[The world of plant-based alternatives is vast; for every new
vegan option on store shelves, there’s a “conventional” producer
wondering about the comparisons people will make between their two
products; even the labels defined by the FDA are in flux. ]
[[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

NAMING PLANT-BASED FOODS  
[[link removed]]


 

Emily Baron Cadloff
October 24, 2022
Modern Farmer
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ The world of plant-based alternatives is vast; for every new vegan
option on store shelves, there’s a “conventional” producer
wondering about the comparisons people will make between their two
products; even the labels defined by the FDA are in flux. _

Should oat milk be allowed to use the name milk if it's not obtained
from the mammary gland of an animal? , Sheila Fitzgerald,
Shutterstock.

 

From oat milk to vegan burgers, plant-based dairy and meat products
are gaining traction— and sparking debate over their names. But are
consumers actually confused about what they’re buying?

French marketing and advertising executives have their work cut out
for them. As of this month, France is the first European country to
ban words such as “steak,” “sausage” and “bacon” when
describing vegan or plant-based alternatives. (However, the word
“burger” is still allowed under French law.) The law states that
“products that do not belong to the animal world and which, in
essence, are not comparable” will not be able to share specific
terminology with products derived from animals.

There are similar court battles happening in North America, although
not on any country-wide scale, and they’re playing out differently
on this side of the Atlantic. In 2018, the City of Montreal sued
Rawesome Raw Vegan for using the word “cheese” on its packaging to
describe vegan cream cheese. In an email to Modern Farmer, a city
spokesperson said that the city received two complaints about Rawesome
products claiming to be cream cheese, but that cheese products are
governed by Canadian legislation and must “be obtained from the
mammary gland” of an animal. Montreal said that Rawesome products do
not meet these standards and, thus, it followed up on the complaints
to denounce this “problematic designation.”

However, the courts disagreed. While the City of Montreal won its
initial court battle, Rawesome appealed that decision and won earlier
this fall. Natalia Manole, lawyer for Rawesome, told members of the
media at the time that the decision was precedent- setting in Canada.
“Nobody has a monopoly on the word cheese.”

Courts in California were on the same page last year when they ruled
in favor of Miyoko’s Creamery, allowing them to use words such as
“butter” and “cheese” while marketing its vegan products. The
lawsuit was originally filed by the California Department of Food and
Agriculture in 2020, which said that, in using these terms, Miyoko’s
was deceiving consumers.

“There are a variety of cheeses: cow’s milk cheese, sheep’s milk
cheese, goat milk cheese,” says Miyoko’s Creamery CMO Rusti
Porter. “Why should plant milk cheese be any different? At
Miyoko’s, our plant milk cheeses are made using the same traditional
techniques as most animal cheeses. For this reason, we think plant
milk cheeses deserve a spot alongside animal-based cheeses. There’s
room for everyone at the table, and having more options is not only
better for consumers but better for the overall success of the
industry.”

Porter scoffs at the idea that customers would be confused by
plant-based analogs and says the result of the lawsuit is proof of
that. Further, Porter says the company is intentionally explicit in
its branding as a vegan product. “It’s not something we shy away
from; in fact, we think it’s a selling point,” says Porter says.
“Additionally, consumers are savvy enough to read packaging and see
what ingredients are used in products, so to say otherwise is to
underestimate consumers.”

However, some producer associations say that’s not where the
confusion might lie. Alan Bjerga, senior vice president of
communications with the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF),
calls the idea that customers might be confused between cow milk and
almond milk a “red herring.” Via email, Bjerga clarified that what
the NMPF is concerned about is “the implied similarity in
nutritional content that occurs when a manufacturer uses dairy terms
for non-dairy products without FDA-recognized qualifiers such as
‘alternative’ ‘substitute’ or ‘imitation.’”

Bjerga doesn’t hold back, telling Modern Farmer that “consumer
confusion over the nutritional merits of plant-based beverages versus
dairy is well established and has been acknowledged as a public health
issue by the last three Senate-confirmed FDA commissioners.
Plant-based lobbyists would like to confuse journalists and the public
as to our position, because they know our position has
substance—they’d rather switch the topic to fake arguments that
distract from their own declining sales.”

