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Bacolod City, Philippines Monday, March 5, 2012
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The Good Life
with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit
OPINIONS

Milk

The Good Life
with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

Just when we were not looking, something happened to milk. Yes, that dairy liquid we’ve always had for breakfast has multiplied too widely, it is now difficult to distinguish which is which.

Well, as in most things, people in my generation knew a much simpler time, when the  word milk was so simple you either meant fresh, evaporated or condensed.

These days, the profusion of milk variants is such that they line an entire aisle in supermarkets, you feel like you’re in the middle of the DVD black market with a million and one choices before you.

There is now fresh milk, fresh processed milk – I don’t know the difference there; skim, low-fat, non-fat, 1%fat, milk with slow-release sugar, fortified, calcium-enriched, milk for senior citizens, milk for weight management, milk for those with heart problems.

Then you have flavored variants, the most popular of which are the ones of chocolate, and then lately, those of fruit such as strawberry and even mango and melon. There is one that is vitamin-fortified, vanilla-flavored with, get this, “15 milligrams of Gingko Biloba extract.”

I can imagine what else they’re going to come up with. Recently, I came across coffee that had had a range of variants that seemed too fantastic to be true. One had minerals to give you strength; another had enhancers to de-stress you; another one was supposed to revitalize and energize you. I smiled when I saw that: what did they add to those brews, marijuana?

It used to be as simple as Darigold, Bear Brand, Alpine and Carnation and perhaps two or three others. Darigold, which brought us those black and white movies at the public plaza, has already disappeared from the Philippine market, I don’t know if it is still available elsewhere.

But Darigold’s absence has been more than made up by Nido, Anchor, Anlene, Dutch Mill, Angel, Daisy, Alaska, Moo, Selecta. There are even foreign brands like Country Goodness from New Zealand, or Farmhouse from Australia that have gotten into the local supermarket shelves.

If the number of brands is dizzying, go see their packaging and sizes – the traditional tubular tin cans, cartons, tetra paks and plastics, from huge ones that vary from a kilo to five, to tiny ones that weigh 90 milliliters, no doubt made for the Pinoy market that buys tingi-tingi, small by small, because consumers here live from payday to payday.

The extra-small packaging is a modern day phenomenon, but it is very pervasive now, from bath needs to processed meat, milk and other foods: coffee per cup, margarine and butter by the stick, why, even corned beef by the spoonful. I held a 90 ml pack of milk and it looked as small as my cellphone and even lighter.

Of course to the Western consumer, tingi-tingi is so inefficient; imagine the packaging costs, not to mention the transportation and the time that we waste buying things in small packs for several times; it would have been cheaper if we bought them in bulk at once, we pay for transportation and packaging only once but then most of us just don’t have the money for that. Ironic.

Aside from economic, the explosion of milk variants can also be traced to the current trend where everything, from bags to shoes to food, is designed to suit our individual needs and preferences. Thus, there is milk for almost every lifestyle and condition. The tragedy here is that even with this rich range of milk choices we have, we still wouldn’t choose the right one because we do not know that most important thing in this equation: ourselves.*

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