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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: 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).