Milk, Marketing, and Manufactured Ignorance

Look familiar? Back in 2021, this MilkPEP campaign was seen everywhere – from TikTok, and Instagram to the nearest billboards. With little to no context, a picture of an athlete glistening in sweat was situated next to a headline printed in bold, reading “Milk hydrates better than water.” The campaign did its job, quickly stirring up quite a discussion. Could something as rich and heavy as milk quench thirst more effectively than water? 

The advertisement, it turns out, was a masterclass in marketing. A closer look into gonnaneedmilk.com (Beg, 2024), a website owned by MilkPEP, reveals that the advertisement is not stating that milk is always a superior choice compared to water, but rather that milk is more beneficial when it comes to hydrating after workouts. This explains the picture of the person on the bike plastered on the billboard. To support its claim, MilkPEP cited scientific research from several hydration studies. However, the headline’s broad claim is what sticks. So, MilkPEP’s statement is not entirely false, but its simplicity hides the complex, narrow science behind it. While MilkPEP’s argument rests on real physiology, its authority comes less from science than from how marketing translates low-certainty, lab-bound findings into a sweeping public “truth.” This process is called agnotology, the manufacture of ignorance. 

To understand the billboard, meet the messenger: MilkPEP (“About Us”, 2025). The Milk Processor Education Program is an organization governed by the USDA and funded by U.S. fluid milk companies. It was borne by a 1990 Act of Congress to increase dairy milk intake. They are the same organization that was behind the “Got Milk?” campaign of the 1990s and early 2000s. MilkPEP’s goal is to educate consumers, drive dairy milk consumption up through marketing, and support research that benefits milk processors and the milk industry in general. Since MilkPEP exists to support the sale of dairy milk, they inherently have economic and institutional bias towards portraying milk as the best fluid choice. As milk consumption has been declining significantly for decades, nearly 50% since 1975, according to the USDA (Stewart & Kuchler, 2022), the advertisers aimed to revive interest by rebranding milk – a nutritional staple – into a performance drink. Therefore, the preliminary belief may be that the campaign around Milk hydration serves more as marketing propaganda rather than informing with objective science, necessitating further examination. 

Their bias can be seen through their choice of language, such as “better”, and in their research selection of choosing only studies that favor milk. MilkPEP cites papers from journals such as the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, British Journal of Nutrition, and Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, but fails to mention the specific conditions that created the information, making for their broad claim. So while the advertisement namedrops respected journals, its perspective is unmistakably commercial with an evident agenda to promote milk, not to produce a mindful, balanced report of those papers. It is a case of marketing dressed in a lab coat. 

Yet, labeling MilkPEP as biased is only half the story. Instead of basing judgement entirely on MilkPEP’s agenda, examination of the credibility of the claim's sources is also necessary. What do these studies show, and how have independent reviewers interpreted them? Between 1998 and 2016, a series of small lab studies cited by MilkPEP on their website (Martin et al., 2007; Klesges et al., 1996; Maughan et al., 2016; Volterman et al., 2014; Seery & Jakeman, 2016; Shirreffs et al., 2007; Watson et al., 2008) tested milk, water, and sports drinks under controlled exercise conditions. In each of these experiments, the setup was almost identical: participants were deliberately dehydrated before and during intense exercise, then rehydrated afterwards. Researchers then measured how much urine each group produced over the following hours, assuming that the less the volunteers excreted, the more hydration they retained. 

