Big Dairy still sour over plant-based “milk” labels, tries to outlaw them

The FDA previously found that no one is confused about where almond milk comes from.

See full article...

 

[AlicePlaysWithRockets]

Came for the Beth Mole puns and was not dissatisfied!

 

[Mardaneus]

Mozzarella? Not milk?


Huh...

There are two versions one is made with 'real' milk from dairy cows and one from what ever buffalo lactate.

 

[Transatracurium]

Nobody tell them about milk of magnesia.

Or, indeed, Milk of Amnesia…

 

[Beleg]

Breast milk will be the next target. Sorry, homo sapiens, you'll have to call it 'natural human breast product' or 'juice of nipple'.

 

[draekris]

DAIRY PRIDE

I've confirmed my fears - this is in fact a (b)acronym and it stands for "Defending Against Imitations and Replacements of Yogurt, milk, and cheese to Promote Regular Intake of Dairy Everyday" Act.

My god.

 

[Ivanp91v]

[removed]

 

[AxiomEater]

Still going with the "confusion" angle, huh? Idiotic. The reality is people seek out milk alternatives specifically because they DON'T want or CAN'T drink cow's milk. Soy, almond, oat, and coconut-based beverages approximate cow's milk and therefore have become popular substitutes. Do they think they're going to regain those consumers simply because they remove the word milk from the containers?

What a colossal waste of money and everyone's time.

 

[Unremarkable]

Yeah, that's the craziest part of this whole thing to me: people buy these because they aren't milk.

On purpose. No one's confused. Everybody knows damn well that "milk" by itself usually means cow milk specifically, and the modifiers aren't weird hiding like "canola" which is rapeseed oil, but also has the word rape in it. Almond's made of almond, soy out of soy, oat out of oat.

They are saying their customers are really stupid, trying to make this into law.

If the plant-based milk industry really wanted to, they could produce some brutal attack ads.

[Split screen picture: a cow on the left, an almond on the right]
"One of these is an animal. One of these is a plant. The dairy industry thinks you're so fucking stupid you can't tell they're two different things."

 

[Arkannis]

You think that's gross, wait 'til you find out about the process that turns grass and grain into cow milk.


It is literally illegal for a school lunch to not come with milk. You have to have a doctor certify you can't drink milk to get anything else.

In the 80’s even that didn’t fly. I just gave my milk to whoever wanted it, since it would kill me if I drank it. My mom always sent me to school with some kind of juice instead.

 

[zore]

Spoiler: It doesn't work. In Europe it is banned to label them as milk, they are labeled as "almond drink" or "soy drink" but they are still exposed in the milk section, people still calls them milk and they still use them as milk replacement.

If they wanted to reduce the competition* from plant based milk, it failed spectacularly.

*Because everyone knows that "not getting confused" was always an excuse.

 

[zore]

How about sugar? Last I checked, a carton of cow's milk with no additives had more than double the sugar of a vanilla-flavored (so extra sweetened) soy milk.

Are you going to argue that sugar is good for you?

Ahem. That sugar you saw is lactose. Lactose is a type of sugar. Fresh fruit has a lot of fructose, wich is also a type of sugar. Are you going to argue that fruit is bad for your health?

Not every sugar is the same. The ones you should worry about are the simpler ones, like glucose or sacarose, which are the ones the industry abuses because they are the cheapest.

EDIT: And as said above sugar isn't bad for you. Too much sugar is. In fact sugar is absolutely necessary for you, your brain needs it to work. But if you take too much, then it causes problems elsewhere. Ask a diabetic person what happens if their blood sugar level goes too low.

 

[Toastr]

I’d argue that sugar is better for you than the ultra-processed flavoring and chemical sweeteners in that soy milk.

The "chemical sweeteners" in soy milk are generally...sugar. The most popular soy milk in the US uses cane sugar, which comes with the lovely side benefit of not causing nausea, bloating, flatulence, and diarrhea in ~65% of the global population. But hey, if you don't like that either then you can get unsweetened and unflavored soy milk at basically every grocery store in the United States.

