Different chicken breeds lay different colored eggs. Brown eggs are usually laid by red hens, and white eggs are usually laid by white hens.

Shell colour depends on the breed of hen they come from. US customers prefer white eggs. UK customers prefer brown eggs.

Also, US requires their eggs to have been thoroughly prewashed requiring them to be refrigerated. Outside the states, many countries sell eggs at room temperature.

Is this true though? Both white and brown eggs are equally available at the grocery store. The only difference seems to be that white eggs are cheaper.

Because the eggs don’t need to be washed. There’s a protective layer that is removed by washing. With the layer, the refrigeration is not necessary

In the UK most shop-bought eggs are brown because they sell better. They're seen as wholesome. In the US, they're seen as dirty and white eggs are seen as cleaner.

Retailers will up the price of variations to convince customers they're better in some way. And if most producers provide white eggs, the market would pay less for them, since a greater supply is available.

As some has mentioned, this is a false premise. The US tends to have a mix of white and brown, and. uh, "higher end" grocery stores can have multicoloured eggs. For example, I have a carton of eggs in my fridge right now with white, brown, blue, and green eggs!

Fun fact, there are breeds that lay blue and even green eggs.

The food the chickens eat also affect the color. Those with more organic food will produce light blue and green eggs. Source: grew up on a farm.

IIRC the variety that lays white eggs eats a little less than the brown egg laying one, leading to lower cost

That's more a function of their breed than their feed. Specific breeds produce the different shell colors, such as Americanas, Araucanas and mixed breed Easter Eggers. I used to raise chickens as a hobby, my Americana hen was the only one of them to lay green eggs. All of them got the same feed and foraged in the yard eating bugs and various plants. There was an effect on the clearness of the whites and the color of the yolks, the yolks having a darker orange color, possibly from pigments from their foraging.

Interestingly enough, it seems that the egg color gene is passed by the rooster rather than the hen, because none of the daughters of my Americana hen ever laid any green eggs. That, or the brown egg color gene is just more dominant.

I've never heard anybody saying that brown eggs are dirty.

My neighbors have friends with chickens and every few weeks they give me a few cartons of green eggs

Source: You made this up

The eggs depend on the breed of the chicken, not the nutrients themselves.

No, I always thought it was the feed actually! Learned something new today!