Cow's Milk, the New Cotton....

The other day I was fixing myself a nice bowl of cereal when I actually took a real look at my milk carton. I then proceeded to notice the label "100% Cows Milk" on it. I immediately thought to myself, "Of course it is!!!" while putting the milk back in the refridgerator and then laughing to myself that I was even smart enough to know that.

BUT, as I was sitting there, enjoying my cereal, I thought, "WAIT, why did they need to put that label on the milk?!?" Have I been fooled all this time thinking all the milk we buy in the supermarket is actually 100% cow's milk?!? What other things are people milking these days?!? At the time, Ben Stiller's character in Meet the Parents was funny, but now one of his memorable quotes seemed to echo in my head - "You can milk just about anything with nipples...."

In this processed world we live in, it would not surprise me to learn that possibly the milk we all like to purchase in the supermarket is not 100% cow's milk. Perhaps it is a nice 90% cow's and 10% goat's milk blend. Maybe we should be more aware and start reading milk cartons like they were clothing labels.... In fact, cow's milk might be the new cotton!!! Remember that first time you saw a 25% cotton, 15% silk, 15% rayon, 10% lycra, 10% polyester, 10% wool, 5% acrylic, 5% acetate and 5% nylon t-shirt?!? That was about the time you started humming to yourself, "The touch... the feel... the fabric of our life... Cotton!!!"

Remember, those fabric blends created new care labels as well - No Tumble Dry, Dry Clean Only, Gentle Cycle, Remove Promptly from Dryer, etc. We may soon see labels on "milk blend" cartons such as: No Cooking with Carbohydrates, Consume Cold Only - Do Not Heat, Do Not Stir/Shake as Liquids May Separate, Live Unstable Cultures, etc.

Now, I am still under the belief that the milk sold in supermarkets are still all 100% cow's milk and everything that I am writing will not actually come into fruition. But, performing a search in Google under the many variations of "not 100% cow's milk" or "is it cow's milk" results in some very upsetting websites of people against the milk industry. Don't even get me started on those other websites I found about "cow's milk for cow's; human's milk for human's!!!" Come to think of it, all those sites might simply be pure propaganda by the Tums people. They have been trying to convince us their product is now a "calcium supplement" and not the antacid/stomach reliever they used to convince us it was.

As an aside, if anyone was wondering about the separate New York City sell by dates for milk; YES, it is true that New York City has earlier sell by dates compared to other areas. Long story short, New York City, one of the few in the country, has a stricter dating system for milk (days after pasteurization). OR maybe it is just NYC trying to give yet another reason why it is better than the rest of the country....