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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 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.