Sunday, May 22, 2022

Watering the Milk and Vegan Milk

Stumbled on a factoid in the footnotes to a book I'm reading: "The Weirdest People in the World"--about which more later.  The footnote ties to a mention of what economists call "credence goods".  Thoreau originated a famous quote, now used by lawyers: "a trout in the milk" which the piece at the link explains. 

The context is that buffalo milk in markets in an Indian city was tested and found to be adulterated by the addition of varying amounts of water, from 3 percent to more than 40 percent. But consumers couldn't distinguish the adulteration by taste (hence a credence good). 

In the US milk, at least cows milk, is tested for quality, such as fat content. Thoreau's observation--that finding a trout in the milk would be sure proof the milk had been watered--shows this wasn't always the case in the U.S.

As far as I can tell, based on an extensive 10 minutes of research, there are no standards for plant-based milk--all the attention seems to be devoted to the issue of whether calling it "milk" is misleading.  

I'd guess that milk testing evolved well before the idea of requiring nutritional labels on food, and as long as plant-based milks have such labels it removes any impetus for a testing regime comparable to that for milk. 

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