Crying over Spilled Soy-Based Beverage!

Crying over Spilled Soy-Based Beverage!

I use soymilk. In fact, I use a lot of soy products. I like soy. Dairy milk gives me the heebie-jeebies so I dump soymilk onto my breakfast cereal. The main problem with soymilk is that the calcium added to it doesn't absorb into the body as easily as calcium naturally found in dairy (and other) products. Since I wouldn't use dairy milk either way, as least soymilk gives me another source for my calcium--albeit a less efficient source.

Now, the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) is filing a "trade complaint" to stop soymilk from being called "soymilk." They want it to be called soybean beverage or something like that. They feel that putting milk in the name gives the soymilk producers an unfair advantage. Besides, the NMPF says, calling it soymilk is incorrect anyway because milk comes from cows, not soybeans. As Chris Galen of the NMPF told ABC's John Stossel, "Unless you can demonstrate that the product comes from a cow, you don't got milk."

How wonderful! The National Milk Producers Federation has decided it owns a word. Let's look a little further into Galen's New Collegiate Dictionary. The stuff new mothers use to feed their babies can no longer be called "breast milk;" it would have to be called "breast beverage" or "human juice." (Unless they're suggesting new mothers are cows--an ill-fated endeavor even for the bravest people.)

(For those of you who are like me and don't trust John Stossel, 20/20, or ABC, I verified the information on both the CNN and NMPF web sites.)

Imagine this kind of thing happening in other industries. For instance, if the national radio organizations claimed that music could only come from the radio--demanding live bands, compact disks, and videos no longer be called music. "Hey, Louie! Have you seen that new Metallica pleasant-noise video? It rocks!"

By the way, as long as the NMPF is claiming ownership of words, are they claiming ownership of pus, blood, hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, cholesterol, and saturated fat, too? You can't have milk without most or all of those; at least in this day and age. (Hee hee! I stumbled upon PeTA's "Milk Sucks" web site, too.)

And it isn't like "soy" is printed in tiny letters and "milk " is printed in large letters--you know, like that teeny tiny "don't drink and drive" in the corner of a big beer ad. When you see the word "soymilk" on the carton, the letters are all the same size and the word starts with "soy." Anyone who could confuse that with dairy milk probably had sometime earlier confused turpentine with dairy milk.

One of the brands I buy is Silk, which, I assume, is a contraction of soymilk. Now, THERE'S a problem. Someone might walk through the store thinking, "I think I'm going to make a nice shirt today." Then they see the carton of soymilk labeled "Silk" and think, "Say, silk would make a nice shirt!" and buy a few cartons. (For those of you thinking that someone buying a carton of silk probably must have earlier made a shirt out of turpentine, remember, some nylons were packaged in big plastic eggs.) The milk producers aren't the ones who should be worried. The silk producers are the rightful bearers of concern.

If the NMPF is concerned about consumer confusion, perhaps they look at their own products in the dairy case. The whole milk is near the skim milk. The two are NOT interchangeable--ask any whole-milk or skim-milk drinkers--and should not be near each other. And what of the half-and-half? For consumer confusion's sake, that should be on the other side of the store.

We mustn't forget the "Got Milk?" ads. You know those ads with the "milk" moustaches. It's not milk; it's yogurt. If we can't put the word "milk" in soymilk, why is it okay to call yogurt "milk?" Seems to me that that's a case of "udder" hypocrisy.

Instead of going trying to endanger our soybean farmers, perhaps the NMPF should concern itself with potential lawsuits from National Car Rental, Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, and the World Wrestling Federation.

The arrogance of such legal action is annoying. Just thinking about the NMPF is giving me an upset stomach! I need an antacid.

Pass me the Beverage of Magnesia, please!

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