I don't really understand this. I've never seen a package of plant-based meat and found myself confused, much in the same way I've never seen a carton of oat milk and thought it contained dairy. What's the concern here?
I don’t know about the meat issue, but I’ve seen women in mother’s groups ask “what kind of milk” people were going to be giving their babies after they were done giving breast milk or formula. Some people seemed to genuinely think that something called almond milk is actually a type of milk in some meaningful sense just because of the name.
I’m fine with them having non-dairy beverages, but they aren’t “substitutes” nutritionally just because they have milk in the name. If your 1 year old is drinking almond milk (30cal and 1g protein per 8oz) instead of whole milk (150 cal and 8 gr protein per 8 oz), you need to adjust what you’re feeding, just like you would if you were giving any other drink.
The issue is some people seem to assume liquids that are labeled milks are actually like each other in some way that goes beyond flavor and texture.
Yes, the problem is not dairy vs. non-dairy, it is with feeding kids who have been weaned a vegetarian or vegan diet in general. For instance, the following is a recent study (July 2020):
Vegetarian and Vegan Weaning of the Infant: How Common and How Evidence-Based? A Population-Based Survey and Narrative Review
Background: Vegetarian and vegan weaning have increasing popularity among parents and families. However, if not correctly managed, they may lead to wrong feeding regimens, causing severe nutritional deficiencies requiring specific nutritional support or even the need for hospitalization. Aim: To assess the prevalence of vegetarian and vegan weaning among Italian families and to provide an up-to-date narrative review of supporting evidence. Materials and methods: We investigated 360 Italian families using a 40-item questionnaire. The narrative review was conducted searching scientific databases for articles reporting on vegetarian and vegan weaning. Results: 8.6% of mothers follow an alternative feeding regimen and 9.2% of infants were weaned according to a vegetarian or vegan diet. The breastfeeding duration was longer in vegetarian/vegan infants (15.8 vs. 9.7 months; p < 0.0001). Almost half of parents (45.2%) claim that their pediatrician was unable to provide sufficient information and adequate indications regarding unconventional weaning and 77.4% of parents reported the pediatrician’s resistance towards alternative weaning methods. Nine studies were suitable for the review process. The vast majority of authors agree on the fact that vegetarian and vegan weaning may cause severe nutritional deficiencies, whose detrimental effects are particularly significant in the early stages of life. Discussion and conclusion: Our results show that alternative weaning methods are followed by a significant number of families; in half of the cases, the family pediatrician was not perceived as an appropriate guide in this delicate process. To date, consistent findings to support both the safety and feasibility of alternative weaning methods are still lacking. Since the risk of nutritional deficiencies in the early stages of life is high, pediatricians have a pivotal role in guiding parents and advising them on the most appropriate and complete diet regimen during childhood. Efforts should be made to enhance nutritional understanding among pediatricians as an unsupervised vegetarian or vegan diet can cause severe nutritional deficiencies with possible detrimental long-term effects.
That's certainly an interpretation of that study. Here's another one.
> Almost half of parents (45.2%) claim that their pediatrician was unable to provide sufficient information and adequate indications regarding unconventional weaning and 77.4% of parents reported the pediatrician’s resistance towards alternative weaning methods.
> Our results show that alternative weaning methods are followed by a significant number of families; in half of the cases, the family pediatrician was not perceived as an appropriate guide in this delicate process.
In other words, nearly half of parents who try vegetarian weaning report that their pediatricians stop helping them or are unable to give them adequate/informed nutritional advice, and unsurprisingly, parents who no longer have adequate access to health resources and information struggle to raise healthy kids.
This isn't an argument against vegetarian weaning, it's an argument for educating pediatricians so they're not shrugging their shoulders when people ask them how to keep their kids healthy.
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It's also really important here to distinguish between vegan and vegetarian weaning. You're lumping them together when the paper doesn't. Its take is:
> Vegetarian weaning with appropriate guidance from family pediatricians or nutritional experts is possible and it should not be opposed.
> Vegan weaning should be discouraged because serious damages (slow growth, rickets, irreversible cognitive deficits, cerebral atrophy, and also death) have been demonstrated.
This is something that kind of annoys me when it comes up in these conversations. The health risks of veganism and vegetarianism are very different. Being vegan requires paying attention to your food intake, it requires doing some research, because the United States food system is not built around that concept. The risks aren't common knowledge and fewer foods are fortified to deal with problems that vegans face. But being vegetarian is comparatively much, much easier to do, and you're much less likely to make a mistake and end up with a deficiency if you go down that route. They really shouldn't be talked about as if they have the same levels of risk.
