MilkTruth Channels FoodBabe, Flops

Credit: SciBabe

Anyone who follows me on twitter knows that the 'real food' movement and their many meme-worthy sayings tend to annoy me. The one that seems to get the most play, coined by the FoodBabe, is something to the effect of "don't eat it if a third grader can't pronounce it". To anyone who has ever taken a chemistry class, this will sound ludicrous; alas, it's a popular saying in the lay media, and even something I've heard reiterated by healthcare professionals. I get the saying (a very long list of ingredients can be a marker for a food that isn't particularly nutrient dense), but I personally find that it spreads fear and contributes to scientific illiteracy more than it does educate the consumer. As I've covered in a couple posts here, and others have done as well, many of the ingredients added to foods serve a very functional purpose, and believe it or not, food scientists are not putting them there to kill you.



That all being said, I was quite surprised (-ish?)  yesterday when I saw a MilkTruth commercial employing similar FoodBabe-esque advertising tactics. The very short ad can be found here . It begins by dichotomizing 'real milk' against almond milk and leads into a spelling bee contest, where a student is asked to spell lecithin, an emulsifier commonly added to non-dairy milks, and another is asked to spell milk. The ad closes saying "Milk wins! Ingredients you can spell".  Ingredients you can spell - what a meaningful health message!!!!! (eyeroll). It seems whoever started the campaign might be following me on twitter, since I joked about this back in September. 



The complete ridiculousness of the ad didn't really strike me until this morning. Lecithin is just another name for phosphatidylcholine, Guess where phosphatidylcholine is found? Cow's milk! (1) Essentially, MilkTruth is calling Almond Milk not 'real' because it contains an added ingredient that is already found endogenously in cow's (and all mammals') milk. I guess it's hard to find something in almond milk to fear-monger about since it's not worthy of fear.

Regardless of which you choose to drink, no individual food is magic or poison and it's pretty shameful that the MilkTruth campaign is stooping this low to get a one-up on AlmondMilk. Check the quality of your diet, and if almond milk fits, go for it. I'm sure you'll somehow manage to not be protein deficient if you opt for it over cow's milk. And maybe, in some crazy world, you might drink both.... (assuming you're not vegan/lactose intolerant/religiously,culturally opposed)

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3944656