Blast from the past: Where have all the white eggs gone?

When was the last time you had a white egg?
White eggs, which are laid by breeds including Leghorn and Dekalb White, are reappearing in supermarketsWhite eggs, which are laid by breeds including Leghorn and Dekalb White, are reappearing in supermarkets
White eggs, which are laid by breeds including Leghorn and Dekalb White, are reappearing in supermarkets
By Helen McGurk
Published 29th Mar 2024, 17:21 BST

As a child of the Seventies, white eggs were all the rage. We boiled them, fried them, put them in a sandwich with their odorous, but delicious companion, onion, and mashed them in a cup.

At Easter time we boiled them to roll down hills, decorated them with paints, or even dyed them with the skins of their aforementioned ole mate, onion.

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But, I can’t actually remember the last time I saw one. Go to your supermarket and, to paraphrase Henry Ford, have any colour of egg you like, so long as it's brown. So what has happened?

Until the early 1970s white eggs – which are generally medium-sized – were popular in the UK but they had fallen out of favour by the end of the decade when shoppers began switching to the brown variety, which were larger and seen as healthier (a misconception).

Since the 1980s, the UK industry has produced almost 100 per cent brown shelled eggs for high street retailers. As a result there are now very few white egg-laying flocks in the UK. However, the pandemic has given them a new lease of life and they are becoming a more familiar sight in supermarkets, proving that the white variety is still a good egg.

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