Deep-pocketed dairy industry continues war on plant-based milk as FDA hears comments on new draft guidance
Deep-pocketed dairy industry continues war on plant-based milk as FDA hears comments on new draft guidance
The dairy industry is using lobbying and viral marketing in an attempt to restrict the use of words like “milk” to animal products.
You can declare war on it all you want. It’s not going away no matter what it’s called. Seems like a real waste of money to be arguing about it.
42It's modern capitalism 101. Can't beat them on the market? Start filing frivolous lawsuits until your competition collapses under the weight of legal fees even if they win every case.
4But if they can kick down at it, slow it down, and force all the brands to rebrand and rename their products, they might scare some people away from it for good and just make others ignore it due to confusing or unfamiliar naming.
3I'll just make my own damn oat milk! What is it Oats, water, a blender and cheese cloth?
1
Don't know about you, but I'm not going to start buying liquid milked from a cow, and stop buying liquid that was milked from a bunch of almonds, just because cow-milkers won't let almond-milkers say "milk". The non-dairy producers will just get creative and name their stuff something else, like Malk
40Or melk which is milk when pronounced with a couple of us accents
7Oh dang, I kind of want to buy Malk just because it's fun to say. It's like how every time I buy those frozen fake beef tips (Gardein? idk), we pronounce be'f as beff (rhymes with Jeff) and it makes me laugh. Gonna have some beff and malk for dinner. Advertisers have such an easy job with me, stg. Just make something good and call it something stupid and I'm in.
7Milque. Or Milq if there's a "How do you do, fellow kids?" type on the naming committee.
4You're welcome to buy anything you want, but calling everything milk just because it's a white liquid still seems silly to me.
2
The dairy industry receives tens of billions in federal subsidies each year, and then dumps $100 million back on congress to solidify their position and earn even more favorable treatment from Congress. Really nasty system we have.
38The system must be pasteurized…
8Permanently Deleted
2That joke's so old it's in a Benny Hill song.
She said she'd like to bathe in milk, he said, "All right, sweetheart, "
And when he'd finished work one night he loaded up his cart.
He said, "D'you want it pasturize? 'Cause pasturize is best, "
She says, "Ernie, I'll be happy if it comes up to my chest."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_(The_Fastest_Milkman_in_the_West)
1
Dairy industry can fuck right off!
31it obviously doesn't confuse consumers: no one thinks you can milk an almond. It's just another way for a big business interest to try to push an agenda
27looks through this thread
Apparently many seem to think just that
2No way, the dumbass who didn’t read the package (that says non-dairy cheese right on it) is not a reason to let the government prop up a big agribusiness. Should the vegan cheeses not be allowed to put a picture of their product on the package either for when people decide not to read the package?
2
Big dairy's collusion with the US government is a much deeper issue than anyone suspects.
Here's a good read on it, I wish everyone knew about this:
tl;dr The US government is partnering with food manufacturers (and Pizza Hut) to increase the amount of cheese in products in order to prop up the dairy industry.
When it comes down to "can oat milk be called milk?" I think the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
FWIW - I consider myself "lactose ambivalent". I'm not intolerant. :) It just doesn't occur to me to buy dairy most of the time.
I do enjoy Oat Milk, I wish it didn't have as much sugar in it as it does. :( It really doesn't like me though!
26The US FDA is a captured organization. The familiar food pyramid was hogwash designed to support the grains industry and led to the obesity epidemic.
6When I was a kid it was the 4-4-3-2 plan...
4 servings of fruits or vegetables.
4 servings of breads or grains.
3 servings of milk.
2 servings of meat or protein.2
Something I think gets glossed over by most folks is inflation figures effect on food. Things in the inflation index consumer basket, always subsidized. If the government didn't manipulate the price on these items they'd have to pay out more in pensions and social security payments.
Everything that effects inflation figures is subsidized. Corn gets to double dip. It's in so many good products and they make gas with it. Our corn is so subsidized that other countries don't allow it to be imported.
4Try making your own oat milk and put in as little sugar as you want! It's pretty easy.
1
I get it. There's the old Lewis Black rant that you need a tit for "milk" and no one wants to drink something called "soy juice." But I think that letting plant-based alternatives label themselves as "milk" allows them to compete in an arena where they are a tiny fraction of sales.
Plant-based milk often uses much less water than animal milk.
TLDR: Oat milk is fukken awesome and also like the one thing my kid isn't allergic to.
9Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/DxgITv5yaPI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
5Good bot.
1
Hard to milk those little oat teats though.
1
Finally an excuse to use one of my favorite memes!
5Just call it a milk substitute and be done with it.
