You Won’t Believe It: Millions of People Think Chocolate Milk Comes From Here

Chocolate milk: it’s pretty popular in our newsroom and among our readers, and recipes for variations with spirits in them, or with toppings like marshmallows or meringue (fancy!) are always a hit. And even if you pour it straight from a carton, most of us can figure out that this is milk with chocolate in it, right? Well, when you see the results of an American study, you’ll be falling off your chair.

If you use the method of dissolving cocoa and sugar in warm milk at home, or stir one of those fancy chocolate blocks on a lollipop stick into hot milk at a café, you can obviously see it happening right before your eyes. But even if you never do that, and always run straight to the chocolate milk aisle at the supermarket, you do know that this incredibly simple drink consists of milk and cocoa (and sugar), right?! Just look at what it’s called! Well, that’s what you’d think. But leave it to the Americans to leave us open-mouthed once again.

You Won’t Believe It

The ‘Innovation Center’ for U.S. Dairy commissioned a study. A thousand (adult!) people were asked questions about dairy, and when respondents were asked where they thought chocolate milk comes from or how it is made, the answer was downright shocking. No fewer than 48 percent of those surveyed weren’t sure. And no fewer than seven percent said… ‘from brown cows’. WHAT?!

Brown Cow, Blue Cow

Now, seven percent of a thousand may not sound like much, but extrapolated, it of course represents a considerable number of people. So you could say that millions of adults in America think chocolate milk comes directly from the udders of brown cows. That’s quite a shock, isn’t it? Unfortunately, the results of the study can’t currently be found, but they have been cited on various platforms. And as the popular science platform IFL Science asks: do these people also think that blue cheese is made from the milk of blue cows?

Time for Hot Chocolate

I think the best way to read stories like this is with a cup of hot chocolate. By the way, did you know that Tony’s Chocolonely also sells chocolate milk, produced entirely in line with their goal of making the chocolate industry free of slavery and child labor? Give it a try—it’s absolutely delicious!

Also read:

• Delicious: this snowman for chocolate milk with marshmallows
• Move over hot chocolate: Nutella Latte is here
• Remarkable news: Tony’s Chocolonely is asking for a sugar tax itself. Huh?

Source: Food and Wine