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This percentage of Americans think chocolate milk comes from brown cows
By Joanna Sarah-Freedman
09 Jan 2023
2m
If your head is feeling a little bit foggy after Christmas and New Year then we have a statistic which is going to remind you that you’re pretty switched on after all, really.
Believe it or not, almost 10 percent of Americans think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Really, we wish we were making this up.
In news that has left us feeling like Einstein, a survey has uncovered that seven percent of people think the old wives tale is actually legit – which is frankly akin to thinking carrots help you see in the dark, or that the tooth fairy exists.
The findings come from The Innovation Center of US Dairy and Edelman Intelligence, who asked American adults where chocolate milk comes from.
PSA: brown cows don’t make chocolate milk (Credit: Alamy)
Yep, you read that correctly. It’s not even kids that make up this percentage. Lord have mercy!
According to Undeniably Dairy’s ‘Dairy Good’ website, “the purpose of the survey was to gauge some interesting and fun facts about consumers’ perceptions of dairy, [and it was] not a scientific or academic study intended to be published.”
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Nevertheless, the statistics are still legit, and of 1,000 Americans polled between 5th May and 9th May in 2017, a pretty shocking amount still believed the chocolate milk fable.
Responses came from as many as 50 states, and the numbers were pretty even across the board.
The cow’s face says it all, frankly (Credit: Alamy)
Now, seven percent might not sound like a lot of people, but when you consider that’s the whole of America, it’s actually pretty startling.
The population of the US today is 335,877,437, for reference.
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The folks at LADBible worked out that this stat therefore means that you could fill New York with people who believe a brown cow makes chocolate milk.
Plus, it also makes up the same amount of people who live in the likes of Cambodia, Chad or Senegal.
Mind. Blown.
The survey also found that a staggering 48 percent of people said they weren’t sure where chocolate milk came from.
It’s worth noting that this research isn’t brand new, so the numbers could vary a little today, but we can’t say we’ve noticed an education campaign on this topic since it first reared its head.
Are you seriously telling me you think this came from a cow? (Credit: Alamy)
In fact, who knows, perhaps more people believe it now?
This isn’t the first time surveys have shown how clueless people can be when it comes to food.
Previous research has found that nearly one in five Americans were oblivious to the fact that hamburgers are indeed made from beef.
“We still get kids who are surprised that a French fry comes from a potato, or that a pickle is a cucumber,” said Cecily Upton, co-founder of the nonprofit FoodCorps
“Knowledge is power. Without it, we can’t make informed decisions.”
