A surprising number of Americans think chocolate milk comes from brown cows | Hacker News Reader

A surprising number of Americans think chocolate milk comes from brown cows

washingtonpost.com

18 pointsmalloci18 comments

I'm skeptical of the 7% number. I can easily imagine 7% of survey respondents choosing the "brown cow" answer because they thought it was funny. It was just an online survey, after all. The other claims about pickles and french fries are easier to believe.

A surprising number of Americans think that cows just produce milk all the time and 'need' to be milked. As opposed to them being, well, mammals, who only lactate after pregnancy and are thus regularly inseminated in rape racks (industry term) to keep them lactating until they're no longer useful then killed.

A surprising number of Americans think baby cows get some of that milk from their moms. As opposed to baby males being killed soon after birth as veal and baby females raised on hormone cocktails to continue the cycle of forced labor and death of their mothers.

For those wondering, the number is 7%. I doubt that many people actually believe what the story implies. Depending on the phrasing of the question, I think you could easily move that number higher or lower.

I wonder about that. Stores sell powder for making regular milk into chocolate milk. But maybe some people haven't noticed that.

But then, Americans will buy the Coca-Cola Company's "Dasani", which is tap water with some minerals added for flavoring. That product was laughed out of the UK.

People will buy bottled water (300 times the price of tattoo water in France) while there is perfectly good water in taps (again, in France (where water is a "food", so it follows very strict regulations - and in average (you may have places where the taste of water is not extraordinary, but it will be safe))

7% is basically the Lizardmen's Constant [1]; wouldn't buy into this as Americans being stupid.

[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-...

That's a very insightful article, and I look forward to using "the Lizardman's Constant" in conversation.

Oh America, don't ever change

United States of America. Not the whole 3 continents.

Not in conventional usage.

> United States of America /əˈmɛrɪkə/ (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S.) or America, -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

This is weird, not just because you forgot how many American continents there are, but because when people get bothered about calling the USA "America," it usually turns out to be because they consider America to be a single continent, north and south together, whose name the USA is usurping. If you prefer dividing it into North America and South America, then there's no confusion with plain America.

In other words, you should have said "Not the whole one continent."

North America is also Canada

Never said it wasn't.

You're right, I misread your comment (I thought that you were saying that using "North America" makes it obvious that this is the USA - which you did not). Sorry (as they say in Canada :))

Phew, glad you cleared that up for me

What 3 continents?

North, South, and In.

I assume he meant regions with the third region being "Central America".

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