Clark?

  Why?

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Well, he'd have the name egg in his name, too.

• 5:40Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  He could go by GR Egg Fowler.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Anyway, if you've got a white chicken, it's gonna 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 are gonna have colored eggs.

• 6:00Josh Clark?

  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.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  All right, let's do it.

• 6:35Speaker 03

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• 7:06Josh Clark?

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• 8:23Josh Clark?

  Okay, Chuck, get your miner's cap on.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:26Josh Clark?

  Turn on the light.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 8:28Josh Clark?

  Maybe don some gloves.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:30Josh Clark?

  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 ova duct. And it's almost like a cartoony conveyor belt. Like I can almost see like mechanical gloved hands shaping things along the way.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. In the ova duct, 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's where it gets pigmented.

• 9:23Josh Clark?

  Right. That's, that's Greg Fowler's middle name. Shell gland.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Greg's shell gland Fowler.

• 9:32Josh Clark?

  Or his fraternity nickname.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  But they all start white, right?

• 9:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because they're made of calcium carbonate and that is white in nature. And so all chickens' eggs are white. That's, 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.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:56Josh Clark?

  Again, like Leghorn, White-Earlobe, no pigment deposit. But other kinds, like you said, Plymouth Rocks, Orffingtons, 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.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  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.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Hey, let me try another take, just in case.

• 10:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:49Josh Clark?

  Does it come out of like a, um, a pastry frosting bag?

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Well, sure. You can call it that.

• 10:57Josh Clark?

  Gross.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  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, uh, Billiverdin? Billiverdin?

• 11:12Josh Clark?

  I like Billiverdin.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  And proto porfirin?

• 11:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Or proto porfirin?

• 11:19Josh Clark?

  Porfirin.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:21Josh Clark?

  Um, so that proto, yeah, that is. Those two make the whole thing. The greens and blues are the Billiverdin. Um, and the proto porfirin make the reddish browns.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 11:32Josh Clark?

  And it's not just chickens that this, this happens with, you know, robins lay, um, Tiffany box blue eggs.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, look at you.

• 11:41Josh Clark?

  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 mure and they have a blue egg that sometimes is speckled. I, I, I think all of this is so wonderful, but really there's nothing that can compare to an Easter egg. It'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 crane and then you, 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.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  I totally agree. Uh, and here's the thing. We talked about nutrition earlier and you said it's all the same and that's true. Uh, the inside of a white egg is the same as the inside of a brown egg. If you, if you get like, you know, the, the really, now they're super expensive. Not, not the free range, cause 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.

• 12:51Josh Clark?

  Same with cage free too.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, cage free, but a genuine pasture 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, of, of stuff that the, 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.

• 13:17Josh Clark?

  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.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Do some research.

• 13:26Josh Clark?

  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.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I'm going to recommend, especially now that eggs are so expensive, like try and source them locally. They're, guarantee you in your town, there is a farmer's market with some stinky hippie that's going to sell you some eggs in a funny looking container, or at the very least a, a used egg carton from somewhere else. Or, or if you have a friend like I do, that, you know, they'll give us eggs. Cause 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, the commercial egg industry's woes. So now some of those are cheaper than grocery store eggs.

• 14:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  And you know where they're coming from and they're walking around eating insects and grass.

• 14:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but there's some things that you need to know about this. If you're, if you're eating locally sourced eggs. One is that they probably haven't been washed.

• 14:35Josh Clark?

  Which is fine that they don't normally come washed unless you're buying 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

• 15:18Josh Clark?

  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.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  I would not recommend using Dawn, but that's just me.

• 15:50Josh Clark?

  Why? What's wrong with Dawn? I love Dawn.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Great.

• 15:53Josh Clark?

  They have a free and clear with the, it's got a little duck on it. It's totally natural.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sure it's free and clear.

• 16:00Josh Clark?

  It is.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  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.

• 16:09Josh Clark?

  True that. But once you do wash them, you need to refrigerate them because, again, bacteria can invade them pretty easily.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I'll tell you, I've eaten dozens and dozens of those eggs from Justin. Never washed them, never had a problem.

• 16:22Josh Clark?

  Really?

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:24Josh Clark?

  Did you get a little poop in your eggs?

• 16:27Speaker 02

  No, they're great.

• 16:28Josh Clark?

  Cool. Well, there, there you go. Everything you need to know about locally sourced eggs from your friend Chuck B.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 16:37Josh Clark?

  Chuck said that's right, and that means that, obviously, the short stuff is out.

• 16:43Speaker 04

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