Oahu's last dairy will be closing on February 15, causing all the island's residents to rely on imported milk. After its closing, Hawaii will only have two dairies, while as recently as 1980, Hawaii had two dozen dairies and was totally self-sufficient in milk production. "The decline in Hawaii's dairy sector and livestock industry in general comes amid rising feed, shipping and land costs, urban encroachment, environmental regulations, and stagnant sales."
Posted by Erin Zimmer, January 8, 2008 at 3:00 PM
Inside a Sheetz gas station on U.S. Route 29 in Virginia, next to the predictable Slurpee machine, sat an almighty F'Real shake-maker this weekend. Something like a DIY malt shop from the future, it lets you pick from a mini-freezer of ice cream cups (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry or a limited-edition egg nog) and thickness settings (extra, regular or less thick). After dropping my vanilla into the sleek blue machine and choosing extra-thick, the cup levitated to a shake-making heaven. Some bzzt noises later, and it dropped back down to our mortal world.
Creamy and chalky-white, it wasn't much more sophisticated than McDonald's vanilla soft-serve, but very satisfying with all that buttercream and host of scary chemicals. Cellulose gum, maltodextrin, carrageenan and dextrose. For $2.29, the most satisfying part, of course, was the futuristic, hands-on element. There's absoltuely no countertop, no glass case or no middleman of any kind between you and the shake! You're basically on par with Jimmy, the jolly-looking, old-timey mascot wearing his ice cream parlour lab coat, smiling at you. He must be thinking back to the dinosaur days of churning by hand. Ha!
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Posted by Lia Bulaong, April 17, 2007 at 10:30 AM
From Ask MetaFilter: Why is there no more milk delivery in the US? It used to be common, now it's extremely rare. Why is that? The short(ish) answer: First, larger dairies meant cheaper milk, making it harder for milkmen to make a living, especially since they had to wash and reuse the glass bottles. Second, the advent of both supermarkets and cars meant housewives could buy supplies on their own schedules. Perfectly valid reasons, but man, plastic jugs and cartons are so dull.
(Ronnybrook Dairy's milk is fatty and delicious, but I will cop to buying it at least partly because it comes in glass bottles.)
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 2, 2007 at 5:09 PM
"Ben & Jerry might help you get pregnant, but not in the usual way. A diet rich in ice cream and other high-fat dairy foods may lower the risk of one type of infertility, a study suggests. It sounds too good to be true and probably is, some doctors say. But the findings are bound to get attention because they are from the well-known Nurses Health Study at the Harvard School of Public Health and were published Wednesday in the European journal Human Reproduction."
