Our local community advertising newsletter recently ran a local grocery store’s ad for “white milk”. Being of the area, I knew immediately it meant either whole, 2%, 1%, or skim milk. Yet this descriptive term is falling out of use locally. It used to be quite prevalent back in the 1960’s though. Is this a term you would immediately recognize? Was/is it used in your area?
I’d planned to create a poll, but I just realized I have no idea how to make one since the board upgrade. Tellwiddit.
Chicago, grew up in the 80s, and for school lunches, we called it “white milk” and “chocolate milk.” I think “white milk” was typically whole milk, but I can’t say for sure. I know we had skim milk, too, which came in a small single-serving cardboard carton with light blue accents. Chocolate milk was brown accents, of course. And regular “white” was either red or dark blue – can’t remember for sure.
What other kinds are there? Aside from ones that (IMO) always come with a qualifier, like buttermilk, almond milk, etc.
I would recognize it, from a similar sort of grade-school context in the '70s, in contrast with “…or chocolate milk.”
Those of you who knew it from school (as I did), would you see the term in printed ads?
Here I recall ads for both white and chocolate milk.
Yeah, in a non-school (or similar) lunch context, I can’t think of the need for the distinction. I can’t for the life of me remember anyone having pre-made chocolate milk at home. I’m pretty sure they sell it, but I’ve never seen it at anyone’s house. “Milk” was understood to be unadulterated milk, typically whole or 2%.
Never heard it. Mid-Atlantic, New England, Cascadia.
Not that I can remember. Only on the lunch form.
Not that I remember. (And, this would have been Illinois, and Wisconsin, in the '70s.)
I wouldn’t recognize it, unless by context.
I do know about the blue milk scandals.
Our milkman carried chocolate milk too, so we got it delivered back in the good old days, if I could talk mom into it.
That’s me, if you replace “Chicago” with “Central Illinois,” “80s” with “70s,” and “whole” with “2%.”
WTF is a “milkman”? 
“White milkman” seems problematic, too.
Yes, this is the only circumstance in which that usage would have made sense to me.
I’ve never heard the term ‘white milk’. SoCal native.
In my class of about 35 (depending on the year), I’m pretty sure it was always every kid opted for chocolate milk, except for the one kid allergic to chocolate.
Is…is it not called white milk anymore?
ETA, I never thought of it as being a regional thing and I didn’t notice the OP is QtM, so we’d be in the same region (Kenobi too).
I would recognize “white milk” from any context where a kid had to choose either a half pint of white or chocolate milk- school, summer camp, a museum cafeteria ,McDonald’s. I may have heard kids say “white milk” (but probably not) at the dairy, which is where we bought milk when I was a kid. But I definitely never saw it in ads.
I don’t remember using/hearing the term and I volunteered to hand out the milks in grade school.
It let me get out of class a little early. I also volunteered to be an altar server at the church our school was attached to which also let me out of class, maybe for a whole hour if it was for a funeral. You’ll never guess who volunteered to clap chalkboard erasers and raise and lower the flag at either end of the school day.