Acidophilus

Many years ago Notarius and I observed that once you leave elementary school there are certain words you just don't hear anymore. They seem so important -- essential, even -- when you're ten years old, and then... they just cease to be part of your daily life. The word that got us thinking about this was "irrigation". Seemed to us that when we were kids, we were always hearing about, reading about, writing reports about irrigation. And now we're adults, and we hardly ever think about it. Huh.

So the last few weeks, I've been pondering a similar situation regarding the word (and concept) of acidophilus.
When I was a child, I had a little friend who, for reasons I never understood, had to drink a special kind of milk that said "ACIDOPHILUS" in big letters (in a funky 1970s graphic style) on the side of the carton. She couldn't drink normal milk. I never knew why. I thought it all seemed kind of silly. And yet the word "acidophilus" was everywhere; I was ten years old and it seemed like everyone around me was talking about this complicated, scary sounding kind of milk. And then... it went away. I don't remember thinking about acidophilus milk at all as a teenager, or at all during my twenties. Soon I will be forty, and I can't recall the last time I saw the word "acidophilus" on the side of a carton of milk.
(OK, Miss Edith won't be 40 years old for another few years, but, you know, she's definitely getting on.)

I've decided that acidophilus milk, whatever it is, must have been the "lactose intolerance" of the 1970s. That is to say, it was a trendy medical issue that marketers jumped on. And that as millions of people today go around coyly saying that can't eat this or that because they're lactose intolerant, people in the '70s were probably just as annoying about acidophilus, but I was too young at the time to appreciate how annoying they were, because I was probably just too annoying myself to dwell on anyone else's awfulness.

(Those who are likely to get het up about my making fun of health problems, by the way, should just please go away and read another blog, or maybe just another entry by Miss Edith; you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time, here.)

I want to know: is anyone still thinking about acidophilus milk, whatever it is? Or has it just become a really good Scrabble/Scrabulous word?