 

[brightsafflicted]

You're in rare form for this article, Beth! Thanks for the groans.

Personally I vote for "almond squeezings". No chance for consumer confusion there.

 

[alansh42]

But the chemical additives in soy milk to emulsify it and make it vanilla-flavored (no actual vanilla required!) are, I would argue, more concerning than the naturally occurring sugar in cow’s milk. But drinking even that vanilla-flavored soy milk is probably healthier for you than a soda..

Milk is an emulsion of butterfat in liquid. What makes you think it doesn't contain emulsifiers? Milk contains phospholipids which act as an emulsifier. The typical emulsifier in almond milk is soy lecithin... a phospholipid.

 

[BenjyD2]

How about the FDA rules that dairy milk is now labelled only as "lacteal secretion of cows.". Problem solved.

 

[Cognac]

Milk is a verb. Calling fresh-squozen fruit juice "milk of fruit" makes perfect sense.

*Immediately adds 'squozen' to regular usage vocabulary.

 

[Cloudgazer]

The EU already went down this dumb as cheese path.

Even more stupid, lactose free milk has to be sold as 'lactose free milk drink' because since it contains 100mg or so of lactase it can't just be sold as milk. Sigh.

 

[KChat]

A baby almost died because his stupid mom gave her Almond Milk. I'd say it should be called almond juice. I cannot paste the article link but a quick Google search will get you to the original article.

Yeah, well babies shouldn’t drink cow’s milk either. They need to consume breast milk or formula. So what’s your fucking point?

 

[zore]

The "chemical sweeteners" in soy milk are generally...sugar. The most popular soy milk in the US uses cane sugar, which comes with the lovely side benefit of not causing nausea, bloating, flatulence, and diarrhea in ~65% of the global population. But hey, if you don't like that either then you can get unsweetened and unflavored soy milk at basically every grocery store in the United States.

Ahem. That 65% of the global population is highly skewed because in south Asia 90% of people is lactose intolerant (that's why in south Asia you don't find cheese, butter or cream). In USA is between 10% and 15% and in Europe is about 16%.

And if you are lactose intolerant you know and you just don't take dairy products. No one is aiming a gun at you to force you to drink milk.

 

[close]

I don't think anyone associates dairy products with being healthy to begin with (other than maybe yogurt)?

So many do, not even in the sense that "it's fine" but rather in the sense that "it builds up your bones".

This being said if the dairy industry really just wanted to avoid confusion they could have lobbied for 1 of 2 labels to be applied to any "milk-type" product: "Plant base" or "Animal based". This would go on the package just like the "vegan" icon goes, maybe right next to the name. Instead they want to change a name which has been used for decades or centuries. It gives away their real agenda, if someone still wasn't clear on it.

The rest of the issues should be solved by other agencies, like false advertisement. I did buy once a carton of plan based milk, not sure which type. But it was called just "Milk" (eventually found a reference to plant based in the fine print of the tiny label). Nothing about that situation was nice but that's an issue with that producer, not with plant-based milk naming.

 

[Chuckstar]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJCTIPWPNtw

Great line: “Back in the old days, we used to train gerbils to milk nuts…”

 

[StuiWooi]

Doesn't the "standard of identity" insist that it's from a cow, ie. goat milk (for example) shouldn't be allowed to be called milk. What about "milk of magnesia", an antiquated term perhaps, but that only serves as stronger evidence the dairy industry doesn't have an udder to stand on.

Even if the Dairy people got their way, you'd just get products labeled something like:

ALMOND MILK
_{style beverage}

Wouldn't pass muster here in the UK (which I presume to be retained EU rules), can't say "milk" at all, lest you mislead consumers; it would be "almond drink" legally. That being said branding can be as subversive as M*LK.

Eventually, based on the fact everyone calls it almond milk (though here, I feel, oat is the market leader by a wide margin), I suspect they'll allow it as a customary name (as we use cornflour to mean starch extracted from maize, rather than simply ground kernels).

