Last week, the progressive blog-o-sphere absolutely lost it when an article published by Tom Philpott on Mother Jones loudly proclaimed "Lay off the Almond Milk you ignorant hipsters", which was later republished on other liberal media sites again, and again, and again, each time with an extensive round of (almost completely) negative comments from readers on Facebook, Twitter, and the original sites with some threatening to unfollow the blog(s) but most commenting along the lines of "I came to expect more from Mother Jones" or, perhaps more notably, "This reeks of Dairy Industry money".
Does it? And does anyone see something a bit fishy lying under this whole debacle?
For some perspective, The American dairy industry is in free-fall with the popularity of cows milk falling as rapidly as our former obsession with orange juice and the popularity of non-dairy and vegan alternatives growing in urban, hip areas.
So why did these articles get published on progressive sites like Mother Jones, then Alternet, then Huffington Post, etc. and is it pure coincidence that they didn't originate in, say, Glenn Beck's 'Blaze' or The Daily Caller or even Fox?
To begin, who actually drinks almond milk or other non-dairy plant-based milks? If you said vegans, vegetarians, whole-foods shoppers, the young, hip, and progressive, you may be on to something.
Also keep in mind that political ideology is largely correlated with where you eat, where you shop for groceries, and go out to eat.
In fact, it was Rush Limbaugh himself who said that eating organic food "makes you a jerk" and even Jonah Golberg's famous "Liberal Fascism" book notes links between vegetarianism, Hitler, Socialism, etc. All those 'west coast granola-eating hippy liberal' jokes may actually have some grain of truth to them.
Some are old enough to remember a time when big Tobacco used to pump millions into studies, articles, advertisements, and the like in an effort to sustain their industry in the eyes, and pockets, of Americans. Luckily for the cigarette manufacturers, their product actually came with a physically addictive ingredient already present in the product itself. Now Big Tobacco is attempting a takeover of the E-cigarette market as a last-ditch effort to corner the market on 'alternative' nicotine products.
So how do these puzzle pieces all this tie in together and what is the source? Where did this recent rash of anti-plant milk originate?
It was only one month ago that the first anti-almond milk article appeared in U.S. News and World report which sparked the 'debate' online. The article received thousands of shares and swept across the internet at alarming speed.
So would it strike you as interesting if I told you that this 'source' article was written by Dietician Tamara Duker Freuman and that some deeper research into Ms. Freuman shows that she just so happens to be a paid 'Media spokesman' and consultant [PDF] with the Dairy industry? Or perhaps, when all the highly-subsidized overabundance of milk in U.S. public schools was being criticized, it was the same Ms. Freuman who not only came to Dairy's defense but actually advocated sugar-laden chocolate milk as a 'good thing' in schools?
Mrs. Duke remains on the payroll of Redwood hill Farms, which sells milks, cheeses, lactose-free creams, etc. and is headed by a woman by the name of Jennifer Lynn Bice.
Jennifer Lynn Bice is actually quite a busy lady and a former board member of the powerful lobbying group, the American cheese society whose 4-letter motto is "Serving the Cheese Industry".
The ACS may be a strong figure on the public stage when it comes to cheese but what about the actual Dairy organizations and lobbying groups?
The National Milk Producers Foundation is the leading lobbying arm of the dairy industry and has been staying quite busy in the national shift toward plant-based milks. In fact, they sent a strongly-worded legal request [PDF] to the FDA asking that the definition of "milk" and "Cheese" only be those products that directly come from cows, a position that would greatly benefit their industry.
More about that definition of "Milk" by the NMPF: hidden within the petition is a portion asking the FDA to (secretly) include chemical sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose.
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