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Soon, your soy milk may not be called 'milk'
Soy and almond drinks that bill themselves as "milk" may need to consider alternative language after a top regulator suggested the agency may start cracking down on use of the term.
The Food and Drug Administration signaled plans to start enforcing a federal standard that defines "milk" as coming from the "milking of one or more healthy cows." That would be a change for the agency, which has not aggressively gone after the proliferation of plant-based drinks labeled as "milk."
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb talked about the plans this week, noting there are hundreds of federal "standards of identity" spelling out how foods with various names need to be manufactured.
"The question becomes, have we been enforcing our own standard of identity," Gottlieb said about "milk" at the Politico event Tuesday. "The answer is probably not."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Saturday July 21 2018, @01:56PM (18 children)
So the dairy industry is feeling the pinch?
Should we have laws that say all non-dairy cow 'milk' have to be coloured pink or black?
What about the poor goat? Do goats no longer provide milk to their young? What do they now provide? ILK? YUCK?
This is fecking silly lobbyist crap. Grow up, you stupid FDA idiots. Maybe we should reclassify the FDA as the MDC: Milk and Drug Corporation?
MDC! :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday July 21 2018, @02:21PM (3 children)
I heard that when margarine first came out, Iowa (one of the biggest farm states) would not allow manufacturers to add food coloring. Instead, if they wanted they were allowed to include a little pill that the consumers could blend themselves. That rule didn't last long. If this proposal becomes law, I expect it won't last long either.
Meantime, producers will have to say "milk substitute", "artificial milk", or "synthetic milk" instead of just "milk"? Can they say "I can't believe it's not milk"? Or can't they use the term at all, and we'll see stuff like "soy drink" instead? Are they going to cover all dairy terms so they can't say "soy butter", "soy cream", or "soy cheese" either?
Where does powdered milk, lactose free milk, and fat free milk land? Is it still milk if you take the lactose out?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 21 2018, @03:08PM
My mom was given the job of mixing the coloring into the margarine.
Not that margarine was any good, but if it were, we should have just gotten used to it being white. Food coloring is fraud. It mostly isn't even safe. We're on Red 40 now because 39 previous attempts caused cancer, and now we're finding that Red 40 is causing hyperactivity.
I guess I'm OK with calling something "milk" if all the nutrient amounts are within the ranges that you could find for real milk that humans actually drink. Humans drink from cattle, goats, camels, and humans. Every amino acid must be in the range by mass and by portion relative to the others. Salt, fat, iron, carbohydrates... all must be within the range.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday July 21 2018, @03:09PM (1 child)
> Meantime, producers will have to say "milk substitute", "artificial milk", or "synthetic milk" instead of just "milk"?
Or maybe just "... formula" - as is done for baby not-milks ?
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday July 21 2018, @04:31PM
Those tend to be sold in powdered form as a rule (though ready-mixed bottles are also offered, at a premium).
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 21 2018, @02:43PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 21 2018, @02:57PM (2 children)
Being a cable TV lobbyist seemed pretty horrible for running the FCC, but he knew all the dirty tricks and turned out to not be beholden to his previous masters.
Scott Gottlieb might be similar.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 21 2018, @03:50PM
Unless Scott Gottlieb toadies up to the orange one, he won't last long in the cabinet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 21 2018, @03:52PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday July 21 2018, @05:39PM (1 child)
If the dairy industry is feeling the pinch, then they should think twice about this move. If they force soy, almond, coconut, and other varieties to stop calling themselves "milk" then cow milk won't be able to ride on the coattails of the positive associations consumers have with the other varieties of milk.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 22 2018, @12:09PM
Say what?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by schad on Saturday July 21 2018, @06:04PM (7 children)
This honestly isn't that hard. The word "milk" has a meaning. It means either the product of lactation from a mammal (noun form), or the process by which those products are extracted (verb form). That's what the word means, it's what the word has meant for hundreds of years. Probably for as long as the word has existed. This is what literally every single English-speaker in the world who knows the word understands it to mean.
