• Bickfords introduced its plant-based milk range in 2020.
    Bickfords introduced its plant-based milk range in 2020.
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The growing popularity of alternative milks and proteins raises questions around how we define traditional concepts of milk and meat. Dr Philip Button writes. This article first appeared in the January/February issue of Food & Drink Business. 

Decades ago, meat and milk had a simple and straight-forward definition. Plant-based diets were in the minority and so were plant-based products. Few people really knew what such a lifestyle involved and even fewer followed them – they were definitely not approaching mainstream.

Fast forward to the last decade and especially the last five years, and the booming plant-based movement is pushing the boundaries of traditional definitions of diets and food products. While they may still be in a minority, their increasing dominance in diverse product categories suggests demand is widespread across many demographic groups.

What does this mean, for example, for dairy milk and soy milk, which have happily co-existed for centuries in different parts of the world, only to be in a terminology war over the last few years? It is time to rethink product definitions or terminology or time to redefine scope.

Not that new

With the angst by some over the broad use of the word ‘milk’, some may believe that this use in a non-dairy context is a recent trend – not so. For example, it has been noted that coconut milk has been known by that name for some 800 years, with its origins in India and South-East Asia.

Almond milk (from the Middle East, northern Africa and England) and soy milk (from China) both originated in the 14th century, under those names, though commercial production only commenced around 110 years ago, in France. Rice milk is a much newer product on the market, and next year will mark 100 years since its development in the US.

Even though the word milk has been in use for many hundreds of years in the context of plant products, the increasing market dominance of plant-based milks has made it a particularly contentious issue, subject to legal challenges and intense scrutiny by the world’s leading regulatory bodies.

In considering this current debate, it can be interesting to delve back in time to early definitions of words and their origins. When Old English was spoken, between about 850 and 1150, meat tended to refer to solid sustenance or provisions, and was even used as a verb, especially in the context of providing sustenance to animals, which was unrelated to meat being obtained from those animals.

Changes over time

From early on, this definition has certainly been widespread, even referring to solid parts of plants as food, for example coconut meat. In essence, the word ‘meat’ was a word used for food. 

While we may think of the plant-based movement as a recent phenomenon, it has its origins centuries ago. There has been references to vegetarianism and tofu as a meat replacement for more than 1000 years, with mentions in Chinese literature from 965.

In the Western world, concepts for meat replacement didn’t appear until more than 900 years later, in 1888. While the idea of tofu and legumes as meat replacements are well-established, internet search analysis by Google shows consumer searches for plant-based meat were not on the radar until 2019.

So where does leave us now in just two years? Myriad meat alternatives or mock meat products have become available to satisfy the huge and ongoing demand for such products. What these products are called depends on the context and the consumer.

Meat has an accepted and common definition today, but vegetarians and vegans might tend to use it out of convenience to refer to mock meat products. But flexitarians may have difficulty referring to alternative proteins as meat due to existing definitions in their diet.

A cultured quandary

The alternate meat development that is really pushing boundaries and forcing a definition rethink is cultured meat. The simple question – is cultured meat actually meat or non-meat – has no simple answer. It simply doesn’t fit into anything current and doesn’t satisfy criteria for any existing definition.

Also, how would it fit with definitions of veganism and vegetarianism? Strictly speaking, it is not the actual flesh of an animal, so it can’t be regarded as meat by most definitions. But it is derived from meat and is therefore identical to meat. Surely this would fit a definition of meat?

However, there are arguments why it isn’t meat. If we look at cultured meat from the vegetarian and vegan perspective, people that follow these diets are against killing animals and consuming animal products. Cultured meat doesn’t involve the killing of animals, and it doesn’t actually contain any animal products, or does it? It is derived from animal cells, so does that mean it can be called meat?

The rise of cultured meat, with the Singapore government recently approving cultured chicken for human consumption, highlights the need for new definitions need to be made or existing definitions to be changed, just as the meaning of meat has changed over time.

People need convenient terms and words in everyday language and the fact is the words meat and milk are convenient and understood by most as well as already in use. If almond milk or soy milk for example, are not called milk, what is the alternative? Changes to established products would surely create confusion and havoc in the food industry, retail environment and consumers’ minds.

A better option may be to extend or alter existing definitions and enable increased consumer awareness of the various products, their composition and how they fit into a healthy diet and lifestyle.

Dr Philip Button is a food microbiologist. His start-up Food Microbiology Academy is based in Melbourne and offers consulting and training services to the food manufacturing industry.

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