What is 🥛 milk?
And some questions 🙋🏻♀️
How much a particular food is understood or consumed in a society has more to do with the amount of cash 💰 fuelling its lobbying and advertising, than how good it objectively tastes 😋 or the nutritional benefits it offers. Companies are in constant legal battles 🤼♀️ with each other on recipes, naming rights, even when their products may be hard to tell apart 🙃.
Right now, the definition of ‘milk’ is in hot debates between plant-based 🌱 and animal-based 🐄 manufacturers. Is it okay to label non-animal based milk, such as oat milk, ‘milk’? Is it deceiving 🤔, or just marketing 🤑? What is the scientific definition of milk anyway? Is it defined based on how it is produced, nutritional values or molecular composition 🧪? Or is ‘milk’ just a manmade concept that is up for interpretation; and along with many other words, its meaning changes through history and updates according to popular cultural norms and context of its time?
Here’s how Merriam-Webster dictionary 📖 defines milk, which appears to cover both bases: milk produced by mammals and broadly, also plant-based milk-like substances.
I don’t recall such heated debates 🗣 about soy or coconut milk, both Asian pantry staples 🍜, while I was growing up. Was it because they only served a minority, mostly non-white population? Have the recent contention bubbled up because these food products have finally worked their way through mainstream western diets 🥞 and started being perceived as threats to incumbent dairy producers’ livelihood?
Can’t milk just be what I add to my coffee ☕️ or cereal? Why does it matter where it came from? Why, if they froth up in nearly identical ways when steamed, are we debating about the definition of one word as if our identity depended on it 🤬?
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Why do we pit ourselves against each other? Why can’t we embrace our differences? Why don’t we learn more about each other’s points of view? Why must everything be black and white? Why aren’t we more at ease with ambiguity? Why might it be a good idea to challenge our default understanding? Why aren’t we more curious about the differences between all the varieties? Why do we not talk about which type works best, and when? Why can’t we simply ask ourselves which we prefer, or can we not even tell them apart blindfolded? Why does everything have to do with everything?
Tell me what you think by leaving a comment below!
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