Do you know how almond milk, for instance, is made? You soak almonds in water. Then you puree them in a blender and push them through a cheesecloth. The liquid that drains through the cloth is almond milk. (The stuff that stays behind can be dried and ground. That's almond flour.) That's not milk, and no honest person would ever describe it that way. It's almond water. And that's exactly what it tastes like. The stuff sold in stores usually has sugar and vanilla added for taste, and is then fortified with vitamins because plain almond milk is... well, it's almond water. So it, of course, has roughly the nutritional profile of water.
Now, "milk" on products meaning "cow's milk" specifically... that's bowing to the masses. Absent other context, if someone says "get me a glass of milk," what they mean is "get me a glass of cow's milk." So it's reasonable to follow that convention on product packaging. But still, if you wanted to argue that all cow's milk should be labeled as such, I wouldn't disagree too strongly. I think it's unnecessary because, as I said, everyone in the US already correctly understands what a carton of "milk" contains. But I don't think it would be confusing to consumers or cost the cow's milk sellers any money or anything to be more specific.
By the way, I don't mind almond milk. I just think it's stupid to call it milk. Really, as a manufactured product, it should probably have a new word invented as its name (as with margarine). But if you insist on using the names of other things, I wouldn't object to "almond water."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Saturday July 21 2018, @07:57PM (3 children)
Looks like milk to me: in no way does almond 'water' look like water.
"Milkweed is named for its latex, a milky substance containing cardiac glycosides termed cardenolides that is exuded where cells are damaged."
In other words, it's 'sap' looks like milk and has been called 'milk' weed since at least 1753.
Goats milk: is it not milk also?
Breast milk?
For them to be wasting their time on this means ONLY that the dairy industry has their knickers in a twist and are lobbying hard because the competition is biting into their profits and their subsidies.
When I say get me a glass of milk, everyone who knows me knows I mean almond milk.
It's like Kleenex: if someone says get me a Kleenex, everyone knows what's what, the same as get me a tissue.
They are giving in to the dairy lobby. Plain and simple.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 21 2018, @10:15PM (2 children)
No, they are not giving in to the dairy industry. There has been times when food items needed to be defined because of vendor chicanery. Ice cream is one example. Ice cream is very well defined, so you can't pass off overly-aerated non-dairy crap as ice cream. Cheese is another example. There is a reason that some "cheese" that comes in individually-wrapped slices has to label itself as "processed cheese food", because there isn't much of what one would consider cheese in those slices. Some of these food producers take a homeopathic approach to their products, such as "Kona" or "Jamaican Blue Mountain" coffees, which for a while contained a smidgen of those coffees and the rest regular arabica. Do you consider 99% arabica and 2% Kona coffee to be sold as Kona coffee? It goes to truth in advertising.
And they're not "wasting their time" on this. They are considering whether they need to enforce existing rules that are on the books.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday July 21 2018, @11:20PM (1 child)
Disregarding your math, I don't think anyone is confusing soy milk or almond milk with cow milk. Nothing is being lied about, nor is there any lies in the advertising.
They are not calling it cows milk, but it's really 99% almond milk....it's almond milk!
Ice cream needed to be changed because there is no cream involved.
If the dairy lobby isn't involved, why not let it be: everyone knows almond milk is made from almonds, soy milk is made from soy and cows milk is made from cows milk.
No confusion, no change s needed!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday July 22 2018, @02:23AM
LOL.
Please re-read this sentence again juxtaposed against the rest of your argument. If you don't see the logical inconsistency, I don't know what to say.
And by the way, I'm not against various alternative "milks" in any way. But calling them "milk" is also just a marketing scheme by their producers. So if you want to call out the dairy industry, at least be consistent and acknowledge that you're arguing for precisely the same thing from the other side.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Sunday July 22 2018, @12:52AM (2 children)
I have a suggestion. Instead of calling it "milk", call it "almond milk" just like the producers do. Then you're not calling it "milk". Seriously, adjectives are here for a reason.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday July 23 2018, @03:28AM (1 child)
"almond milk" is a noun cluster, not an adjective attached to a noun.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 23 2018, @05:01AM