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Comment by dgrin91 | Hacker News Reader

(not try to troll, genuine question)

Do you believe milk should be labeled with "contains milk"

Not who you’re replying to, but yes, because “alternative milks” like almond milk, oat milk, etc. do not contain (dairy) milk. Dairy farmers raised this objection and (temporarily?) forced producers of milk alternatives to stop using the standalone word “milk” on their packaging, but I still see it as part of a compound word on packaging.

Thus “chocolate milk” and “strawberry milk” mean milk mixed with chocolate or strawberries, while “oatmilk” and “almondmilk” may contain no milk at all. Though I’m not sure whether a product that mixed almond flavoring into dairy milk could be labeled “almond milk”.

People with dairy allergies shouldn’t be relying on the presence or absence of a space to determine if a product is safe for consumption.

Shouldn't the others carry a label "does not contain milk" rather than putting "contains milk" on regular milk?

No.

Your rule explodes into "Label every vaguely-relevant allergen your food does not contain.". Not only is that a rule that's inevitably going to miss something in the long run, it's WAY more complicated than the "Label the allergens your food does contain." rule.

No.

That's utterly ridiculous. Milk is already a listed ingredient of milk and butter. It does not need an extra label.

Also, if a product claims to be Milk and it isn't, that fact should be stated to stop confusion.

> Also, if a product claims to be Milk and it isn't, that fact should be stated to stop confusion.

Centuries of past labeling disagree with you here. Non-dairy "milks" have been called "milk" for ages. That's going to be impractical to change.

> Milk is already a listed ingredient of milk and butter. It does not need an extra label.

"Explicitly and separately listing allergen classes of a food product in addition to listing specific allergenic ingredients in the ingredients list." is the entire practice most of the folks in these threads are talking about. If you disagree that that practice has any value, then we are not going to have much of anything to agree on.

Should broccoli be labeled "does not contain milk" ?

Should broccoli be labeled "contains broccoli"?

No, that's fairly obvious. Also, broccoli doesn't claim to be milk. So, it doesn't need that label.

But isn't it incredibly clear when you're buying cow milk, vs. alternative "milks"?

I can understand how people with a dairy allergy might want to double-check an alternative milk to make sure it doesn't contain any real milk, or was processed in a bottling facility that also processes dairy milk, or something like that...

But it's hard for me to see how people with a dairy allergy might want to double-check the regular milk...?

I don't think we should be relying on the good 'ol "it's common sense" approach for allergies when complying is so simple.

Then how about alternatives like Lactaid? Animal-free dairy milk?

As someone else said, is what makes people happy here making the regulations more complex with special cases - when someone not knowing those special cases could potentially kill them?

Lactose-free cow milk is a perfect edge case, because something like that is safe if you're lactose intolerant, but not if you have a dairy allergy. So the fine print really does matter.

This is why there are proposals to ban labeling such "fake" milks as milk.

It's not just the fact that these things aren't milk, but they are also nutritionally and culinarily very different.

Yes. There are many drinks that are labeled "milk" that don't contain milk proteins, but we now have "animal-free dairy milk", which does. I can absolutely see someone being confused as to whether a given product labeled as milk will trigger their allergies:

https://perfectday.com/blog/why-animal-free-dairy-still-cont...

The dairy industry has always fought the FDA on this, arguing that anything besides milk from a cow should not be allowed to be labeled as milk:

https://agfundernews.com/dairy-farmers-urge-fda-to-crack-dow...

https://www.nmpf.org/on-almonds-dont-lactate-anniversary-dai...

The matrix is big and will only continue to grow: lactose-free milk, animal-free dairy milk, almond milk, oat milk, strawberry milk, etc. Multiply that across milk-derived product analogues like butter and ice-cream and it becomes even more confusing. The meaning on the allergy label is quite specific!

Do you know if "I can't believe it's not butter" contains butter?

That's pretty much irrelevant to whether you know if butter contains butter.

Is “almond butter” butter? What about “clarified butter”?

First of all, this isn't either of those. It's just plain old butter, labelled as such.

Secondly, people in general also know what those are.

That is a different question. If something is labeled "butter"it is probably butter. If it is labeled "not butter" it definitely should have a label that says "might contain butter. Now I understand the labeling and allergy concerns. Like does "almond milk" contain milk? I didn't know but it probably contains almonds or almond extract.

So cookie butter is a butter that contains milk?

Sorry, what the heck is "cookie butter" (native English speaker here, in case it matters...)?

Ha, why would a non-native English speaker ever be shopping in our glorious American stores? /s

Cookie butter is sweet spread primarily made of ground up cookies and is from France/Belgium/the Netherlands.

Do you mean cookie batter?

I do not, but cookie batter should also be labelled if it has dairy/butter.

Obviously not, but Americans regularly tell me a dish doesn't contain milk, only for me to find out that it contains butter. The labels help.

Yup, and this is why the labels exist. So many people confidently "guess" when asked, and I've had to ask a few times for them to check the label.

Surely the context matters though?

In a culinary context, something can obviously be made with lots of butter and no milk.

In an allergen context it's totally different, but isn't the normal question whether it contains dairy?

I mean, in a regular cooking context, the Americans sound totally correct to me, unless they know you're asking because you're allergic.

I highly doubt the "contains" label would matter in this case, given that butter IS labeled as such and yet your anecdote stands.

Which is to say, that the label missing from this particular batch is likely to have had zero impact positive or negative on the overall situation.

Yes. Oat milk / almond milk / etc doesn't contain "milk". There's a section for both "ingredients" and "contains" on every label, and "contains" specifies if it includes "milk" as defined by the FALCPA.

yeah. there was a proposal by big dairy to ban alternative milks from calling themselves "milk" at all, but there was a public outcry about it and it was found to be overstepping, not least because alternative milks have existed for hundreds of years and been called as such.

now we get into the area of should these products be called milk when they don't have milk.

if there's regulations that say a package must list what is inside, shouldn't there also be regulations that say you can't list ingredients that are not inside?

Note that, if the labeling for the "contains" section is accurate, I do not have to give a fuck what some marketing wonk has decided they have to call their product for my safety.

THAT's why this isn't about government overreach. The SANCTITY of the labeling is important, so that it can be relied on NO MATTER WHAT

You really should give yourself more agency.

The only person you can rely on is yourself, if for no other reason than mistakes happen (case in point).

And then what? Maybe your relatives can sue the company after you died. Fat lot of good that does for you.

Please don't blindly trust the labeling and exercise some basic common sense. Do you really want to be in the afterlife, thinking "well, the box didn't say milk, so how could I have known that butter contains milk"?

The usage of the word “milk” for non dairy products is hundreds of years old.

Should peanut butter be allowed to call itself “butter” by that logic?

I think they should have a full mass spec analysis given for it. I've tried lactose free milk and it turns out it's not just the lactose in milk I'm allergic to.

Of course I don't know your situation, but most lactose intolerance is not an allergy, it's an inability to produce lactase, so the lactose gets digested by excited microorganisms instead of processed by your body. This often causes discomfort, as the microorganisms don't care if things go smoothly.

Depends. Dairy milk? Oat milk? Soy milk?

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