This is the best info on the survey
theconversation.com/take-that-chocolate-milk-survey-with-a-grain-of-salt-80178
npr.org/2017/06/16/533255590/alarming-number-of-americans-believe-chocolate-milk-comes-from-brown-cows
CORNISH: Jean Ragalie-Carr is president of the National Dairy Council, which commissioned the survey. She says they put that question to a thousand people and gave them several options for how to answer.
RAGALIE-CARR: Well, there was brown cows or black-and-white cows, or they didn't know.
Indeed, early media coverage focused on the 7 percent statistic but left out the fact that 48 percent of respondents said they don’t know where chocolate milk comes from. This gives context to the 7 percent number. While it’s conceivable that 7 percent of the population doesn’t know that chocolate milk is just milk with chocolate, the idea that a full 55 percent — over half of adults — don’t know or gave an incorrect response begins to strain credulity. This points toward a confusing survey question.
We reached out to Lisa McComb, the senior vice president of communications for Dairy Management, Inc., about the survey. She confirmed that it’s not publicly available. “The purpose of the survey was to gauge some interesting and fun facts about consumers’ perceptions of dairy, not a scientific or academic study intended to be published,” she told us.
The rapid spread of this story is likely related to the desire, unfortunately prominent among many liberals, to see and label other people as ignorant.
Studies suggest we are more likely to accept new information when it confirms what we already want to believe. In this case, the chocolate milk statistic fits well with the notion that Americans are fools, so it’s accepted and republished widely despite the numerous red flags that should give scientifically minded people pause.
So this survey did point out a lack of science understanding. Ironically, rather than showing Americans’ ignorance of chocolate milk’s origins, the fact that media coverage of this survey was reported so widely and with so few caveats instead showed that many people are not skeptical of the science they read.