Lonsberry: OF NUTS AND NIPPLES

We need to talk about nuts and nipples.

 

               Specifically, about the fact that nuts don’t have nipples.

 

               The government is confused about this. And I’m not surprised. When a Supreme Court nominee, lacking a biology degree, is unwilling to define what a woman is, that’s not a good sign. When the federal government sees men pissing in the women’s room as the civil rights issue of our day, you’ve got to expect something’s gone haywire.

 

               Which gets us back to nuts and nipples.

 

               This week, the Biden Food and Drug Administration, in furtherance of the revolution, has proclaimed that the slurry made by grinding up nuts, beans and grains and mixing them with water can legally be called “milk.”

 

               Specifically, liquefied oats, soybeans and almonds can now be referred to as “milk.” Apparently, if they identify as milk, you have to go along with it. And just like men can call themselves women, nut juice can now call itself milk.

 

               Even though it’s just nut juice.

 

               Because “milk” is a word with a meaning. A specific, unwavering scientific meaning. Milk is the nutritious fluid produced by mammary glands. Mammary glands are the organs bestowed by nature on female mammals. Not mammals which identify as females after a particularly rigorous fifth-grade year, not mammals assigned female status by patriarchal veterinarians at birth, but actual, real biological females.

 

               The mammary glands of female mammals produce milk for the nourishment of the young.

 

               Usually this involves a nipple. Or two. Or 10, or – for the common tenrec – 36. Only the duckbill platypus gets away with having no nipples.

 

               But however nature has rigged the specific delivery device, milk comes from nipples.

 

               Not nuts.

 

               Or oats or soybeans.

 

               But that fact is ignored by clever marketers and conniving Democrats who sell liquid concoctions called “soy milk,” “oat milk” and “almond milk.” Don’t get me wrong. These products are fine. They meet the needs of people with allergies or philosophies that don’t tolerate actual milk. And that’s great. Some of the stuff actually ends up in my refrigerator, used by various members of my family whose commitment to upstate New York dairy farmers is not as great as my own.

 

               Which is where the FDA ruling is problematic. When the government declares that truth-in-labeling laws don’t prevent marketers from calling juice milk, producers of actual milk get a little bent out of shape. They figure that if the feds say you can get milk off a tree, that will reduce market share for milk you get from a teet.

 

               Put another way, if it’s ok to call juice that identifies as milk milk, dairymen believe real milk is getting ripped off.

 

               And I think they’ve got a point.

 

               You can’t call margarine butter, and you can’t call Kool Whip whipped cream, and you can’t call sparkling cider champagne, so why can you call nut juice milk? It’s not accurate, and it’s implicitly dishonest. It creates a perceived equality between products that are dramatically different. One comes out of the back end of a cow and the other comes out of a chemistry lab.

 

               And that’s not right. Actual milk is a gift of nature and nature’s God, to be used for special things, like feeding baby calves and making French-onion dip.

 

               And you don’t make milk out of oats, you put milk on oats, to fight diabeetus.

 

               And soybeans? Better living through chemistry has allowed soybeans to become the prime component of every food on earth. And, yes, if you bleach soybeans and grind them to a powder and add water you get watery white stuff that you can process into tofu, if you’re that desperate, or which you can mislabel as milk and con Californians into buying to put in their espresso.

 

               And that’s the issue here, really: It’s a con.

 

               You can’t call potatoes oranges. You can’t call beef pork. And you can’t call juice milk.

 

               And you can’t attack the livelihood of America’s dairy farmers, who support the economies of much of rural America and whose product – unlike nuts, beans and grains – is designed by nature to be nutritionally complete.

 

               God bless the nut juice drinkers, thank goodness a product exists to meet their needs and tastes.

 

               But that product isn’t milk.

 

               And it shouldn’t be called milk.

 

               Milk comes from nipples. Nuts don’t have nipples. Milk doesn’t come from nuts.

 

               Even Joe Biden should be able to understand that.