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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: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday July 21 2018, @03:18PM (9 children)
Yes.
I have a number of friends who buy soy milk, almond milk, etc., and then drink them in places where they would normally drink milk. They feed them to kids instead of milk. They ask me in they can substitute them in recipes for milk. Also, stores stock these in the same location next to each other. Clearly, consumers think one is basically an equivalent of the other.
The FDA's recommendation here is roughly in line with EU definitions [europa.eu], which state:
In other words, "Milk" by itself does mean "cow's milk." The term may used for other mammalian milk with the qualification of the type of animal (e.g., "goat milk," "sheep milk," etc.).
Now, I know a number of posts here already question why such a regulation is necessary or useful. I'm somewhat surprised because usually around here there's a lot of complaints about "pink slime" in beef, etc., even though that's actually still part of the cow.
Words do mean things (though such meaning can shift), and calling something "milk" will imply that it can be used in similar way, serve similar purposes, etc. That's not always true with the various "milks" on the market today.
It also has implications for quality. If veggie burgers started selling products next to the meat section and called them "beef" or even just "meat," would anyone mind? What if you started to get "ground beef" with 15% grain mixed in to "stretch" it? Is that a problem?
That sort of thing happened in the past, which is why the FDA started creating consumer standards and definitions. Even with them, you get a lot of bogus nonsense. You get yogurt makers putting labels on that say, "No added sugar" when they have an ingredient called "evaporated cane juice" which is basically identical to cane sugar (with slightly different processing and a little more molasses). That's a consumer problem.
And we currently are seeing the "stretching" of meat in unclear ways. I was wondering why chicken breasts were so cheap at the store a while back. Then I noticed why -- "contains brine solution with chicken broth of up to 15%" (or something like that). So, what I'm really paying for is 85% chicken and 15% water. That's why that package of "chicken" is cheaper... except it's not chicken, it's "Chicken and Broth" and should be prominently labeled as such. If you put a few chicken breasts and a large packet of water in the package for injection at home, I bet a lot of consumers would question whether pricing is fair to charge you for that weight.
And that same thing happens surreptitiously with products like bacon all the time, whose definition has now basically been permanently changed. Traditional dry or wet cured bacon doesn't cook at all like modern "bacon" which is injected with a large amount of brine to speed up curing. Well, initially it was to speed up curing -- now, they just add as much water as they can get away with to charge more for crap. We've gradually allowed the definition of "bacon" to be changed, so it's nearly impossible to find traditional bacon anymore in a standard grocery store. (Although, you can find what I like to call "BS bacon," which states that it's "uncured" but generally contains more nitrates than "cured" bacon, just delivered through "natural" sources like celery powder.)
It's all BS. And the more BS we allow, the stupider and more accepting the public becomes, and the worse the quality of our food at grocery stores get. Yes, this is a bit of a slippery slope argument, but we're so far down the slope for the nomenclature of many store goods that have been adulterated in various ways, no one seems to care anymore.
Sure, this is an effort by the dairy lobby to restrict the nomenclature of "milk." But doesn't restricting the definition in this case make at least some sense? What does "soy milk" have to do with "milk" as traditionally understood??
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday July 21 2018, @05:34PM
If we don't want the slide in quality and evasion of regulation you're talking about, then we have to engineer things differently in our society.
In the past people have campaigned successfully for better labeling to combat the erosion of quality. To combat fake sugar water being passed off as juice flavored with a little citric acid, they insisted on labels that specified what percentage of the volume was fruit juice. So the companies said 'no problem' and started labeling their juice as 'orange, with 100% real juice!' when the juice was 100% white grapes (the cheapest fruit to juice) and a little pulp and citric acid were added to make it taste like orange.
Pink slime, which you cited, was used to claim 100% all-beef patties, though none of us looking at a vat of pink slime would ever have called it that.
The profit motive drives that race to the bottom. Essentially, it gives producers every reason to cheat. That in turn gives producers added incentive to recruit government as an accessory to the cheating. Average Joe, working three jobs to pay the mortgage, student loans, medical insurance, taxes, taxes, taxes, sales taxes, and utilities that seem to grow more expensive by double digits every year, does not have the time and certainly does not have the energy to keep an eye on government to make sure they're not stabbing him in the back. Thus a very few win big, and everyone else loses and loses and loses.
One answer is DIY. Don't trust food companies and the government? Then grow/raise your own food. But Average Joe might not have any time left to do that, and Average Sue, living in a studio apartment in Manhattan, can't exactly plant the back 40 to grow the soy beans she wants to eat. Then again, maybe Sue can get part of the way there by using a CSA and green markets.
