LAKESIDE, Calif. — Have you ever been told brown eggs are healthier than white eggs? It's something a lot of people believe, even here at News 8. We were curious, is that really true?
To verify if that's really the case, we visited Hilliker's Family Farm in Lakeside. It's been around since 1942. There, we spoke with Frank Hilliker. He's been an egg farmer his whole life.
"I like to call it my 'eggspertise,'” said Hilliker.
We asked Hilliker if brown eggs are healthier than white ones.
“An egg is an egg," he said. "Neither of them are healthier.”
We can verify, they're equal.
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Hilliker says the chickens on his farm drink the same water and eat the same food, making the eggs they produce the same.
Can you tell what color egg a chicken will produce? That's true.
Frank tells us the color of an egg has to do with the pigmentation of a chicken's earlobe, not its feathers.
"As you can see, this girl right here has a brown earlobe, so she lays brown eggs," said Hilliker. "It's not the feathers. White chickens that we have have a white earlobe. The white could have a white earlobe. If it has a brown earlobe, it's going to lay a brown egg and conversely on this girl."
Frank has more than 20,000 chickens on his farm. About half produce white eggs, the other half brown. He does this on purpose, saying the misconception regarding the difference in egg color is a common one.
"You know the consumer dictates that and since we have consumers that want brown eggs, we have half and half," said Hilliker.
Can chickens be bred to lay certain color eggs? Yes. It's a common practice in the industry.
"Commercial chickens are genetically bred," he said.
As for organic versus nonorganic, if an egg is organic, that means the chicken it came from eats feed grown organically.
When it comes to cage-free, thanks to California's Proposition 12, which was approved in 2018, all eggs sold in the state must come from cage-free hens by 2022.