The first was from the food section a local borough-bound paper; a convoluted missive calling the certified organic designation a “fancy label,” and stating that 84% of adults surveyed by Harris Interactive don’t believe organic means their product is healthier.

Meanwhile, a below-the-fold article caught my eye yesterday on the front page of The New York Times – Solution or Mess? A Milk Jug for a Green Earth. Here, the Times reported on a new gallon-jug shape for milk being sold at Costco, Sam’s Club, and Wal-Mart. The bonus: It is apparently cheaper to ship, easier to stack, and thus faster in its journey from dairy to store shelf, all of which amounts to a cut in the plastic used for packaging and fossil-fuels burned in delivery.

The problem? For the latter, many folks say they simply don’t like the new package. Consumers claims that the new, tall, tip-and-pour shape has them awkwardly spilling milk each time they pour, and crying over it because, dammit, they want their old milk back! Others seem to just eyeball the new bottle suspiciously, dubious of change, even if it’s a good one. As to the anti-organic milk story, nowhere did the writer of the article lay forth the FDA government standards for deeming a product organic to help the potentially confused reader understand what, exactly, organic certification for dairy products is; nowhere did she  give readers a place to go to find out which local dairies are putting out products that are, at the very least, free of the controversial growth hormone rBGH (like this handy state-by-state table). Nowhere did she try to educate.

But maybe the most disturbing thing of all in both of these stories was that, even at this late date in the weary world’s existence, consumers remain stubbornly in the dark on what is in their food and how it finds its way to them.

Back at Sam’s Club, an employee set up shop in the dairy department, showing shoppers the proper way to pour the new milk container to avoid spilling. She also gave out cookies to sweetly lure brow-furrowed doubters to give it a try. Reading this in the Times, I couldn’t help but remember a quote from an interview with Steve Jobs a decade before: “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” It got me to thinking—maybe, as much as healthier food products produced in a more responsible manner, what we really, desperately need is Green Marketing.  How else will a consumer be convinced to try a new, eco-friendly milk or milk container? If clever campaigns found a way over the last 60 years to convince Middle America that TV dinners are wholesome and  nutritious and fruit roll-ups are good for your kids, then maybe, just maybe, it can do the same to bring them around to earth-friendly produced products and more responsible packaging.

The battle for the planet may well need to be fought on Madison Avenue.

Amy Zavatto will be blogging for Eco Eats for the next eight weeks. Zavatto is a food, wine, and spirits writer in New York City who contributes to Plenty, Edible East End, Edible Brooklyn, Imbibe, New York Magazine, and others. She is currently writing a dining guide to New York restaurants and trying to break her extremely bad and wasteful habit of using paper towels for everything.