Coles responds to shopper's bizarre egg theory
Shoppers have come up with a bizarre theory for Coles-branded eggs having a dark-brown colour that washes off under water.
A video posted online showed an egg that appeared to have a “tan” become a pale beige colour after being lightly rubbed while under a running tap.
A curious Coles customer presented their theory to the supermarket on Tuesday, asking if it was “doing something funky” with its eggs.
“Hey Coles, are you guys doing something funky with your eggs these days? They look like they have been given a spray tan that rubs off when you put them in warm water or boil them,” the woman wrote.
In a comment, she detailed what had led her to develop such a hypothesis.
“Before washing the residue off, all the eggs are a pretty standard brown colour. Once you wash them, they are rather different in colour compared to each other,” she wrote.
The shopper speculated that perhaps light-coloured eggs were subject to “a bit of spray of some kind” so they would be “uniform” with the rest of the eggs.
Another person said from their own “anecdotal evidence” and “research” on different forums, they were convinced “some sort of artificial colouring may be happening”.
“Someone somewhere has decided that an even-toned brown egg somehow sells better. If that actually is the case, that is a new and special level of dumb,” they wrote.
A Coles spokesperson said shell colour could be impacted by a variety of elements, including an oil used in the “egg grading process”.
“Egg colour including white specks can be influenced by a number of factors including bird age, access to minerals in the range and access to additional calcium in their diet,” the spokesperson told Yahoo News Australia.
“Our egg suppliers also sometimes use oil during the egg grading process to help seal the porous shell of the egg and preserve quality. The colouration on these eggs look to be a combination of the above effects.”
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