> I've never seen a carton of oat milk and thought it contained dairy
I have no issues with "<plant> milk" products and labeling them like that, but people do get confused about their nutritional profiles, thinking they're substitutes for milk. They're not, and they're chemically different enough that they're not good substitutes for cooking. About the only thing they're good substitutes for is liquid milk, though I hear oat milk foams up well for a cappuccino.
> but people do get confused about their nutritional profiles
By that logic, should 2% milk be allowed to be called milk? What about chocolate milk? Nutritional profiles can vary wildly between different brands and products, especially when we're talking about meat -- so where do you draw the line?
Look, you're raising an interesting point but this is not about meat vs. not meat (or "what kind of meat"). For instance, I was recently made aware that about 80% of the milk sold in Greek supermarkets (I'm Greek) is UHT ("long-life"). That goes for the milk displayed in refrigerated isles. OK? Supermarkets put UHT milk in the fridge - so people will think it's fresh. Most likely it's the dairy companies that direct them to do so. Some brands even put UHT milk in clear plastic bottles, like the ones used for fresh milk. Last time I checked there were maybe three brands of pasteurised (i.e. "fresh", not long-life) milk in the refrigerated isle in the three supermarkets I visit frequently.
And yet, I remember reading (and could perhaps dig up again with a bit of effort) a study claiming that Greeks don't like to drink UHT milk and prefer fresh milk. Well, perhaps that's what they think but in practice most of the milk on sale (and so, very likely, most of what is consumed) is UHT.
Note: "fresh milk" is not raw milk; "fresh" milk means milk that's been pasteurised, but not ultra-pasteurised, and that's been knocking about the dairy industry's plants and refrigerated trucks and the like for about a week. "Fresh" is a misnomer. Even if it wasn't, people don't seem capable of distinguishing it from UHT milk anyway.
Bottom line: people don't know what they're consuming. Like, they really have no idea. Myself I hadn't noticed all that but it was pointed out to me by a friend who is a dairy scientist. In fact, I'd been drinking a UHT milk and thinking "hey, that tastes kinda sweet". I even kinda liked it. I mean, there's nothing wrong with drinking UHT milk! Don't get me wrong- it's just as nutritious as "fresh" milk. Except, I had no idea. This is disturbing. It makes me wonder- what else am I missing? What else is sold to me as one kind of food but is really something else than what I expect?
Okay, but you're arguing for better labeling in general about food production, ingredients, and storage -- not that people shouldn't be able to use the word "meat" on a Morningstar package.
I mean, I would love if every product was clearly labeled whether it contained animal by-products, it would save me from having to read ingredients on everything. It's annoying to have to check to see whether a loaf of bread in the supermarket contains milk or not, or to have to search online whether some obscure ingredient is an animal gelatin. And additionally, yeah, there is a lot of confusion around buzzwords like "free-range" or "organic" which basically mean very little. You're right about that stuff.
But the words "milk" and "meat" are not part of the problem. It's fine if almond milk is in the milk isle and labeled as milk. Calling it almond milk-substitute would not have solved your problem with accidentally buying UHT milk, because "milk" itself is not a specific enough word to solve your problem on its own.
And to jump back to the original comment I was responding to -- "milk" is also not specific enough of a word to communicate what the nutritional profile is of the food you're consuming. Yes, there are concerns about people not knowing what is and isn't healthy and not being able to identify how food was produced and sourced. No, forcing plant-based substitutes to drop the words "milk" or "meat" won't fix that.
I agree about the world "milk", for example in Greece we call fig sap "fig milk". But calling nut paste or beans "meat" grates.
Anyway my ocncern is that most consumers are at the point where they don't understand the difference between animal milk and plant milk, or even animal meat and plant-based meat substitutes, because they're used to so much over-processed food that they don't recognise the tastes of ordinary foodstfufs anymore.
I find it more likely that 16 million Americans decided to take the piss when answering that particular question, perhaps offended that such an obviously dumb question would be asked of them with a straight face. I would be.
16 million Americans have, by definition of the scoring mechanism, IQ 70 or lower. I suspect the only reason the number thinking it’s from brown cows isn’t higher is all the people who don’t think milk comes from anywhere but the supermarket selling it.
I don't see that the OP said anything about there being any kind of confusion. I think you're responding to a different concern than the one they expressed.