Milk’s hydration benefits stem from its composition. The studies on the MilkPEP website show that unlike plain water, milk contains moderate energy density combined with high nutrient density and natural electrolytes such as potassium, magnesium, calcium, and sodium – all of which were deduced indirectly to have helped retain liquid, and slow urination production. Across trials, milk consistently ranked highest, or near the top for high-fluid retention. Together, these papers tell a limited but consistent story: small controlled studies show that milk temporarily improves fluid balance under extreme conditions. However, a question remains: If these results are legitimate in the lab, will they translate to real-world application? This uncertainty prompted independent scrutiny. Harvard Health Publishing was one of the first to fact-check MilkPEP’s headline that milk hydrates better than water post-exercise. According to Shmerling (2022), the commercial uses small and dated studies. Considering the commercial was released in 2021, more than half of the data used is relatively old, having been published from 5 to even over 20 years prior. Shmerling (2022) points out that the studies had small sample sizes (n = 7 to 72), and that using urine to measure hydration is not a reliable methodology. He also notes that the conditions of the papers were unrealistic as the participants endured athlete-like conditions (exercising in warm environments), and did not exercise like ordinary gym-goers. However, Shmerling (2022)’s assessment is not without shortcomings. For example, he stopped at making critiques based on the involved studies, but did not include his own peer-reviewed papers to refute the claim. The author’s comments on the advertisement raised valid concerns about study designs, but it also relied on the same limited dataset, leaving open the question of whether newer research supports or contradicts these findings. 

Still, Shmerling’s comment on methodology invites a fair question: were those hydration metrics truly unreliable, or is it simply the author’s opinion? To that, the paper by Samuel et al., 2016 in correlation with the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine would offer a nuanced answer. Although this paper addresses population-level hydration, it establishes a key principle: urine-based hydration assessment is reliable only when concentration (about 850 mmol/kg) and urine excretion rate (<850 mL/24 h) are measured together. They showed that urine concentration, along with volume, fluctuates in response to hormones, diet, and recent drinking, and that spot samples or short windows can be misleading when used alone. Samuel et al., 2016 defines hydration using a 24-hour urine framework, whereas the milk studies measured urine for only 2–4 hours, reflecting short-term fluid retention rather than hydration. This nuance exposes a misalignment between the U.S. The Army's paper and the advertisement’s cited studies. On one hand, the author confirms that urine is a real physiological signal (that must be interpreted in an appropriate timeframe), which contradicts the Harvard article’s opinion that urine is not a reliable hydration evaluation metric. However, because the milk studies used only a brief 2–4 hour window, their results represent retention, not hydration. So, the advertisement’s cited studies are measuring a fundamentally different physiological process. The Army signal requires a 24-hour window and dual concentration/volume thresholds to indicate health status; the milk signal relies only on short-term cumulative output to indicate product efficacy. This creates an important inversion: in Samuel et al. (2016)’s framework, low urine output paired with high concentration signals dehydration over a 24-hour period, whereas in the milk studies, reduced urination in a 2–4 hour window is interpreted as superior fluid retention. Methodology limits are only a part of an even bigger story. The deeper issue lies not in how the experiments were conducted, but in who funded them. All three of the more recent studies (Maughan et al., 2016; Volterman et al., 2014; Seery & Jakeman, 2016) were published by the same institution, and were all supported by a grant from the Milk Development Council, raising questions about independence of the research outcomes. Content-wise, all focused specifically on the topic of milk’s hydration after a person’s workout. This apparent coincidence brings about speculation on source diversity, and potential bias. While these seven studies are peer-reviewed and published in respectable journals, they still can only provide a limited, narrow evidentiary base. 

By considering the concerns mentioned above, we can be mindful of the criticisms of the studies rather than completely dismissing them. Newer, independent evidence was difficult to locate because most hydration studies on milk share the same sponsorship and design. To demonstrate are three papers on the milk-hydration subject by Roy (2022), James et al. (2018), and Berry et al. (2020). While they all used different methodologies, they agreed that milk hydrates better than water. Coincidentally, they all either listed conflicts of interests, or were explicitly funded by major milk corporations. 

To see whether the notion that most milk-hydration studies are funded by “big milk” still holds under modern, independent reviews, consider a 2025 systematic review published in the Journal of Athletic Training by Brier et al. (2025). The paper screened over 3000 pieces of relevant literature and chose 11 to dissect. The review found that while skim or low-fat milk does lead to improved hydration status compared to water, evidence lacks certainty due to impracticality (contextual limitations), inconsistency across experimental setups, and fragile evidence base (mostly descriptive and not statistically conclusive). The insights made by this research align with previous observations. In the end, even a meticulous synthesis could only offer cautious support, not confirmation of MilkPEP’s argument – unlike the claim’s deliberate language and the seemingly valid information backing it. 

