Cue concerns about American obesity. Amid a historic glut of dairy products, Dairy Management Inc., the secretive, government-sponsored entity behind the "Got Milk?" campaign of the 1990s, is helping to develop menu items to push cheese anywhere it can stuff it. As in the Quesalupa: a taco served in a cheese-stuffed fried shell whose 2016 arrival was heralded by a Super Bowl ad featuring a cackling George Takei. For DMI's help, dairy farmers pay 15 cents for every 100 pounds of dairy they sell.
From Bloomberg Businessweek:
Read Full Article »DMI argues that its prowess has helped slow Americans' declining desire for dairy, even as milk and cheese consumption has moved in opposite directions. Demand for milk has gone from 35 pounds per person in 1975 to 15 pounds today, the reverse of the trajectory cheese has followed. But championing dairy also means DMI has promoted lots of saturated fat and cholesterol, which has created its share of controversy. “Americans rely on the USDA for dietary guidance,” says Parke Wilde, a food economist at Tufts University who studies the checkoffs. “All these fast-food restaurant-chain partnerships must be pretty embarrassing for the people at the agency working to promote healthy eating.” Still, DMI's benefit to the dairy industry is clear: A cost-benefit analysis done by Texas A&M University economists in 2012 shows that every dollar a dairy producer invested in DMI returned $2.14 for milk, $4.26 for cheese, and $9.63 for butter industrywide.
