They're not even remotely substitutable. Different plant milks aren't even culinarily substitutable for each other. It's like substituting vinegar for cooking wine: broadly speaking, it'll usually work, but they're really not the same thing.
"milk" is more of a visual descriptor than a culinary classification.
People substituting almond milk for cow milk in cereal is it’s number one use. That’s cooking by the preparing food for consumption definition, even if you don’t use heat that’s hardly required.
Oh, absolutely; I'm saying it's not any better to substitute, say, almond milk for cow milk. Worse, even; substituting vinegar for wine won't usually make the whole recipe fall apart altogether the way not enough fat will.
Hyperbole much? If they weren't remotely substitutable then why do coffee shops freely offer them as a... substitute. And interchangeably between different plant-based ones at that.
They probably don't work interchangeably in scenarios where the physical characteristics of the milk is a linchpin of the recipe. Baking in general requires precise temperature control and ingredient control (eg. cake, pastry, and bread flour types), whereas adding milk is more of a flavoring that doesn't impact the resulting drink at much (your coffee won't be a chewy inedible mess if you put a different kind of milk).
What harm is done by saying plant-based milk? Everybody knows what we are talking about. It is crystal clear (yet white).
Milk is still understood by default as cow milk. It will change when and if cow milk is not as widespread as today, and then the word milk will keep reflecting the reality, as today.
The FDA, as in many parts of the world (in EU too, for instance), forbids calling such plant-based drinks milk because they are bribed and receive aggressive lobbying from the dairy industry [1].
How are we supposed to call them? Plant-based drinks that are white and look like milk? They are not always used as drinks since they can be used to cook, and are not the only plant based drinks. Yes, this makes it difficult to speak about them. Yes, this is possibly the point, along with avoiding that people think them as alternatives to cow milk.
When you are telling people that "this is not milk", you are spreading this lobbying. What is your point? People saying milk for plant based drinks will not be convinced by this prescriptive approach anyway.
> When you are telling people that "this is not milk", you are spreading this lobbying.
I neither object to your fallacious assertion, nor find personal shame in supporting its cause if the objective hammer countinues to drop hard on the class of uncritical marketing wank that you've just demonstrated.
Food is labeled based on its culinary classification. Something can be culinarily milk without coming out of a teat.