How Now? Brown Cow?

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 23840 – 1279

Dear Savvy and Awe-Inspiring Readers,

Here’s the haps:

The more you think about some things, the weirder they seem to become.

Why do we drink cow’s milk? I mean, who was the guy who first looked at a cow and said, “I think I’ll drink whatever comes out of these things when I squeeze ’em?”

So, as part of an attempt at a humorous post, I was going to pose the simple question, “How come chocolate milk doesn’t come from brown cows?” Now, I will show you the way I get distracted and derailed and wind up not finishing anything but going down rabbit trails. I recalled having seen somewhere that there was a statistic that said 7% of Americans believed that chocolate milk came from brown cows. This would be (very roughly guesstimated within the confines of my headbone) about 20 million-ish people. And I didn’t know any of them. I knew and know absolutely zero people who think this, but as I dived in deeper, I found it was headline news reported in 2017 by CNN (already a questionable source, at best), NPR, and the Washington Post. Now I was even more curious. Was it possible that I had never met any of these people who think this? I started asking friends and family members, “What if I told you that chocolate milk comes from brown cows?” “Umm…sure, Herb. That makes a lot of sense. Really. Are you still taking those meds the doctor gave you?” “Of course it does. And the moon is made of green cheese.” Mostly, I got disdainful looks and eyerolls a-plenty. “Writing another one of your ‘blog’ thingies?”

The actual raw source material or any firsthand sources of any type are not available. There is no information about how the survey, done by an advertising agency, was conducted, if it was conducted at all. Was it done by phone, on the Internet, by writing on the inside of ice cream boxes with a crayon? The closest that I came was an interview that said that the only choices were black and white, brown, or I don’t know, and that was third-hand information.

This was a fun thing to look at and write about, but I believe that it begs a bigger, unrelated question. In 2017, when the mainstream (lame-stream) media was being minutely scrutinized and called the “Fake News” that it was and still often is, why would any editor with more than an ounce of brains, and I mean any editor, run a story with zero primary sources? Later on, they said they were using it to show that Americans are out of touch with where their food comes from. And that’s the best they could do?

But fear not, dear friends, because chocolate milk actually can come from brown cows. It just has to be processed first. The process is amazingly simple and merely requires the addition of your choice of cocoa powder and sugar, chocolate powder, or chocolate syrup.

Of course, we all know that strawberry milk comes from rabbits: