RE: "serum of milk" & modern marketing !
For better or worse the last 2 days have been so crowded with exigencies of modern life I didn't make much progress with attempts to revisit the past (much less improve on it), but I did get to the health food store, and found there a lesson in modern marketing that begs to be shared. When I asked about whey, the fellow in charge led me to an entire shelf, two shelves in fact, of large round cannisters labelled "whey." The largest cannisters were twenty some odd dollars apiece (discounted), half that size was about $16. I said this was much more than I needed, whereupon he remembered some envelopes also labeled "whey," containing only a few ounces for about $4. But this might not be enough. I looked for the instructions, but landed first in the ingredients list.... This was long, I mean looong, and full of chemical terms I knew not, as well as flavorings (chocolate and vanilla being paramount), sugar, gums & so on -- I remember tragacanth, also lecithin, and others I couldn't pronounce, much less remember. Most memorable however was a warning: "Contents include milk products." This I figured later was a warning for kosher kitchens (which parse rules so finely that if you accidentally ingest a worker ant on a Saturday you're breaking the Sabbath -- or something along those lines), also to folks with lactose intolerance. Which sent me back to the large cannisters, where I struggled to read the even longer contents list, again hampered by bad light, bad eyeglasses, and teeny tiny type. The list of ingredients was similar to the small packets, but longer, all contained flavoring and sugar, and a more equivocal warning: "may contain milk products." While I was thus engaged, another customer, noticing my study, apparently took me for a serious expert, and asked how I use the preparation. I explained that I was simply attempting to replicate a 100 year-old process, and didn't think this was going to do it. She then bought a large can of, if memory serves, vanilla, which she'd evidentaly used before. Of course, "tragacanth" is a familar "gum" and lecithin a familiar name from ingredient lists... but few of the others seemed familiar, and the stuff didn't seem very appetizing as either a "health food drink" OR sugar of milk. But I took it for a timely lesson in "health food" marketing, anyway. J.
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