Why Is the Internet in Love With This Milk Brand?

This nutrient-rich milk seems to be making real dairy cool again.

After several years of the reign of milk alternatives — with my favorite coffee shops offering everything from oat to pistachio or macadamia milk — it seems like regular old dairy milk might be making a comeback, and it’s partially thanks to one brand.

While scrolling through my daily feed of food videos on Instagram or TikTok, it’s almost a given I’ll see someone use a bottle of Fairlife milk. The brand’s unique bottle, with bright red or blue coloring, a slight hourglass shape, and boldly displayed nutrition facts, is easy to recognize.

Fairlife has a few major selling points that have prompted its rise in popularity. Those large numbers on the front of the packaging proudly proclaim that it has 50% less sugar and 50% more protein than “regular milk,” and it’s lactose-free. These statistics hold true for all of the brand’s milk offerings, including the fat-free, whole, 2% reduced-fat, and chocolate varieties. The products also have a higher calcium content than its competitors; one cup of Fairlife’s 2% milk has 380 milligrams of calcium, while many other 2% fat milk brands have about 295 milligrams of calcium per cup.

Related: Here’s the Actual Difference Between Whole, Low-fat, and Nonfat Milk

Some fans even say that Fairlife tastes better than other milks, with a richer, creamier flavor. But how can all of those things be true when this is still regular milk that comes from cows? And does this mean anything is added to the liquid, like protein powder or supplements?

The secret lies in a proprietary “ultra-filtration” method that Fairlife uses to process its milk — and you’ll notice this language included on the front of its bottles. The company’s website doesn’t provide much detail on what this practice actually looks like, instead simply saying “we flow our milk through special soft filters to concentrate the protein and calcium and filter out most of the sugar.”

Essentially, the components of milk can be divided into water, minerals, lactose, protein, and fats. So by developing a patented process to separate these out, Fairlife can combine them at the ratios it wants. As health and food specialists from South Dakota State University Extension describe it, using ultrafiltration technology makes it “possible to produce designer milk, milk products, and dairy ingredients containing high protein and lower lactose content.”

Related: Why Is Social Media Telling Us It’s OK to Drink Raw Milk?

Fairlife isn’t adding anything to the milk. Instead, it's removing the things it doesn’t want. This includes removing water, which allows the product to have higher concentrations of protein and calcium within the liquid. Lower water content is likely responsible for the remarkably milky flavor of Fairlife; with less dilution, it’s easier to detect all of the components that make milk taste like milk.

And while the nutritional claims of Fairlife hold up, the brand has had a rocky experience in the public eye since it first launched in 2012. The company was created and is still owned by Coca-Cola, and both came under hot water in 2014 for a tasteless and sexist advertising campaign for Fairlife that featured cliche depictions of women in pin-up style outfits.

More recently, Coca-Cola paid a $21 million settlement in 2022 for lawsuits about its false advertising that the milk came from humanely raised cows. (The suits were filed following video evidence in 2019 that documented animal abuse at a farm that provided Fairlife milk. It is worth noting that Fairlife no longer sources milk from this farm.)

Related: The 5 Best Nut Milk Makers, According to Our Tests

These issues have done little to stop the milk’s rise in popularity, and its protein drinks have certainly seen a boost in sales from the protein diet coke trend on TikTok, which sees users mixing vanilla protein drinks with the soda.

Should you try Fairlife yourself? I bought my first bottle of the 2% milk earlier this week and can confirm it's delicious (my colleagues tell me that the company’s chocolate milk is particularly good, too, although I haven’t yet tried it myself). If you need more protein in your diet or can’t have lactose, Fairlife is helpful to have on hand for things like a bowl of cereal or a cup of coffee. But as with all consumer products — especially those owned by major corporations — it’s best to remain conscious of who makes it and how they're producing it.

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