How Much Do Americans Know about Agriculture?
In a world besieged by "fake news" and questionable data from non-scientific polls, the conclusion of a 2017 web survey commissioned by the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy is still a head-scratcher. The survey found that 7 percent of American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. If the data is correct, that would mean that about 17 million Americans are woefully ignorant about agriculture and food production.
How now, brown cow?
- This isn't the first study to underline Americans' lack of understanding about where their food comes from. For the record, chocolate milk is made from milk (from cows of any color), cocoa, and sugar.
- A 1993 Department of Agriculture study found that one in five respondents did not know that hamburgers are made from beef.
- In 2011, when researchers interviewed grade-schoolers at an urban California school, they found that more than half of them didn’t realize that pickles were cucumbers, or that onions and lettuce were plants.
Follow wiseGEEK:
Discuss this Article
|
anon998529
Post 1 |
Some of these 'articles' are ridiculous. I have no problem believing, and understanding "grade schoolers" not being aware of the original form of pickles. That, however, does not mean that there is any believable basis for suggesting that 7% of the adult population is actually convinced that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. It's much easier to believe that 7% of the adult population loves pulling people's strings and that an even percentage of surveyors are gullible enough to publish the results without engaging their intellectual processes because it's just more fun for them to ridicule others, and unfortunately themselves, at the same time for taking the bait so readily. |