Those remain edge cases, though, and something bigger has to change about why we do what we do.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by sjames on Saturday July 21 2018, @05:43PM (7 children)
None of what you said in the first paragraph constitutes confusion. They KNOW what they're buying didn't come from a cow or any other animal. If they didn't, why would they ask if it can be used as a substitute in a recipe? Nobody goes to the store to pick up regular old cow's milk, buys a carton of soy milk, then upon tasting says "what the hell is this?".
And unless you can find an example of someone thinking they can substitute the milk in their coffee with milk of magnesia, I'm not buying that the term milk as part of "soy milk" or "almond milk" is confusing.
I have never seen a container claiming simply to be "Milk" that didn't turn out to be from a cow.
As for the FDA's motives, note how they don't seem to give a damn if chicken and broth is sold as chicken. They also allow "100% parmesan cheese to be 2% added cellulose powder. (surely it should be sold as 98% "Parmesan cheese"?)
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday July 22 2018, @02:14AM (6 children)
They may know that they aren't buying cow's milk, but they may still be confused. Specifically, I'd argue that many consumers assume they are buying MILK, i.e., something with a roughly equivalent set of nutrients, use cases, etc. They aren't trying to substitute tomato juice or ginger ale or whatever in recipes that call for "milk," but they figure they might be able to use soy or almond or oat or whatever juice, mainly because the packaging says "milk."
In reality, of course, they are using a product that usually only shares the fact that it is white and liquid and generally is formulated to have roughly the same viscosity as actual milk. Otherwise, the product is often quite different chemically, nutritionally, etc.
As for your latter point about chicken, are you seriously arguing that one wrong should excuse another wrong? I noted in my previous post that the motivations behind this may not be pure, but if it leads to improvement in food labeling, I'm still in favor of it.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday July 22 2018, @03:10AM (5 children)
See my point about milk of magnesia.
In fact, soy and almond milk can be and ARE used successfully as a substitute for cows milk for coffee, cereal, and cooking.
Unlike the chicken injected with brine or broth, soy milk has always been produced from soy beans. No surprises.
As someone who is on a salt restricted diet, I can say I would more likely be physically harmed by the surprise brine injection than truthfully marked soy milk.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday July 22 2018, @04:33AM (3 children)
Let's just be clear about one thing: the primary reason soy, almond, oat, etc. "milk" producers call their products "milk" is to convince consumers to buy their product, believing it to be like another product.
The primary reason the dairy industry wants to limit the use of the term is because they want to emphasize the difference in the products.
Both sides here are motivated by business at the expense of the other. And there's no objective logical standard to appeal to other than changing English usage.
My point is that you're obviously convinced you are correct. I actually don't care that much about this case aside from its relationship to larger trends in food labeling that I do think are seriously problematic.
But at heart both sides here are less concerned about linguistic purity than about making money by advertising at the expense of their rivals. The alternative "milk" industry doesn't have purer motives than the dairy industry or the FDA.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday July 22 2018, @04:59PM (2 children)
No, it's called milk because you can use it in your coffee, on your cereal or for cooking like you can cow's milk. Since it is popular among vegans and people who are lactose intolerant, I doubt very much that there is any desire to confuse consumers as to it's origin (since that would kill their market). It causes zero confusion.
This is all about trying to use regulation to accomplish what marketing has failed at.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday July 23 2018, @03:56AM (1 child)
I'll try yet again to say that I never implied the confusion was about its origin. The confusion is that some random white liquids are equivalent to "milk."
And yes, you can use these various products in some similar fashion to how you use actual milk, just like you can use artificial sweeteners in some applications similar to sugar. That's the point: the products have been engineered (often with added sugars and flavors, sometimes thickening agents or other additives to change properties) to be similar enough to confuse people about whether they are equivalent to milk (not again, not the same in origin as milk, but equivalent in properties).
Unfortunately, just as artificial sweeteners have some surface similarities to sugar, so the similarities are only "surface level" to "milk."
Sweeteners are not sugar, though they can sometimes be used in place of it.
Note again that I have absolutely nothing against almond or soy or whatever juices being used by whomever (I sometimes enjoy these products myself), and some may have good nutrition or reasons to be used. However, they are not "milk," as generally understood... And that term was again only appropriated by those who engineered these substances to play off the similarities to milk.
Also, if vegans don't care and don't want there to be confusion, why the heck would they argue to appropriate an animal-based term?? It's only for advertising purposes.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday July 23 2018, @02:52PM
So nobody is getting deceived or confused in any way, why again do we have the FDA throwing it's weight around and demanding an expensive redesign of all those cartons and associated re-branding campaigns? (ultimately paid for by consumers)
Next up, "Lucky Charms" haven't been shown to have an effect on probability and Cheerios haven't been evaluated for their value as an anti-depressant?
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday July 22 2018, @04:39AM
And when grocers start stocking milk of magnesia next to dairy milk and remove all the labeling that indicated milk of magnesia is a medication rather than a food... Maybe you'd have a point there.