“Despite What Some May Say, Chocolate Milk Does Not Come From Brown Cows”, All Things Considered2017-06-16 (sociology; backlinks)⁠:

A survey of 1,000 people shows 7% of participants think chocolate milk comes from brown cows. The answer did not surprise dietitians, who discuss several common misconceptions related to food.

• • Jean Ragalie-Carr: …When we asked them, where does chocolate milk come from, they indicated that they thought it came from brown cows.

  • Ari Shapiro: 7% of Americans thought that.
  • Audie Cornish: Jean Ragalie-Carr is president of the National Dairy Council, which commissioned the survey. She says they put that question to a thousand people and gave them several options for how to answer.

  • J. Ragalie-Carr: Well, there was brown cows or black-and-white cows, or they didn’t know.

• • A. Shapiro: When Ragalie-Carr and her team got the results…

  • Ragalie-Carr: [laughter] I have to say, there were probably a few chuckles in the room as we learned this, you know? But it did make me wonder what they thought about strawberry milk. Did they think there were some pink cows out there?

  • A. Cornish: …Registered dietitian Lisa Cimperman says while she thinks some people were having a little fun with their answer, she’s also not surprised that some might think chocolate milk comes from a brown cow.

[Details are scarce, and the original survey has not been published according to Glendora Meikle:

A spokesperson for the Innovation Center told me the purpose of the survey was to “gauge some interesting and fun facts about consumers’ perceptions of dairy”, and the chocolate milk stat was apparently a winner. (She declined to respond to my queries about the wording of the questions, and said the full results of the survey were not intended to be published.)]

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