Zeina Ayache 7 out of 100 Americans believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows: this belief can make us smile and surprise us, but it must also allow us to reflect on the awareness and knowledge we have in the food sector. We know less and less what we eat and where our food comes from: and this is the most worrying news
Do you really know what’s inside chocolate milk? Well, an enlightening study shows that even questions to which the answer would appear blazingly obvious can mask some amazing misconceptions, both funny and revealing.
What’s in chocolate milk?
If I asked you to name the ingredients of chocolate milk, you would probably immediately say: milk, chocolate, and maybe sugar. The milk can be animal-based, cow’s milk for instance, or a plant-based one, like oat milk. The chocolate is usually powdered and often pre-sweetened.
Right? Well… it would appear self-evident, anyway.
A study that amuses and makes you think
In fact, a 2017 survey by the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy revealed that 16.4 million Americans–7% of the population, or 7 out of every 100 people–believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
This may be surprising to many because it lacks logical reasoning. It begs worry that 16.4 million people could think that a drink called “chocolate milk”-as pretty descriptive a name as it gets-derives from brown cows instead of just being milk flavored with chocolate. If this is the sampled group, you can imagine how many people around the world would give this answer.
This statistic also speaks to the more important question of the growing disconnection between ourselves and our foods: we have no idea where exactly our foods originate.
Do we know what we’re eating?
Within a mere two generations, we have effectively erased nearly all the accumulated knowledge of 23,000 years of agriculture.
For example, some people don’t know that bacon comes from pigs, and the United States Department of Agriculture classifies potatoes as “vegetables” and fruit juices as “fruits.”
Already a minor victory is if we know fruits and vegetables have their seasons.
We have become so accustomed to having everything at any time of the year, in immaculate, single-serving plastic packages, that we totally forgot what it is we are consuming.
