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Comment by adtac | Hacker News Reader

Wait till you find out how the peanut butter industry has fooled you for years! How dare they call it butter?

Or hamburgers, which contain no ham?! Surely at least coconut milk is real milk right?

It feels like you missed the point of his post or you're just responding in bad faith.

No, I fully understand their nonsensical argument and my comment was constructive, although with a less serious approach. Things are called by whatever is convenient. If something is intended as a meat/dairy substitute, it is perfectly natural to draw similarity to the thing it is replacing. Nobody is going to call it "oats soaked in water and then blended to a consistency and taste that you can use in your tea". It's just oat milk.

Hey you're passionate about the topic, fine with me.

Oat/Soy/Almond milk in most cases is a sugary flavored drink with a little less sugar than a soft drink. It's marketed with dubious health claims as a substitute, including paid placement on dairy shelves to imply that it is in fact a dairy product.

We call Coffeemate "non dairy creamer", Yoohoo a "chocolate flavored drink", SunnyD "orange drink", cut-up whitefish with red dye "imitation crab". Why should oat water be any different? Why is it important for the private equity people who own Oatly, or the Diamond Nuts people who own Califa, or Coke and Pepsi to market nut/oat based products as milk?

Commenters point is that these are the wrong solutions to the wrong problems, misdirected through naming and PR.

>> In Comments

>> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

>> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

As a personal recommendation not endorsed by the HN guidelines, I suggest responding to the point a commenter is actually making, rather than a point that is often made on the same "side" of an issue, but that that particular comment is not currently making. Specifically, the comment above said nothing about product naming "fooling" anyone.

>> In Comments

>> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I stand by my comment. It is a good response to what they said. I cited multiple examples of the same thing happening commonly in food naming to prove how their argument thta this is some PR narrative is wrong.

Do you actually use peanut butter as a substitute for butter?

Mozzarella from coconut milk is the new thing /s

It has a similar consistency and it's uses are sometimes similar to butter in that it can be spread on a slice of bread.

It sounds like maybe you are aware of how silly your argument is now: the fact that these happen to arbitrarily share a common word in English, does not make them a substitute for each other. If you still don't understand, you should try sautéing some shallots in peanut butter.

Edit: this is clearly different from a company marketing a product alternative, such as margarine (for butter) or Impossible Burgers (for ground beef).

> Or hamburgers, which contain no ham?!

Why would they? Do frankfurters contain frank? Do danishes contain da?

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