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Comment by chickenpotpie | Hacker News Reader

The same is true for butter, yet nobody has any qualms about "peanut butter" not being made of dairy products. The term "oat milk" is clear. It is made of oats and resembles milk.

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Absolutely, as long as they say oat milk then that's fine. I don't think they should be allowed to just say milk.

That's exactly what's being proposed. The document specifically says that the word milk should be proceeded by the plant used to make it.

Oh, you can't call it peanut butter in the Netherlands on account of that. It's peanut cheese (pindakaas).

This is hilarious to me, as its even less like a cheese than a butter.

That's the Netherlands for you!

This makes absolutely zero sense as cheese is also a product that the peanut puree most certainly is not, what am I missing?

A non-dairy product may not be advertised as butter. This is to prevent the margarine companies from mislabeling their products as butter. Because of this, peanut butter cannot be labeled butter.

So why cheese? We don't really know.

Some theories:

- possible "germanization" of a Surinamese dish/product "Pinda-Käse"

- A product called pindadokun which literally was a block of pounded peanut that could be sliced, like with cheese

- When Calve marketed their peanut butter (Rising in popularity due to WW2), they were barred from marketing it as pindaboter, and instead used pindakaas.

They already label it oat milk. Am I missing something? I just don't want to buy plain "milk," or something advertised to contain it, that turns out to be some substitute.

Except peanut butter is not trying to be a substitute for butter.

A good example of how that doesn't matter is apple butter, which replaces neither peanut butter, or regular butter, and doesn't really resemble either, and which I've never seen anyone complain about the naming and the FDA will not go after any producer who makes it and labels it apple butter.

However I daresay you'd get in a bit of trouble if you took margarine and added a tiny bit of peanuts OR apple and then called it (very small "peanut" very large BUTTER).

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