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People insist in considering almond milk (and many other vegetable based milks for that matter) as a mere substitute for cow milk, and not for a kind of food in its own right.

Where I live, with the exception of oat milk, all soy, rice or almond milk comes with tricalcium phosphate and sometimes sugar, some flavour and even vegetable fat. Same for yoghurt.

This tendency to add stuff (particularly sugar and fat) to food is becoming more frequent in bread and other vegetable products that were healthier once.

Sure, it's not the same as dairy milk, but I don't get this whole "don't call plant-based milk 'milk'" meme. What about Milkweed, or the white oozing "milt" that comes out of a dandelion stalk? Can those also not be called milk?

Maybe if there was a good word that quickly described what rice, soy, or oat milk was it would be OK. But simply calling them "juice" seems to be even more of a culinary misnomer.

it's not about what you call it... it about not adding s to it to make it more like "cow milk" now that you call it milk

like in, "look, kids are eating this for breakfast, we need to fortify it vitamins and stuff to prevent deficiencies"... nevermind that those extra vitamins will just increase the risk of cancers or stuff in adults. it's becoming hard to find the "un-enhanced" sortiments of many products.

While I'm generally a fan of leaving foods as untouched as possible, I have not seen any link between vitamin D3 in the dosage applied to milk and cancer. Conversely, vitamin D deficiency is a population health problem (widespread), so the tradeoff is warranted.
Of course, I forgot vitamins. Who needs doctors when we have corporate nannies telling us how to eat healthily.

I don't know about cancer, but food additives aren't always a good idea.

Extra calcium is not really absorbed without vitamin D3 (more specifically, calcitriol), but I imagine that if one has a kidney condition one would have to avoid such food additives.

Even the addition of iodine to salt is not without consequences.

There was a time in the US margarine had to be dyed pink, so that consumers wouldn't take it for butter. Of course no one would confuse the two: it's just a disingenuous way of using antitrust law against the very competition it's supposed to protect.

The same thing happens here: soy yoghurt is 'soy dessert', soy/rice/* milk is '* beverage'.

I'm not sure this is actually enforced, or brands are just covering their asses.

I don't get this whole "don't call plant-based milk 'milk'" meme

I'm on both sides of this. I think it should be called milk, and the public should understand that the nutrition is very different, but perhaps for public interest not calling it milk is better because cow milk does offer more bang-for-buck and nutrition (particularly protein and vit D fortification) and the public could easily overlook this. I lean toward not calling it milk, because everyone who wants almond milk knows what to buy or can figure it out quite easily, even if it's not called milk any more.

They should really call almond milk: "drought inducing almond juice" to fully reflect the consequences of that choice.
Drought inducing? Are you forgetting that feeding cows is much more inneficient than growing crops? They drink lots of water and eat lots of corn/soy, and that corn and soy requires lots of water to grow.

AND you have to feed the calf a milk substitute because we're stealing it's meal.

If you must have milk, drink dairy substitutes if you care about drought.

What would you call cow's milk then? It takes more water to make cow's milk than almond milk.
Here in the land of corn syrup we have 2 national brands of almond milk that have at least 4 varieties, combining plain or vanilla with sweetened or unsweetened. Similar for other vegetable milks.

They have calcium and thickeners added though.

Well, isn't that because the biggest consumers are people who've gone vegan or dairy-free but still want something milk-like?
almond milk is water and almond + sugar
And currently the dairy industry in Europe is litigating to ensure that only mammalian milk is allowed to be sold as milk, this would appear to going in the face of hundreds of years of history of calling other things milk. I wonder what Milk of Magnesia will have to be renamed to
That happened in the US. Immediately after, "soy milk" became "soymilk" and "almond milk" became "almondmilk."
Wow. Goes to show how things can go unnoticed. I just went the the fridge to fact check your comment (!) and discovered cashewmilk, coconutmilk, and soymilk. I had never noticed the disappearing space
> And currently the dairy industry in Europe is litigating to ensure that only mammalian milk is allowed to be sold as milk

Not sure what you mean by "currently" and "the dairy industry" and "litigating", but a (the?) relevant case was decided by the ECJ back in June. Press release: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...; full judgement: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...

For whatever it's worth, the lawsuit was brought by a German society that aims to ensure fair competition by truth in advertising. (Were they bought by the dairy industry? Possible.)

The judgement is clearly based on the definition "The term “milk” shall mean exclusively the normal mammary secretion obtained from one or more milkings without either addition thereto or extraction therefrom." from EU law made by the European Parliament and the Council. (Were they bought by the dairy industry? Possible. But given this sentence that is part of EU law, the court didn't have much choice.)

Many languages are spoken in the EU (as anyone can check by the several translations available for the many documents published by the EU: https://curia.europa.eu), so this sounds really silly.

I say this because most meanings are lost in translation if we're to use them literally.

Take the english word 'oil'.

- In Spain, oil would be translated to 'aceite': olive oil is 'aceite de oliva'; engine lubricating oil is 'aceite de motor'. The same thing happens in French, but a literal translation would sound weird in Portuguese, because

- In Portugal, olive oil is simply called 'azeite', a word that is not used for sunflower seed oil, called 'óleo de girassol', or motor oil, called 'óleo' or 'óleo de motor'.

A similar thing happens with the word 'cream', translated to 'natas' if it refers to the solid phase of cow milk, or 'creme' if it refers to some form of paste, be it an edible spread, a soup, or some body lotion.