 

[sjl]

Hey whatever a dairy industry lobbyist wants to do with a consenting cow in the privacy of their own home is fine with me.

Devin Nunes wants a word.

And if the dairy industry keeps this up, we’ll have to switch to the emergency supplies: dog’s milk. Nothing wrong with dog’s milk. Full of goodness, full of vitamins, full of marrowbone jelly. Lasts longer than any other milk, dog's milk: no bugger'll drink it. Plus of course the advantage of dog's milk is that when it goes off, it tastes exactly the same as when it's fresh.

(Thank you, Holly.)

 

[Bzored]

These morons need to go find something useful to do with themselves and stop milking FDAs time.

 

[Molehill]

The dairy industry should win, but only if as part of this extraordinarily high bar of honesty in labeling, their product must be prominently labeled MILK: LACTEAL SECRETIONS OF COWS

 

[mhalpern]

Read first line. Went back up to see who the author was. Nodded to myself.

And yeah, the dairy industry needs to get over itself. They're NOT losing market share to non-dairy "milk" products because people are getting duped into thinking they're actually made of animal milk. I can't believe they're honestly this fixated on such a non-issue.

Milk of Magnesia, better watch your step!

same, I was like "this is Beth Mole isn't it? Yup"

 

[mhalpern]

What if it's moose milk?

.... A moose bit my sister

 

[Styno]

The dairy industry is having a beef with the almond industry. What's next, are they going to call the peanut butter name nuts?

 

[Styno]

Milk, beverages that are the "lacteal secretion of cows."

/me hears snorting noises from goats, sheep and camels among others

 

[AngryEssay]

Almond milk doesn't need a PhD thesis so you know it's made of.. erm... almonds!
Ah, just lobbyist problems...

 

[enilc]

If the plant-based milk industry really wanted to, they could produce some brutal attack ads.

[Split screen picture: a cow on the left, an almond on the right]
"One of these is an animal. One of these is a plant. The dairy industry thinks you're so fucking stupid you can't tell they're two different things."

TBF, that's basically what the FDA said. Most Americans don't know the difference.

 

[GMBigKev]

I have actually accidentally purchased "fat free half and half" which is certainly not half milk and half cream.

Wait. How can that be a thing?!?!

I've confirmed my fears - this is in fact a (b)acronym and it stands for "Defending Against Imitations and Replacements of Yogurt, milk, and cheese to Promote Regular Intake of Dairy Everyday" Act.

I haven't read the act but I'm going to go back and see what I'm sure it is - there's probably gonna be some incentives or subsidies to the dairy industry ain't there?

 

[GMBigKev]

I'm surprised, no handouts to the dairy industry. But the entire first like... 7 pages is all dairy industry bullshit.

 

[eaving]

Almond milk has been called "milk" for at least a couple hundred years, as you can find the term in recipes and dictionaries from the 1700s!

Back to the medieval ages at least. A cookbook by Le Viandier de Taillevent dates back to around 1300 as the earliest I'm aware of.

 

[Adapheon]

Listen maybe for you it's just a want and yes that's childish, but I need it, and when you need something, that's a responsibility.

Unless you're a baby cow, no, you don't need it.

 

[dmitch33]

We all need more highly-processed foods in our diets. Thoses idiots who claim that they aren't safe are just too conservative for me.

 

[GMBigKev]

Unless you're a baby cow, no, you don't need it.

The only "need" I have from milk (regardless whether from udder or plant) is that it makes my cereal less crunchy.

Also makes good cheese.

 

[StikyPad]

Almond milk has been called "milk" for at least a couple hundred years, as you can find the term in recipes and dictionaries from the 1700s!

What about milk of the poppy!

But regardless, I'm actually in favor of not-milk being clearly labeled as such. Just put "milk substitute" or "non-dairy" or words to that effect. I mean does strawberry milk come from strawberries?!

Just because our words are ambiguous doesn't mean our labeling needs to be.