milk, verb
1. to get milk from an animal.
2. to get money or information out of someone, often in an unfair or dishonest way.
The Coca-Cola company announced last year that its “better-for-you” milk product division, fairlife LLC, had surpassed $1 billion in annual retail sales.
“Just as most businesses in 2021, we had to work against the headwinds of global supply chain issues,” said Tim Doelman, CEO of fairlife. “Our teams remained agile and made the right decisions for the business. This allowed us to meet consumer demand for our top selling ultra-filtered milk and Core Power protein shakes while seeing unprecedented growth for newer products, like fairlife Nutrition Plan.”
I’m not sure what ‘ultra-filtered’ milk looks like, or tastes like. But it sounds like it’s probably “better-for-you” than regular milk that’s only ultra-pasteurized. And it sure as heck ought to be “better-for-you”, considering that ‘fairlife’ milk at City Market costs three times as much, per ounce, as regular City Market brand milk.
In this way, the Coca-Cola company has put the verb, “milk”, back into the noun, “milk”.
I don’t think ‘Coca-Cola’ itself is necessarily “better-for-you”… since it’s essentially high-fructose corn syrup and phosphoric acid, mixed with water. (Unless you like the ‘diet’ version, in which case you are drinking aspartame and phosphoric acid, mixed with water.)
But maybe drinking a Coke can bring world peace? That would be nice.
But this ‘world peace’ development would obviously make video games less exciting.
There’s an exciting battle going on, meanwhile, between the dairy industry and the plant-milk industry. As you may have heard.
The dairy farmers want the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to make it illegal to use the word “milk” to label a product that didn’t come from an animal. The FDA is the main bureaucracy in charge of food labeling, drug safety, and allowing dangerous chemicals like aspartame to be used in food.
“Allowing unlawfully labeled ‘plant-based’ imitation dairy foods to proliferate poses an immediate and growing risk to public health; it is a clear dereliction of the FDA’s duty to enforce federal law and agency regulations,” wrote National Milk Producers Federation President Jim Mulhern in a letter sent the U.S. Food and Drug Administration back in 2020.
Without much success.
Apparently, the National Milk Producers Federation thinks almond milk and soy milk and oat milk and cashew milk and all the other milks in the dairy case are ‘imitating’ cows milk. I guess they have a point. The plant-based milks are typically ‘white’, just like cow’s milk… and they often come in cartons that look just like the cartons that cow’s milk comes in… and they taste pretty darn good poured over a bowl of Rice Krispies or Capt’ Crunch, just like cow’s milk does.
Three years later — in fact, just this week — the FDA decided they would allow the manufacturers of ‘plant-based milks’ to voluntarily include information on their carton, showing a comparison between the nutrients in cow’s milk and the nutrients in whatever plant-based milk was inside the carton. No pressure, guys.
I imagine the dairy farmers belonging to the National Milk Producers Federation were not completely satisfied with that decision. Maybe everyone needs to sit down together and share a Coke?
But I can understand the FDA’s reluctance to make it illegal to call almond milk, “milk”. Because of the the verb.
The makers of plant-based milks can easily claim that the word, “milk”, on their carton, is not a noun.
“Milk” is a verb. The dictionary doesn’t lie.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.