4Just call em like a see um
2This is a hilarious thread, congrats gang
2Jfc.
2Plant based milk is not a thing.
1I'm a fairly big fan of coconut fluid in particular but it's not milk. it's just not. milk comes from a titty. you can sell milk substitutes. I even prefer them, but it simply is not milk and I'm fine with food needing to be labelled what it is.
-8It's been called coconut milk for 300 years now. No-one is getting confused about it.
13
It only took one time for me ruining a pizza with congealed palm oil deliberately masquerading as "mozzarella cheese" to be 100% on big dairy's side here.
If it's not an animal product, it shouldn't be labeled "milk" or "cheese"
-9The term "milk" is an old chemistry term referring to a "heterogeneous mixture of insoluble compounds". "Colloid" is the modern term. Think "milk of magnesia", which is used as an antacid. It is called a milk because the Mg(OH)2 doesn't dissolve and just forms a suspension. Almond milk is a suspension of ground up almond particles. Cow milk is a suspension of fat particles that won't dissolve. This is why milk is homogenized: because it wants to form a floating fat layer and water layer. That's unappealing so they fake making it look the same throughout. It is not a homogeneous solution. So anything you can mix up in water that doesn't dissolve and it stays suspended is "milk".
17I mean, it's two definitions for the same word. And it looks like mammary secretions is the older version, I think. Additionally, personally that is what I think of when I think of milk. I think of almond milk as an emulsion of almonds that approximates milk and I think most people agree with me.
That said, I am not going to confuse almond milk for milk unless they just straight up call it milk.
Bare minimum research: https://www.etymonline.com/word/milk
6So anything you can mix up in water that doesn’t dissolve and it stays suspended is “milk”.
Not to consumers, which is ultimately the only thing that should matter when making decisions on how food should and should not be labeled.
-1
Read the package next time dummy
8I once had to waste 5 minutes and way too many clicks to find that a hamburger was not meat, no idea what it was actually made of because they won't tell you. I wanted to find out why it was cheap. You can't pretend that they aren't being misleading and trying to hide things and the fact that you are really doesn't help your cause.
1
So you're the reason why we need warning labels on everything.
4Warning labels aren't helpful when they're intentionally misleading. That's kinda the entire point.
0
Can't we just call it creamy nut juice and move on?
As someone who knows a couple of (small time) dairy farmers personally, "Deep-pocketed dairy industry" is a term I didn't' think I'd ever see.
-11It's the people they sell their cow juice to that are deep pocketed.
18We should make them call it Bovine Mammary Secretion.
3
My neighbor up the road shot all his dairy cows 20 years ago. He couldn’t afford to keep them. There basically aren’t any ‘small dairy farms’ left, other than vanity or artisanal operations. But sure we should base policy around myths rather than reality.
6maybe not where you are, but there are still small dairies where i am.
-1
No such thing as “small time dairy” anymore. It’s all big agribusiness even if you think it looks like small time, just like the Tyson chicken people operating every “small time” chicken farm
5maybe not where you are, but there are still small dairies where i am.
0
The dairy industry can contest that too. They just need to start milking bulls...
2The other kind of nut juice.
5They already do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroejaculation
1
They are deep-pocketed, and they may be participating in a war, but certain words have technical definitions that are important to maintain when it comes to substances we ingest. Labeling anything as "milk" that did not come from the mammary glands of a mammal is technically wrong. Labeling anything as "mayonnaise" that isn't produced using poultry eggs is technically wrong. Labeling anything as "cheese" that isn't made from milk (see milk definition earlier) is technically wrong. Regardless of how evil you think these corporations are...they're not wrong in this case.
-21People have been referring to white plant excretions as "milks" for hundreds of years. Coconut milk, milk of magnesia, etc. Hell, almond milk was a popular ingredient in the Middle Ages.
But you'll also notice that language has changed a lot since the Middle Ages. This is a natural process, and no amount of prescriptivism or pedantry will stop it. Calling things that are not dairy — but that we use in all of the exact same ways as dairy milk — "milks" is not a problem.
28Yeah, just the other day I bought some chocolate eggs and when I went to fry them up for breakfast it turned out they were chocolate (wtf) this mis-labeling of things is just too confusing.
26The use of the word "milk" to refer to plant-based milks is older than the country in which this argument is occurring.
17Milk thistle has entered the chat.
Followed by Milk of Magnesia.
5I agree that Kraft slices and whatever the fuck velveeta is should be banned from advertising themselves as cheese.
3I'm on your side here but I also want to make platypus mayonnaise now just out of a sense of spite
0This piqued my curiosity but I couldn't find any video. I'm now wondering if this is even possible and how weird it might look/taste.
1
