Or if we’re sticking to the US, the amount of people who believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows is around double the current population of New York.
To make matters worse, the misinformation around food doesn’t end there.
In 1993, it was found nearly a fifth of adults didn’t realise beef is the main ingredient in hamburgers, as discovered by the Department of Agriculture.

Slightly more acceptable, but still fairly shocking, is a qualitative agriculture study on what elementary school students know about food systems.
The study revealed four out of 10 fourth, fifth and sixth-graders didn’t realise cows are used to make hamburgers and three in 10 didn’t know milk is used to make cheese.
Over half of the elementary school students didn’t realise onions and lettuce are plants and that pickles are small cucumbers which have simply been placed in brine or vinegar.
While seven percent of Americans were found to believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows, 48 percent of respondents said they don’t know where chocolate milk comes from – whether that makes the results of the survey better or worse who knows.

The survey isn’t verified or publicly released either, so maybe there’s hope the misinformation isn’t quite as bad as it seems.
Either way, co-founder of non-profit organisation Food Corps which ‘connects kids to healthy food in school,’ Cecily Upton told The Washington Post: “At the end of the day, it’s an exposure issue.
“Right now, we’re conditioned to think that if you need food, you go to the store. Nothing in our educational framework teaches kids where food comes from before that point. We still get kids who are surprised that a french fry comes from a potato.
“[…] Knowledge is power. Without it, we can’t make informed decisions.”