White Eggs Are Being Sold In Supermarkets For The First Time In 40 Years

From Delish

When lockdown started a few months ago, you may have noticed that either there were no eggs available to buy in supermarkets, or if there were any eggs left on the shelves, they were quails eggs or something else as equally inappropriate for baking a Victoria sponge or for a hearty working-from-home lunch.

Luckily, the egg shelves in supermarkets are starting to look less like a war zone, and instead of a few empty boxes and broken eggs on the floor, boxes of perfectly-good eggs are now available to buy pretty much every time you go into a store.

But there is one thing that I and a few people on Twitter have noticed… a lot of the eggs have white shells.

If you buy eggs now, there’s a good chance they’ll be white eggs as opposed to brown eggs, which are the ones we’re used to seeing in supermarkets. But why is this?

About 40 years ago, people decided that they didn’t like the look of white eggs, so brown eggs were the ones sent to supermarkets for selling, and white eggs were reserved for restaurants and cafes aka where customers wouldn’t seem them in their shells.

But now, seeing as demand for eggs in supermarkets is up, thanks to all the baking we’re doing, and demand for eggs in restaurants is down because they’re all shut, white eggs are finding themselves in supermarkets again. And I’m glad to see them, to be honest, seeing as there is nothing different about them at all.

Tesco is one supermarket that’s been stocking white eggs.

Eggs buying manager at Tesco, Megan Kilby, said: “The initial trial during the lockdown has been a success and we will now be stocking white free-range eggs for the first time in more than 40 years.

“These eggs are used throughout the restaurant industry, so shoppers can be assured of their quality.

“The move could also have a massive agricultural benefit as white hens are more docile than brown ones and lay eggs for longer and more reliably too.”

Tesco’s white eggs are supplied by Noble Foods, the UK’s largest vertically integrated egg business in the UK.

Noble Foods director Jean-Paul Michalski added: “Generally our white eggs are sold to a very large global restaurant chain which unfortunately had to close its doors because of the pandemic.

“They are also used within egg processing where the egg is broken into a liquid to be used for food manufacturers, hotel or restaurants.

“None of our standard retail customers stock white eggs so we are really grateful to Tesco for stepping in and helping us out as the white eggs would have gone to waste.”

So there you have it. Mystery solved.

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