[frereubu]

I put up a (much less interesting and more nerdily annoyed) site that described how Dannon / Danone was using made-up sciency names for the bacteria in their yoghurt, and their legal department got in touch. I didn't back down: https://whatisbifidusregularis.org/legal-action-against-this... I think this example would have been fine if the Waffle House branding had been removed. Then just put a big disclaimer at the top, which also makes clear the silliness of the kinds of legal claims made by these companies.

[trbleclef]

If McBroken.com can stay up...

[AStonesThrow]

Your website seems to be an aggregator of surface-level news blurbs from the mainstream media and some interviews with individual physicians. There are claims about "made-up" names and "correct scientific names". Putting health claims aside, there are no citations to any legislation that may have prevented a manufacturer from writing these names on a label. This website has a UK perspective, but I was trying to recall if any FDA or FTC regulations would prohibit the coining of new names for ingredients, particularly organisms. I think not.

In biological taxonomy, new names are coined all the time. Aliases for species are quite common. Common names for species are also common. We just learned that a "Buzzard" in the US is different than "Buzzards" in Europe/UK.

Pharmaceutical companies and scientists coin new "fake Latin-sounding" names all the time. So do astronomers! If there can be an asteroid named "25924 Douglasadams" then why can't Activia add a brand-name alias to something they use? Arguably, bacteria replicate so fast that Danone could have a new species if they cultivated it in a lab, rather than in animals.

Conversely, the food industry has taken names such as "milk" and "water", and expanded their definitions far beyond what common people recognize as those substances. Always receiving legal assent to sell fruit juice [nuts are fruits] with a mammalian name.

I've not had much experience with supplements, but more than a few I've purchased made proprietary blends of substances, and named that blend. Totally FDA-compliant.

I think your website got left up because it's fundamentally not a threat to any such practice in labelling.

I hereby address the candida albicans growing in my intestines, to announce that I dub thee candida hackernewsensis because sitting here has undoubtedly helped it grow.

[krageon]

Your perspective is incredibly US centric, so it is important to note that almost nothing which you note as normal or just happening is okay in the EU.

[myvoiceismypass]

> Conversely, the food industry has taken names such as "milk" and "water", and expanded their definitions far beyond what common people recognize as those substances. Always receiving legal assent to sell fruit juice [nuts are fruits] with a mammalian name.

People don't seem to be complaining about that substance (not to be named) that usually goes with jelly on bread, and is not actually a dairy product.

This timeline is interesting: https://www.soyinfocenter.com/pdf/166/Milk.pdf

[frereubu]

I know that all names are essentially "made up". It's the implicit nature of the "sciency" bit that annoys me. I don't believe Danone did a stroke of real science to come up with a bacteria that had any material difference from any other live yoghurt. The astronomers who discovered 25924 Douglasadams did do the science. Do you think Danone did any randomised controlled trials to measure its effectiveness over any other kind of live yoghurt? Of course not.

The idea of the site and its domain name is to try to get to the top of search engine rankings - which it has done successfully - so anyone who searches for it gets a clear answer, rather than just marketing fluff. I noticed that the Pages widget on the right was missing, which I've now reinstated, but here's the background to why I did it: https://whatisbifidusregularis.org/about-this-site/

[closewith]

> Always receiving legal assent to sell fruit juice [nuts are fruits] with a mammalian name.

If you mean things like oat milk, it's unlawful in the EU (and I think still the UK) to label plant-based alternatives as milk or dairy under EU Regulation 1308/2013.

[filoeleven]

Which is absurd, since

> In English, the word "milk" has been used to refer to "milk-like plant juices" since 1200 CE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_milk

It's like complaining that modern electric irons can't be called irons because the heat plate doesn't have iron in it.

[closewith]

That is referring to coconut milk, which is exempted.

The other uses like oat milk come from 1980's ads. It's so recent that the JM Smucker Company tried to trademark it.