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Browsing Costco yesterday when suddenly
(lemmy.nz)
Of course they are, Bart. There's no calcium in coconut milk (er, Malk)!
I thought this might be the result of FDA direction limiting "milk" to ruminants, but it looks like the latest guidance (2023) is plant-based milk can still be called "milk" as long as it mentions it nutritional differences from dairy milk.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-provides-draft-labeling-recommendations-plant-based-milk-alternatives-inform-consumers
I'm sorry I'm like this, guys.
Seems you're more progressive than EU over there in the US of the A****
All this tells me is that plant-based milk has a lobby that can match the dairy lobby.
Soy? Yes, there is quite a fucking lot of soy farming and money in it
How is that progressive? If you want to let companies label their products as plant based 'milk' or 'meat' when they aren't milk or meat then what happens if they start labeling things as 'plant-based' or 'vegan' when they contain animal products?
The nutrition part of that is a separate issue. FDA recommends that a product calling itself oat milk and having a materially different nutrient profile from dairy milk voluntarily identify relevant nutritional differences
But they still have to say OAT MILK or SOY MILK. They are just allowed to use the term MILK itself after. Otherwise it would be "OAT MILK-LIKE PRODUCT" or something similarly stupid.
This is just saying they can call SOY MILK that, not that they can pass it off as MILK with ingredients: Soy...
Sorry, European here, so no clue about the fda recommendations. But in the EU they can't call it soy milk, oat milk.. they call it soy drink, oat drink.. and so on, which is, in my opinion, a bit more accurate since it didn't come out of the mammary glands of any animal. Being basically water and sugar, it would be like calling a coke cola milk.
The thing is, the definition of "milk" was never that narrow in the first place. Coconut milk is still being sold as "coconut milk". The white stuff that comes out of dandelions and rubber trees, I've always heard referred to as "milk". In Germany, we also have "Scheuermilch", which is a scouring agent that just happens to look white and viscous.
And ultimately, normal people do still call it "soy/oat/etc. milk", because I really don't think anyone's getting confused about that. Its function is like milk, not like cola. So, IMHO it should be enough to specify "goat milk" or "soy milk" or whatever.
Here in sweden we call fish semen "mjölke", which is one letter off from our word for milk. So it's pretty obvious that "milk" literally just means "white cloudy liquid"
I guess we need to rename peanut butter
You joke but I'm sure if it was invented or brought to Europe now, they wouldn't be permitted to call it butter, most likely. I would vote peanut paste, alliteration is always cool. Also in my country it's more often labeled as 'peanut cream' ('crema', meaning an emulsion with the consistency/texture of cream, not literal milk cream, that would be 'nata').
But it's quite different, companies wanting to label these drinks as milk are doing so with the intent of confuse people into thinking they have similar nutritional qualities to milk, which is deceitful.
Neither agree nor disagree, but some people would freak out if they saw Horchata as "tiger nut milk".
Exactly! When a (vegan) person I met discovered horchata ('de chufa', there are other drinks called 'horchata') they commented on using it as their new plant-based milk and I said 'not so fast! This is basically sugar!' but then I read the nutritional info on their oat (I think) 'milk' and was like 'never mind.. this is the same'.
On a side note I didn't know tiger nut is English for 'chufa' which is the (nick) name of my dog. I'm gonna start calling her Tiger nut, it sure suits her!
I mean, you can get oat milk without sugar, but it just doesn't taste like milk, because cow milk contains a lot of sugar as well...