this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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Pretty sure it's not actually milk when plant based. Like, there's wheat extract, which tastes pretty much identical to skimmed milk and can be used as a substitute, but (as far as I'm aware) you can't advertise it as milk in the EU.
Which, and I'm sorry, brings me to one of my pet peeves. Don't label plant alternatives as "vegan meat". It's either vegan or meat/diary, not both! What's even the point in making fake meat? To have some chum accidentally buy fake meat, only to find out and become annoyed and resistant towards plant based alternatives?
Make frigging original ideas. Like "wheat chocolate" where people have no preconceptions, instead of "non-milk milk chocolate that totally tastes the same as real milk chocolate, we swear you won't be disappointed!". And then you taste it, and it's just barely off. It doesn't taste bad, but it's not what you expected when you though about milk, so you become disappointed and avoid other really good tasting alternatives which might have stood a chance if not being directly compared to an already established market standard and favorite.
And yes, that chum might just be me, and although I've been presented with some really good tasting alternatives that I've come to love, I still absolutely refuse to buy/try any "Vegan meats/diaries".
Would much rather just have some ratatouille, grilled mushroom, or wheat chocolate instead.
Rant over.
Almond milk has quite a long history of being called as such: https://historydollop.com/2016/11/09/almond-milk-the-medieval-way/
Thank you for pointing that out. Yet, in a world where refrigerators are commonplace, and where the grip of the church has lessened, the term "milk" has come to be almost exclusively used for diary. So much in fact, that many find it misleading to use it to describe non-diary products.
Milk is one of the many words which have changed their definition over the past millenia, albeit, not as drastically as many other words. And we might come to a point where no one uses diary milk, or where milk once again also covers almonds, but this is not yet it, at least not in the EU. And to use it to cover both anyway, will likely push a lot of people away from more plant based alternatives.
Counter Rant
I don't understand the insistence in the western Anglophone world that milk automatically means cow's milk.
Coconut milk is a very normal word to say in my mother tongue (Bengali). What else are you even supposed to call it? Coconut "beverage" or "liquid" would be hella confusing because we wouldn't know if one means the milk (the creamy liquid that comes from pressing the coconut pulp) or the water (the transparent liquid that resides in the pulp, and tastes and behaves completely differently). Are we supposed to go invent a new word every time we encounter a milky liquid?
Also, what about other mammalian milks? Do we need to invent a new name for goat milk? (Which is a fairly common drink in India, possibly thanks to Gandhi's obsession with the stuff) What about sheep milk (not very common in India, but widely used in some parts of Europe). Or Yak's Milk? (Pretty popular in specific pockets of India).
Milk is any white creamy liquid. That's how it has always been used, in English and in other languages, going back centuries. The cow agriculture industry must have mounted one hell of a PR campaign to convince western consumes that milk automatically implies it must come from a cow. In India, you just look at the packaging. Does it have a picture of a cow on it? Well then it comes from a cow. Does it have a coconut on it? You guessed it, it comes from a coconut. Simple. I don't see how that can ever be confusing to customers.
Rant over