For example, coconut milk is named so simply because it's a white liquid. It's not trying to be a replacement for milk, or trying to confuse people, it's just a metaphor.
But vegan milk, sausages, etc, are all meant to be as similar to the real things as possible so as to cause confusion.
Source? I would assume they are as similar to the real thing as possible in order to be as similar to the real thing as possible. I.e. an alternative for people who do not want to source their food from animals, but do want their food to have characteristics similar to those that are sourced from animals.
For example this pack of ground beef says "Made from plants" in clear large letters on the front https://www.target.com/p/impossible-plant-based-burger-groun...
What confusion are the trying to cause
But Veal and Beef is actually similar. Rose Veal is most definitely not Veal. It was named Rose Veal to try and market what they do with slaughterhouses and with discard young from the dairy industry, to break from the old practices (male milk calves have low value. farming it for veal was how farmers made money from discards)
Rose veal is not veal, why did they keep the veal word?
For a long time the taste couldn’t compare for any product. The fact that the pressure is building to keep the death part can only mean the taste is good enough for enough people that buying habits are changing.
I can see the protection of local business, and France has a strong farming and taste leadership history, but this change towards plant meat is inevitable and good for the world as a whole. Countries can innovate or end up losing this battle and only importing fake meat tech.
"Sausage" is such a generic term, covering so very many things, that it's bizarre to try and restrict it.
(edit: almost forgot we are talking about France, a country which tries to control its language by law. Carry on then!)
I get why this is controversial, but keep in mind that a lot of countries do that. English is the outlier here, and that's because it's not being threatened the same way other national languages are.
You're completely right that French is far from the only language with a centralized linguistic authority. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators)
As a matter of fact, the United States is all in as a language regulator: they have a language regulator ... for Spanish! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Academy_of_the_...)
Where you are absurdly wrong, is where you say that the threat to a language is the reason for the existence of a language academy. It simply isn't; the reasons are purely historical for almost all languages. I mean, Cardinal Richelieu founded l'académie française. French was not threatened during the reign of Louis XIII!
In France various types of sausage are with protected names and origins ( e.g. Toulouse, Montbéliard, etc.), so usually sausage is a very precise term and you know what you're getting.
I don't think Apicius was trying to sneakily confuse non-vegans when he said "lacte nucis".
But I guess arguably the question of whether confusion is being intentionally sowed has more to do with the how the the commonly understood meaning of words today than their historical meanings.
Maybe a better statistic is: how often to people buy vegan/meat products mistakenly when trying to but meat/vegan products. It's obviously not an easy statistic to gather, but it is probably a bit more tractable than focusing so much on language in particular. I've certainly made this mistake myself.
They were the same shape, size and color as the milk based yogurts sitting all around them on the shelf. The only clue was the word "soya" printed at the bottom edge of the tubs in small letters. The kind of letters you'd expect to tell you something like the container size or the country the milk came from.
To be fair this vegan nogurt tastes almost the same as the real thing. But I did not appreciate being tricked into buying it.
I agree that products shouldn't be deceptive, but this is a false dichotomy. More accurately the example should be "Beef Burger", then have it written in small "(dog meat)" as (at least in the West) even meat eaters don't like the idea of eating dogs.
Same does not apply to companies that try to mislead people by calling something not meat meat or cheese or so on.
If you haven't eaten meat for decades, you will probably become violently ill if you eat meat.
Anyone getting sick is most definitely having a psychological reaction (i.e.: a choice) rather than a physiological one. As a young man out in the world on my own I quickly discovered that all the anti-meat propaganda that I was raised with was nothing other than just that. No matter what you're eating, a balanced diet is paramount. Everything in moderation.
Thanks for letting me know!
They just happen to choose not to eat animal based products.
The viciousness in your comment makes it clear though, that it does affect you quite a bit.
However, I am just generally not very observant. I frequently buy sparkling water by accident.
Kast, a right-wing populist politician in Chile, made a big stink during his failed presidential bid over "Not Milk." He said only milk from "happy cows" should be promoted. These so-called proponents of the free market sure do hate competition.
https://www.cnnchile.com/pais/kast-critico-notmilk-necesitam...
Actually I'm pretty sure basically _everyone_ gets irritated when they think they're buying one thing, but instead get another.
You got to be joking.