Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Hard to let Easter go by without at least one Peeps posting. A product passed on to me by Mike Reaser:

  (#1)

Yes, Peeps-flavored milk. It’s hard to imagine what attractions such a concoction might have, except as a novelty. It’s not so much a bad food idea, like the dessert hummus I posted about here, as an unnecessary food idea: flavored milks are widely available (throughout the world), and Peeps in themselves are nothing more than two kinds of sweeteners (sugar and corn syrup) and gelatin, plus artificial flavorings and colors (of just the sort added to flavored milks).  The only thing that Peeps contribute is their name; it’s all marketing.

Last year’s Peeps postings:

on 3/20/16, “Rainbow Peeps”

on 3/25/16, “More Peepshi”

(More in earlier years.)

Flavored milks, in Wikipedia:

Made with milk, sugar, colorings and artificial or natural flavorings. Flavored milk is often pasteurized using ultra-high-temperature (UHT) treatment, which gives it a longer shelf-life than plain milk. Pre-mixed flavored milk is sold in the refrigerated dairy case alongside other milk products. Flavored sweetened powders or syrups which are added to plain milk are also available.

Flavored milk is milk that has sugar, colorings and (mostly inexpensive artificial) flavorings added to make it more appetizing, especially to children (a prominent example can be found in the artificial strawberry flavor, ethyl methylphenylglycidate) can be sold as a powder to be added to plain milk, or bought pre-mixed alongside other milk products. Flavoring can be included in a straw, and some flavored milk products are designed as dietary supplements by including additional vitamins or minerals.

Bottled spiced (masala) milk is a popular beverage in the Indian subcontinent. Other companies provide flavored beverages in the United Kingdom, which sells packaged beverages to the mobile vendor market. Australia has the highest consumption rate of flavored milk in the world, standing at 9.5 liters per capita in 2004.

Flavored milk is particularly popular in the Australian states of South Australia and Western Australia.

Commercial flavored milks are widely available in a few flavors: chocolate milk, strawberry milk, malted milk, and egg nog (actual egg nog has milk, cream, sugar, whipped eggs, and (optionally) spirits: brandy, rum, or bourbon; commercial egg nog has substitutes for any or all of these ingredients, and in some cases is just artificially flavored milk).

Even in the U.S., many companies offer a variety of other flavors.  Here are three.

Turner Dairy in Pittsburgh PA, from their website:

  (#2)

Looney Tunes 2% milk is made by Turner Dairy in 14-oz and 1-quart sizes and comes in chocolate, strawberry, banana, orange cream and vanilla shake flavors. Featured cartoon characters on the labels include Bugs Bunny, Tweety, Sylvester and the Tasmanian Devil.

Note that the only contribution of Looney Tunes is as a marketing device.

Danzeisen Dairy in Phoenix AZ, from their website:

  (#3)

A few of Danzeisen Dairy’s products. From left to right: strawberry, root beer, Arizona Orange, and chocolate milk.

Hiland Dairy Products company, from their website:

  (#4)

red velvet (related to Southern Red Velvet Cake, which has cocoa cake layers with red food coloring and a creamy white icing; the milk flavoring is apparently achieved by artificial flavorings and colorings); pumpkin spice (a blend of ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves, or artificial-flavoring equivaents); chocolate mint; snickerdoodle (a cookie flavor with sugar and cinnamon as its main ingredients)

And one of many international flavors, mango milk from Pokka Malaysia, on their website:

  (#4)

This entry was posted on April 16, 2017 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Holidays, Language and food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.