This back and forth over naming conventions goes beyond milk. In 2015,
Eat Just, Inc. (formerly Beyond Eggs and then Hampton Creek Foods) won
the right to use the word “mayo” on its egg-less JUST Mayo spread,
as long as it enhanced the label design to clarify that the product
was egg-free. The company was sued by Unilever, makers of Hellman’s
mayonnaise, ostensibly about the use of the word mayo and egg imagery
on the product’s label—but more specifically about Unilever’s
loss of market share. The lawsuit garnered a Change.org petition,
where more than 100,000 signers urged Unilever to “stop bullying
sustainable food companies.” Unilever dropped the lawsuit. While
JUST Egg no longer makes a mayonnaise substitute, it has ramped up
production on JUST Egg, an egg substitute made primarily from mung
beans.

The world of plant-based alternatives is vast, and for every new vegan
option hitting store shelves, there’s a “conventional” producer
wondering about the comparisons that people will make between their
two products. Chad Gregory, president and CEO of United Egg Producers
(UEP), says that some consumers might look at label images of
egg-substitute products and think they are buying real eggs. However,
a “more likely source of confusion is the belief that these products
are nutritionally equivalent to eggs. They are not,” Gregory says,
pointing to their sodium content as an example.

The actual definitions of terms such as “milk” and “yogurt”
are legislated by the FDA, which states that milk is a “lacteal
secretion.” For terms such as “eggs,” the UEP turns to the Food,
Drug and Cosmetic Act, which uses a “common” name. “The common
or usual name of our product, i.e., an egg laid by a bird, is
‘eggs.’ Non-egg products using this word may not be labeled in a
way that is truthful,” says Gregory.

However, even the labels as defined by the FDA are in flux. In 2018,
the FDA sent out a request for comment on the topic of naming dairy
products, and by January, 2019, it received close to 13,000
submissions. “These comments are helping to inform our thinking and
next steps on appropriate labeling of plant-based dairy
alternatives,” says a spokesperson for the FDA. The administration
will look to publish new guidance documents addressing plant-based
milks in the coming year, so those original definitions of “milk”
could change.

Until then, there’s a gray area for new producers in this emerging
market. NewYork-based CHKP Foods, which makes vegan yogurt with
chickpea protein, made sure its packaging and branding was clearly
marked for American consumers. “First, we made sure that we’re not
breaking any law,” says co-founder Noam Sharon, who is based in
Israel. But the naming goes further than simply getting on the right
side of potential legal issues. For CHKP, the name “yogurt” fits
because the process of making the product is essentially identical to
making dairy yogurt.

The chickpea mixture is fermented in the exact same process as the
dairy yogurt, although there are different formulations of bacterias
used for the different protein source. “There’s a very clear
threshold that a product needs to meet in terms of acidity in order to
call itself yogurt, and we’re totally there,” says Sharon. “If
we go through this entire process, the chemical or scientific process,
and the result of the process is actually the same, the only
difference is where it was sourced.” In this way, Sharon says that
the name “yogurt” has more to do with the production process
rather than the raw material. With chickpeas a common ingredient in so
many cultures, he says many customers are looking to incorporate
products just like this into their diets.

“From a culinary aspect, [chickpeas are] rooted deeply in our
conscience and tradition,” says Sharon. The idea that customers
might be confused about a chickpea-based product is one that Sharon
considers sincerely. For him, the answer isn’t in the names used.
It’s in the product labels, “setting proper labeling rules—not
in a prohibitive way but in a way that actually helps consumers make
good choices.”

While the FDA is considering its new guiding principles for labeling
plant-based products, a spokesperson says that the chief concern of
the agency is that all American “food products are labeled with
truthful and non-misleading information.”

For a company such as Miyoko’s Creamery, that’s exactly what it is
trying to do when it intentionally uses a word such as cheese or
butter to describe its products. Packaging and branding is an
incredibly thoughtful and time-intensive enterprise. Brands want to
make sure their products stand out on store shelves and that consumers
even respond emotionally to them. “Visual cues and verbal
conventions can reveal meaning to a consumer and build value for a
brand,” says Porter. “Using terms like “plant milk butter” or
“plant milk cheese” isn’t a hard decision for us; it’s simply
the quickest and most direct way to say what these products are.”

While not everyone would agree, it hasn’t stopped plant-based
producers such as Miyoko’s. After winning its suit last year, the
company closed a $52-million round of funding and is now sold in
30,000 stores across the US alone. But is it butter? For thousands of
customers, the answer seems to be yes.

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit portside.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]