this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024
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I'll probably stick to asking for oat milk instead of "porridge water" or whatever the new mandated name will be. To be honest I do think calling it "milk" lets them inflate the price when it is essentially porridge water.

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[–] Pieisawesome 1 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

This is stupid on the surface, BUT “milk” in some jurisdictions is protected with legal standards. This prevents watering down or other issues.

I am not familiar with the UK, so I don’t know if this is applicable.

In the US, “ice cream” is protected and has to meet standards, otherwise it is called a “frozen dairy dessert”.

Additionally, in the US we recently had a massive butter recall from Costco because it did not label “dairy” as an allergen. Common sense indicates butter contains milk, HOWEVER, these allergen labels are the law and the allergens feed into downstream items. IE, if you use the butter to make brownies, then the brownies must be labeled. If you automate this process or whatever, you could miss this, due to it not being labeled correctly.

[–] tabris 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

While oat milk is relatively new, almond milk and soya milk are older than the legal protections the milk industry is trying to use. Almond milk has been almond milk for near enough a thousand years, soya milk is close to twice as old. Basically the word milk hasn't referred exclusively to mammal milk for as long as the word milk has existed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Also, tinned coconut milk is actually labelled coconut milk just fine without a problem.

I wonder how many people might be be put off dairy, even if it's just for a moment before putting it out their mind, if all dairy products were labelled mammary secretions.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I’m not sure (but happy to be corrected) that there is a legal standard definition of what constitutes milk. There was a documentary on Radio 4 a few years ago that asked “What is milk?” and found that - in UK and Europe - it couldn’t be answered (other than it had some cow involvement somewhere). Some pateurised “milks” had barely any actual milk. From what I remember it was the lobbying of the dairy industry that prevented a standard definition.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

other than it had some cow involvement somewhere

Nope! Goat milk is common, so is human (though not commonly sold). My answer would be "mammal tit juice" but the UK seems to have summed it up nicely above with "mammary secretions" as well.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Yeah, on the surface, it looks like evil cow farming lobbyists trying to force the competition to use a stupid name.
But on the other hand, without a protected name, what stops corporations from lacing their milk with 20% oat milk and hiding it in the ingredient list to save cost?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I'd buy that. If you want to replace 20% of my animal product with plants and can do an ok job I'm down.

As long as it's labeled properly and you don't have to do anything crazy, it's at the very least something I'll try.

[–] Pieisawesome 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Well, nut and grain milk are much more costly, so I doubt that

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

not during production

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 weeks ago

your reasoning behind the law and it's purpose is spot on, I think.