Plant juice that identifies as milk - oat, rice, whatever - was given life by the Clinton Woo Era but it really took off when President Obama declared that standards of identity in food were a guideline rather than a rule.
So the days when Kraft could be sued by the federal government for noting how much milk went into its cheese - 'suggesting' its calcium level - gave way to vegan bacon and broccoli rice and anything else you wanted to call anything.
But a lot of those purchases were by people who were told by political allies that Milk Is Murder and cows cause global warming. When Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. defected from Friend of Obama to Friend of Trump, he took a lot of them with him. And he declared that real milk (he dialed down his raw milk claims after California essentially killed the price of eggs when their raw milk films refused to give sick animal disease vectors medicine) was good and plant juice that identified as milk was ultra-processed food full of emulsifiers, gums, and oils that were health food a few years ago. Basically, causing diabetes or whatever their loony claims are this year.
Rosy projections of 2024 are no more. Fake milk is now ultraprocessed, like gluten-free foods.
Alt-milk, that supposedly healthy alternative for rich white people, was suddenly verboten by Food Tank cultists. No more premium price because cost doesn't matter, they're scrambling to stop their eroding market share. Circana, a marketing company which just a year ago said near milk is here to stay, is now warning that the industry is in decline. It has dropped 5 percent since Kennedy became a Republican.
While the sauerkraut he endorses has increased 10 percent in sales.
Rolling Stone, Robert De Niro, environmentalists; they were right saying that if one of their own ever got power, he'd change commerce.
