My sole credentials of expertise on this subject is that I have been consuming milk as a beverage for most of my sixty years. By beverage, I mean that almost all of it has been drunk purely because I think the most delicious thing to drink, sometimes with a meal, but mostly by itself, is a big glass of ice-cold milk. Perhaps two.
Though I have backed away from it a bit the last several years, I often drank milk just by itself because I found it refreshing. In years past, I would often consume a half gallon or so in an evening, if I found myself particularly thirsty. Expiration dates were never a concern with milk in my households.
I have always preferred one brand over another. I usually bought Bordens, but when the store was sold out, I would try another brand. It always tasted “funny” to me. If I didn’t like the taste, I would use it in cereal and such, but didn’t care for it by itself. Some brands tasted different, but were okay, but I always went back to Bordens when available again.
To me, different brands of similar fat content tasted differently.
As far as peanut butter is concerned - I grew up on Peter Pan, which is much sweeter than “pea-nuttier” brands. I just prefer it. I have had peanut butter that was so basic it defied eating and was almost impossible to get down due to its stickiness and consistency. Some would be better used for patching drywall than for dietary consumption.
This week, I bought a cheaper brand of organic milk than my usual brand because I wasn’t going to have time to get to my usual store. Man, this stuff is crap compared to my brand of choice. I think the difference is huge.
That said, I grew up with fresh dairy and I can tell the difference. Even if many others can’t. To me, all coffee tastes terrible. Meh.
I blame this thread. This week the supermarket ran out of the brand I usually use and I had to buy a different brand. Since then, Div has. been complaining that the milk tastes off, the kids are complaining that everything tastes “funny”, and I’m completely unable to detect any difference whatsoever.
Those aren’t milk, as in “white stuff produced by an animal’s teats”. They are horchatas, produced by marinating nuts in water (the process is more complicated than that when produced industrially, but that’s the basics of it); all it’s got in common with milk is being a white liquid - and that for some reason it gets the same name in English. Different taste, different texture, different nutritional value.
You can burn sugar coal (which is just big chunks of sugar, dyed black), but you can’t eat anthracite - yet the two get called coal.
For a while there was a brand in my local stores that was ridiculously cheaper than the other ones. It didn’t last long, as according to anybody who’d tasted it, it tasted like rennet even to people who just put a drop in coffee. My family drinks milk straight, lactofree or not; to us it was “bring out the pitchforks” quality.
Drinking milk gets me classified as an illegal chemical weapon under the Geneva Convention, so I just do almond milk now. But I do remember from my milk-drinking days that Walmart milk was always much sweeter than the other brands and went bad very quickly. I never had that problem with Food Lion milk.
My DH said there was no difference; but when I gave him a blind taste test he picked the Bordens every time. According to the label the 2% has “creamy rich taste” and “high protein” so maybe it’s the power of suggestion, but I buy Bordens whenever I can, regardless of the price.
Recently some big milk produces asked the FDA to let them add aspartame to milk to make it more palatable to kids. Their spin was that if the milk tasted sweeter, kids would drink more of it. But the catch was that they didn’t want to list added chemical on the label because it would be such a small amount. Here’s a link to the story I remember.
As a (soon-to-be-former) Wisconsinite, myself, I can’t tell the difference, but I’m not a milk drinker – I just pour it on cereal. My 7-year-old daughter, though, can tell the difference between Costco and Sassy Cow, and prefers Costco. I tried to tell her it’s all the same, but it’s different enough to put her off, even if she doesn’t see me pour it.
I will say, don’t bother with the ABS “Moo Cow Fuck Milk”. It’s collected in DeForest, so it’s local, but it’s super-pricey, and if you pour it on cereal, it just becomes a sticky mess.
The grocery store I go to carries three different “normal” varieties of milk. Deans, store brand, and a cheaper-than-store-brand one called “Great Value” or something. I buy the middle tier, simply because the labels for the cheapest one looks uncomfortably cheap. Never really had a complaint, and can’t tell a difference between it and Dean’s.
I do occasionally spring for the high-end local milk in a glass bottle, and I definitely notice a difference. But it’s rarely worth the markup.
Today I met a man who had worked on rBST for cows long about twenty years ago. After several months on the job and seeing the results, he quit. He said to an audience of about 150 people that we should never, never drink milk that did not have the label “milk from cows not treated with rBST.” He later referred to it as poison milk because it caused a (relatively) high number of allergies as well as hormone issues with adolescents.
BST is a growth hormone in cows. rBST is a synthetic version used to increase milk production. It’s not allowed in several countries, and it’s either harmless or poison, depending on which source you read.
