So, the dairy industry has a point, actually

Take a look in your freezer.

Is there ice cream in there?  Or is it “frozen dairy dessert”?

Look in your fridge.

Do you have American cheese?  Well, no, you don’t, according to the FDA.  You have a “cheese product.”

What about the reduced-sugar orange juice?  No, that’s an “orange juice beverage.”

Cranberry juice?  No, it’s “cranberry juice cocktail.”

Soy-based imitation nuggets are “chick’n nuggets.”  If they’re buffalo-seasoned, they’re “wingz.”  Vegan “cheese” is a “cheese alternative” and manufacturers tend to emphasize the brand and names like “slices”, “spreads”, or “shreds” on their packaging, rather than “processed oil product.”

And a dairy in Florida finally won its battle on appeal to call its skim milk, “skim milk,” even though it didn’t add in vitamins, but consider that this was a long hard-fought fight for them.

So I really can’t blame the dairy industry for calling on the government to prevent manufacturers of plant-based milk-like products (meaning, white flavored liquids) from calling them “milk” – e.g., soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, etc.

Yes, it’s fun to mock them, as in the recent Tribune editorial, and they lend themselves to mocking with a bill like the “Defending Against Imitations and Replacements of Yogurt, Milk, and Cheese To Promote Regular Intake of Dairy Everyday Act.”  And, yes, American consumers are not foolish enough to think that soy milk and cow’s milk are really the same thing — but they do have a point in that the alternative-milk industry builds off the perception of milk as nutritious, even though the “plant milks” are low in protein and their vitamins are generally added rather than naturally occurring.  (See here, and that from a defender.)

Would you buy “soy juice” or “almond juice” or “rice juice”?

Sounds icky, doesn’t it?  And, come to think of it, the FDA probably has regulations prohibiting labeling these products as “juice” because they’re largely water.  So why can they use the label “milk”?

Image:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A27050121-milk-wallpapers.jpg; By Shivani shrivastav (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons