Let's Laugh!

[waistingmytime]

I find this more unbelievable than funny ......Is it true ?

 

[jeansGuyOZ]

I find this more unbelievable than funny ......Is it true ?

Well, one of our local milk distributors used to claim that their chocolate milk came from chocolate cows. So I guess it COULD be true. Some cows do have a sort of chocolatey colour. However it stil leaves unexplained the origin of strawberry milk, banana milk and spearmint milk.

 

[W!nston]

I find this more unbelievable than funny ......Is it true ?

Unfortunately it seems to be based on some facts. That is if you can put any faith in the Washington Post:

Millions of American adults think chocolate milk comes from brown cows
Last updated 10:02, June 16 2017

​Seven per cent of all American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

If you do the maths, that works out to 16.4 million misinformed, milk-drinking people, according to a nationally representative online survey commissioned by the Innovation Center of US Dairy.

The equivalent of the population of Pennsylvania (and then some!) does not know that chocolate milk is milk, cocoa and sugar.

But while the survey has attracted snorts and jeers from some corners - "um, guys, [milk] comes from cows - and not just the brown kind," snarked Food & Wine - the most surprising thing about this figure may actually be that it isn't higher.

For decades, observers in agriculture, nutrition and education have griped that many Americans are basically agriculturally illiterate. They don't know where food is grown, how it gets to stores - or even, in the case of chocolate milk, what's in it.

This ignorance about where our food and drinks come from is actually logical.
Andy Jackson
This ignorance about where our food and drinks come from is actually logical.

One Department of Agriculture study, commissioned in the early '90s, found that nearly one in five adults did not know that hamburgers are made from beef. Many more lacked familiarity with basic farming facts, like how big US farms typically are and what food animals eat.

Experts in ag education aren't convinced that much has changed in the intervening decades.

"At the end of the day, it's an exposure issue," said Cecily Upton, co-founder of the nonprofit FoodCorps, which brings agricultural and nutrition education into elementary schools.

"Right now, we're conditioned to think that if you need food, you go to the store. Nothing in our educational framework teaches kids where food comes from before that point."

Upton and other educators are quick to caution that these conclusions don't apply across the board. Studies have shown that people who live in agricultural communities tend to know a bit more about where their food comes from, as do people with higher education levels and household incomes.

But in some populations, confusion about basic food facts can skew pretty high. When one team of researchers interviewed fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders at an urban California high school, they found that more than half of them didn't know pickles were cubers, or that onions and lettuce were plants.

Four in 10 didn't know that hamburgers came from cows. And three in 10 didn't know that cheese is made from milk.

"All informants recalled the names of common foods in raw form and most knew foods were grown on farms or in gardens," the researchers concluded. "They did not, however, possess schema necessary to articulate an understanding of post-production activities nor the agricultural crop origin of common foods."

In some ways, this ignorance is perfectly logical. The writer and historian Ann Vileisis has argued that it developed in lockstep with the industrial food system.

As more Americans moved into cities in the mid-1800s, she writes in the book "Kitchen Literacy," fewer were involved in food production or processing. That trend was exacerbated by innovations in transportation and manufacturing that made it possible to ship foods in different forms, and over great distances.

By the time uniformity, hygiene and brand loyalty became modern ideals - the latter frequently encouraged by emerging food companies in well-funded ad campaigns - many Americans couldn't imagine the origins of the boxed cereals or shrink-wrapped hot dogs in their kitchens.

Today, many Americans only experience food as an industrial product that doesn't look much like the original animal or plant: The USDA says orange juice is the most popular "fruit" in America, and processed potatoes - in the form of french fries and chips - rank among the top vegetables.

"Indifference about the origins and production of foods became a norm of urban culture, laying the groundwork for a modern food sensibility that would spread all across America in the decades that followed," Vileisis wrote, of the 20th century.

"Within a relatively brief period, the average distance from farm to kitchen had grown from a short walk down the garden path to a convoluted, 1500-mile energy-guzzling journey by rail and truck."

The past 20 years have seen the birth of a movement to reverse this gap, with agriculture and nutrition groups working to get ag education back into classrooms.

For National Dairy Month, which is June, National Agriculture in the Classroom Organization has been featuring a kindergarten-level lesson on dairy. Among its main takeaways: milk - plain, unflavoured, boring white milk - comes from cows, not the grocery case.

Nutritionists and food-system reformers say these basic lessons are critical to raising kids who know how to eat healthfully - an important aid to tackling heart disease and obesity.

Meanwhile, farm groups argue the lack of basic food knowledge can lead to poor policy decisions.

A 2012 white paper from the National Institute for Animal Agriculture blamed consumers for what it considers bad farm regulations: "One factor driving today's regulatory environment ... is pressure applied by consumers", the authors wrote.

"Unfortunately, a majority of today's consumers are at least three generations removed from agriculture, are not literate about where food comes from and how it is produced."

Upton, of FoodCorps, said everyone could benefit from a better understanding of agriculture.

"We still get kids who are surprised that a french fry comes from a potato, or that a pickle is a cuber," she said. "... Knowledge is power. Without it, we can't make informed decisions."

- The Washington Post

 

[W!nston]

Well, one of our local milk distributors used to claim that their chocolate milk came from chocolate cows. So I guess it COULD be true. Some cows do have a sort of chocolatey colour. However it stil leaves unexplained the origin of strawberry milk, banana milk and spearmint milk.

I worked on a dairy farm in my youth. I've seen strawberry mile, well not actually strawberry but it had the appearance of it, come from cows. The red clumps and pink milk were caused by blood clots in the utter.

I also saw banana milk, well not actually banana milk but it did have the appearance of it, the color was caused by a yellow discharge from an infection in the utter.

I don't remember spearmint milk but it's quite possible something might cause the milk to come out green, lol.

 

[HiPurple]

Strawberry milk


Banana milk


Spearmint milk

:rofl:

 

[waistingmytime]

Unfortunately it seems to be based on some facts. That is if you can put any faith in the Washington Post:

Well this is very interesting to me. I would have never thought this many people would think this way......Thanks for this information W!nston !

 

[jeansGuyOZ]

Well this is very interesting to me. I would have never thought this many people would think this way......Thanks for this information W!nston !

This is getting away from the "Let's Laugh" theme of this thread, but I think many food distributors are quite happy with people not being aware of where their food comes from. Especially in the case of meat.

 

[W!nston]

This Lady's head looks like a dog wearing sunglasses ...

 

[slimjim]

 

[slimjim]

 

[haiducii]

Road to 2018 World Cup

 

[drewguy]

 

[drewguy]

 

[W!nston]

Lazy Susan

 

[W!nston]

 

[W!nston]

The instructions to these chopsticks

 

[W!nston]

 

[W!nston]

 

[W!nston]

 

[waistingmytime]

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