Eggs

[bentaxle]

The wife lived in the southern part of the usa 60 years ago and she seem to remember they only had white eggs no brown is this true

[pastafreak]

Well, I heard from my brother. Like me, he thought colour was to do with breed...and that brown eggs were premium. NOT dirty.
Well...he's a sane American so I'm not surprised ;))

[AuntPollyGrey]

LOL! bleaching eggs! The white eggs are laid by a breed that lays white eggs. I have hens that lay white eggs blue eggs and brown eggs and I don't go around with a paint brush colouring them in lol!

[pastafreak]

Yeah...but we're talking about Americans. We know they do and think weird things
Not me of course...

[theprof]

pastafreak, it's baffling. On the one hand, there's a huge group of people in the States that think brown eggs are dirty, yet there's minority group, like your brother, that think brown eggs are premium quality. Weird doesn't cover it.

You only have to look at the online shopping portals of Walmart or Kroger supermarkets in the USA to see that the brown eggs are nowhere near as popular as white.

AuntPollyGrey, there is no doubt that Pooka1950 was very much mistaken in claiming that eggs are bleached.

[pastafreak]

Bleaching may be some sort of weird urban myth.

[pastafreak]

I also wonder if it's regional...

[ummmm]

Don't they wash their chickens in chlorine? Or is that a myth?

[pastafreak]

That's not a myth...to my knowledge. My reaction is "eeeuuwwww".

[ummmm]

Me too. So it's not unthinkable that they might sanitise the eggs in a similar fashion.

[Mamyalynne]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47440562

[theprof]

To my mind, there was no question that Pooka1950 mentioned bleaching in the context of bleaching brown eggs to white. There was no mention in the post of using bleach to sanitise brown eggs.

Egg bleaching is simply not practical commercially as egg shells are extremely porous and any chlorine based bleach would enter the egg shell with obvious consequences. Besides, the pigments that are present in the shells of brown eggs do not act favourably to chlorine based bleaches - they would not whiten to the snow-white colour required for the American market without consequences.

There are a number of other relatively safe bleaching agents that would bleach brown eggs to white but they would not be affordable to use commercially - I won't sit here in my lab and tell you it's never been done!

Chlorine bleaches are cheap, nasty but effective which us why they wash their raw chickens in it in the USA. It's no myth. Yes, its not unknown for them to sanitise their eggs by very brief immersion of the eggs in dilute bleach. But that's a different story from trying to turn brown eggs to snow-white eggs. That would be futile.