White eggs vs brown eggs

When our visitors from Australia were here in June-July they kept commenting about our white eggs. They wondered why we have eggs with white shells in Japan, when usually Australians buy brown eggs in the supermarket. I think they may have even wondered what Japanese do to the chickens/eggs to get them white. Well, it isn't as sinister as they might have thought. I Googled "chicken egg colour" and found that Wikipedia has a very nice little section here about egg colour.

It turns out that the colour is mostly determined by the breed of hen! Pretty simple really. What isn't so simple is what different cultures expect in their eggs. For example, "in most regions of the United States, chicken eggs are generally white. In some parts of the northeast of that country, particularly New England, where a television jingle for years proclaimed "brown eggs are local eggs, and local eggs are fresh!", brown eggs are more common." (Wikipedia)

Funny, hey? We think we're a most enlightened people, but our ignorance is actually pretty profound, and about the most common of topics.