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Defining Milk

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Photo: USA Today

There’s a battle brewing between real milk and faux milk, or to be exact over the exact definition of “milk”. A dairy lobby group, the National Milk Producers Federation has petitioned the FDA

that the term “milk” be reserved for cow’s milk, although it’s OK with also using the word for goat, sheep or water buffalo milk — any of the various “mammalian lacteal secretions.” The federation says the FDA should require that plant-based beverages be labeled something else, noting terms such as “drinks,” “beverages” or even “imitation milk.” read more from USA Today…

The group has written to the FDA on this matter in the past, as have soymilk producers. In a smart move, the FDA has been ignoring both groups’ requests.

This is a marketing battle, not a health issue.

Cow milk sales are an order of magnitude higher than soy and other plant based milks, $12.3 billion vs. just $1 billion. But the latter saw sales skyrocket almost tenfold in less than 15 years. At that clip, dairy organizations have got to be worried.

From a nutritional perspective, the makers of alternative milks do fortify them with calcium and vitamin D to the levels found in cow’s milk (vitamin D is added to cow’s milk as well). And they offer an alternative to people who are allergic or intolerant to cow’s milk (more precisely – the lactose therein).

While personally my children do well with cow’s milk, other families may choose soy milk, or other sources of calcium and vitamin D for that matter. Remember, there are billions of people in the world, many in Asia, who have been doing just fine for ages without milk or dairy products.

What to do at the supermarket:

Whether you are buying dairy milk or soy milk, shoot for the unflavored versions that don’t contain unnecessarily added sugars and colorings. Please note that milk naturally contains sugar in the form of lactose (8 grams or about 2 teaspoons equivalent). Even the unflavored soy milks do contain about 6 grams of added sugar. So look out for anything higher than that.

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  • Aimee

    What’s so sad about this is the $$ expended for government intervention, when it could be better served advertising that milk/milk alternatives are much healthier than soda, “juice” and flavored waters. Maybe their sales would increase with that.

  • bill

    Home made almond milk is the best and you can use the ground up nut to make awesome cookies.

  • http://lifewithnature.com veronica (lifewithnature)

    I agree with bill. Almond milk is so easy to make (I have a quick recipe on my blog),and it’s delicious. For added calcium, you can also use sesame seeds milk, made the same way as homemade almond milk. Sesame seeds contains more calcium per calorie than cow’s milk.

  • carol

    Cow and sheep milk have closer to 13 g sugars per 1 cup serving; goat is a little lower (11). Unsweetened rice milk has about 10 g (some of the starch converts to sugars in the cooking process). But a few grams of sugar either way (and from whatever source) is insignificant over the course of a day’s food intake. Looking at the total package of nutrients is more important.

  • http://www.goodworkswellness.com Pamela Reilly, Naturopath

    Kudos to the FDA for not submitting to pressures from a lobbying organization who is more concerned with profit than with the health of the public. Let’s please remember that other milks, such as rice, almond and hemp, are more nutrient-rich than soy, don’t have the negative hormonal impacts of soy, and have a lower incidence of allergies. All are available in unsweetened varieties. As someone stated previously, making your own is quick, easy and cheap!

  • L

    90% of the soy crop in the US is genetically modified. The supplier of 8th Continents soy beans is in bed with Monsanto. Buyer beware.

  • http://www.livingitupcornfree.com kc

    Let’s not forget the vast difference between raw milk from pastured animals and the pasteurized, homogenized, fortified “beverages” now sold as milk. Raw milk from pastured cows is rich in the enzymes necessary for proper nutrient absorption, Conjugated linoleic acids (CLA) and natural vitamins A and D. Milk taken from warehoused cows living on cement floors with no access to sunshine or chlorophyll from living grass are only rich in synthetic vitamins (added back in using GMO corn), the enzymes necessary for digestion killed in the high temperature pasteurization process and is devoid of CLA. It seems silly to me that there is a marketing war about who deserves the right to use the name “milk” when the majority of the American dairy producers no longer produce “milk” either.