Milk, Or Not?

A debate rages as India’s top food regulator releases a draft regulation restraining plant-based milk from using the word “milk” on their labels

- Meenakshi Sushma

Back in 1226 AD, historians for the first time documented a kind of milk that humans could consume as an alternative to the one that animals produce. Kitab al-tabikh, an Arab cookbook from Baghdad, has recipes with sweet almond milk as an ingredient. In 1390s, The Forme of Cury, a collection of 200 medieval English recipes, mentioned “almand mylke”, or almond milk. Over centuries, several cultures have adapted alternative milk. In Southeast Asia and even India, coconut milk is used as a beverage and added to sweet and savoury dishes. It was, therefore, a rude shock to the plant-based milk industry when the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) issued a draft regulation stating that they could no longer use the word “milk” on their labels.

The draft, made public for comments on July 21, 2020, states that for such products, “dairy term or phonetically similar or spell alike terms” shall not be used in the nomenclature. FSSAI calls it Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Amendment Regulations, 2020, and says the change will clear confusion among consumers and allow them to make informed choices. “For instance, if the label says almond milk, the consumer might get confused that the product has almond as well as milk,” explains R S Sodhi, managing director, Amul.