Overall, a pattern of agnotology, or overstating knowledge and generating ignorance, is observed. Sometimes, industries do not even need to fake evidence. Instead, they can just cherry-pick similar messages to create a facade of consensus. In the milk-hydration matter, many findings cluster around the same sponsorships and methodology. The issue is worse considering that as of now, there is not enough interest in the matter for independent research without bias or influence to be conducted. 

What began as scientific ambiguity ended as commercial certainty. From the title alone, MilkPEP has created an unspoken hierarchy between drinks, using the phrase “better than” to characterize milk as superior. Even though they did contextualize this claim on their website, clarifying that milk is more desirable for hydration post-exercise, they opted to disregard the “after workouts” or “in controlled studies” portion of their reasoning when marketing their headline. This has led to overgeneralization in the absence of qualifiers. 

MilkPEP’s claim that milk hydrates better than water is persuasive because it leverages half-truths. Milk’s physiological attributes that made it perfect for post-exercise recovery in lab settings were stripped of their context and turned into tools for marketing manipulation. The advertisement’s brilliance lies in the way it weaponizes science to pass over significant faults. In conclusion, although MilkPEP’s claims that “milk hydrates better than water” have foundations in real, industry-funded physiological studies, the organization utilizes agnotology to purposefully distort the findings through selective framing. By overstating the limited lab results and omitting crucial contextual conditions, the campaign turns the partial truth into marketing certainty. In relying on simplified language and emotional appeal, it succeeded at its position in generating discussion and brand visibility, but did so by undermining the integrity of the scientific process. The milk-hydration campaign ultimately shows how science can be weaponized for persuasion, turning what could have been an educational effort – as MilkPEP claims to be – into an advertisement. 

Edited by Eleanor Oden '28

References 

About Us. (2025, April 22). MilkPEP. https://milkpep.org/about-us/ 

Beg, S. (2024, November 16). MILK HYDRATES BETTER THAN WATER. GONNA NEED MILK. https://gonnaneedmilk.com/Hydration/ 

Martin B., Davis S., Campbell W.,Weaver C. (2007). Exercise and calcium supplementation: effects on calcium homeostasis in sportswomen. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 39(9), 1481–1486. https://doi.org/10.1249/mss.0b013e318074ccc7 

Craig W Berry, S Tony Wolf, Bob Murray, W Larry Kenney. (2020). Hydration Efficacy of a Milk Permeate-Based Oral Hydration Solution. Nutrients, 12(5), 1502. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12051502 

Hayden Stewart, F. K. (2022). Fluid Milk Consumption Continues Downward Trend, Proving Difficult to Reverse. USDA Economic Research Service. 

https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2022/june/fluid-milk-consumption-contin ues-downward-trend-proving-difficult-to-reverse

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https://doi.org/10.1139/apnm-2014-0047 

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Niels De Brier, Vere Borra, David C Berry, David Zideman, Eunice Singletary, Emmy De Buck, International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation First Aid Task Force. (2025). Oral Rehydration Beverages for Treating Exercise-Associated Dehydration: A Systematic Review, Part II. The Effectiveness of Alternatives to Carbohydrate-Electrolyte Drinks. J Athl Train , 60(1), 55–69. 

https://doi.org/10.4085/1062-6050-0686.22 

Phillip Watson, Thomas D Love, Ronald J Maughan, Susan M Shirreffs. (2008). A comparison of the effects of milk and a carbohydrate-electrolyte drink on the restoration of fluid balance and exercise capacity in a hot, humid environment. Eur J Appl Physiol., 104(4), 633–642. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-008-0809-4 

Robert C Klesges, Kenneth D Ward, Mary L Shelton, William B Applegate, Edwin D Cantler, Genaro M A Palmieri, Karen Harmon, James Davis. (1996). Changes in bone mineral content in male athletes. Mechanisms of action and intervention effects. JAMA, 276(3), 226–230. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8667568/ 

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Shmerling, R. H. (2022, November 14). When replenishing fluids, does milk beat water? Harvard Health Publishing. 

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carbohydrate-electrolyte solution or water in healthy young men. Br J Nutr ., 116(6), 1013–1021. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114516002907 

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