So the very fact that they translated 'cream' as 'natas', in the portuguese version, means that the context is everything and that people are not unquestioning automata.

As if customers were too stupid to understand what the term "milk" means.

/drinks from his sunmilk

This EU quasi-trademark system for food labeling is such a racket.

I blame champaignians for kicking it off.

The protected food names scheme makes a lot of sense If a food label highlights a regional traditional food then it must come from that area if they have applied for protection. Seems in consumers and manufacturers best interest. Here's a map of British protected foods, I see none I would contest: https://goo.gl/tyE4Bm
My judgment is somewhat clouded by the fact that I have no idea what many of the things on this map are, but in general, I get it if we're talking about, like, Prince Edward Island oysters, but I don't think regional distinctions make much sense for preparations. I think it makes more sense to delineate the preparation required to call something by a particular name (so, for instance, if you wanted to really clamp down on Parmesan cheese, I'd prefer specifying the method you have to use over just saying if it's from Parma it's good but if it's from Wisconsin you can't call it that).
It's an interesting bunch that.

I'm not convinced that 'Welsh Lamb' is in any real sense a regional traditional food that differs from English lamb, but on consumer protection grounds I also don't reckon that you should be able to label random lamb as Welsh anyway. And some others ('Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb' is the one I know best) really are quite distinct from their equivalents elsewhere and really should be recognised as its own thing.

Manufacturers (esp agricultural) are the ones protected. We don't have the same "food fraud" issues that have become a problem in the states (mislabeling fish, etc.).

People used to say "french campaign," they knew some of it was made elsewhere. I would wager more people knew that some champagne was made elsewhere than people who knew that champagne is a region. Same for Greek Yoghurt or feta cheese. These were considered types of products.

Good or bad, these are pure agricultural lobby initiatives, not consumer protection. IMO, it's not too different from Hollywood getting regional trademark protection for to word "romantic comedy."

I am French and I am very happy with the quasi-trademark rules.

This way, when I buy a product named "X", I know that it follows a standard without having to look at all the details. If I think "X" is overrated, I will buy the lesser known "Y" that I know is just as good, because it has its own standard. Same as with name brands, really.

Speaking about Champagne, fundamentally, it is just a sparkling wine. No one forces you to buy Champagne if you want sparkling wine. In France, we have alternatives that can be just as good: Cremant, Blanquette, Clairette,... or even generic "mousseux".

The only thing that makes Champagne Champagne is that it has to meet a certain standard, and part of it is that it has to be made in the Champagne region.

I mean, it's like buying a Swiss watch that has nothing to do with Switzerland. It may be a very good watch, but don't call it a Swiss watch unless it is Swiss.

I wonder how much of this was related to the risk that Milk killed a lot of people in the Middle Ages.
With the access to fresh milk from their own farm animals that they had? Why would milk kill "a lot of people in the middle ages"?

Lots of rural communities in Europe lived until the 50s or so not much unlike the middle ages (no fridges, no electricity, farming, etc) and they weren't harmed by their milk at all.

Since this is also pre-pasteurization I'm thinking all kinds of diseases could be transmitted by cow's milk.
Pasteurization is only necessary for transportation. If you drink fresh milk from a clean source, the risk of disease is quite low. And I have nothing to gain by sharing this as a vegan :P
Tuberculosis?
> Milk killed a lot of people in the Middle Ages

[citation needed]

I don't think it killed at lot of people but it was pre-pasteurization so fresh milk didn't keep in a drinkable state for very long. Most of it got turned into butter or cheese pretty quickly. Almond milk was almonds (with a long shelf life) and boiled water (relatively clean) so less risk.

I'm sure people got sick buying hooky milk though.

Almond milk goes bad pretty quickly too. Not quite as quickly as fresh cow's milk, but you still don't want to keep that stuff around.
This is pre-refrigeration, pre-pasteurization, and milk is an awesome growth medium for bacteria plus a direct vector to various cow born diseases. Even with refrigeration and a much better disease model, modern medicine, etc raw milk regularly kills people so historically you would expect a high lifetime risks even if people where drinking it within hours of milking it.

https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/rawmilk-outbreaks.htm...

Do you mean lactose intolerance?
Put 1 cup of Almonds and 3 cups of water in a blender, blend, filter and you have almond milk. Substitute Almonds for Peanuts or Coconut and you have Peanut or Coconut Milk. Easy and not expensive.
Just fyi to people making almond milk this way is often more expensive than just buying almond milk from the store unless you have a cheap way to buy almonds in bulk.
Store bought is often watered down and has a really small percentage of almond, at least where I looked.
Don't forget soaking to remove phytic acid.
Isn't same thing released when chewing/eating ?
Unless you have a very good blender, you won't have the same texture.
Assuming you already have a sufficiently powerful blender, anyway.
The book "The Lost Art of Real Cooking" by Alabala and Natziger describes how to make what they claim to be medieval-style almond milk and almond butter (apparently quite different from what we buy in stores today).
Interesting article!

In Sicily (especially in the eastern part of the island) almond milk is quite a common beverage, it also makes for a killer "granita".

A similar (almost identical) dessert is the Turkish Tavuk Göğsü, which probably implies a common origin for both dishes
I'd say muhallebi is closer to blancmange than tavuk göğsü, which is literally made from chicken meat.
Blancmange and rice pudding? Yes, I'm definitely in favour of adding almonds to those delightful desserts.
I’m not a big fan of almond milk in general but it’s quite nice to make oatmeal with.