Don’t look now, but the latest front in the culture wars has been opened in our refrigerators.

It all started last month when the federal Food and Drug Administration riled up the dairy industry. For several years, the federal agency has been drafting guidelines to "help ensure appropriate labeling of plant-based products that are marketed and sold as alternatives to milk."

These include products such as soy, oat and almond milks, which the FDA collectively refers to throughout the draft as PBMAs, or "plant-based milk alternatives."

In an Alice-in-Wonderland, Through-the-Looking-Glass kind of logic, the FDA concluded from the results of focus groups and public comments that consumers generally understand that plant-based fluids do not contain milk and choose almond, soy, etc. fluids because they are NOT milk.

In other words, people can be trusted to realize that almond milk doesn’t come from cows fed exclusively on almonds, and they choose to buy said almond milk for health, dietary or philosophical reasons.

Big Milk, in the form of the nonprofit National Milk Producers Federation urged the FDA to reconsider its definition of "milk," underscoring the importance of dispelling "the lie of plant-based beverages masquerading as milk.

The NMPF claims by letting non-milk be called milk and letting its health claims go unchallenged the great American milk-drinking public is being duped and deceived.

And just like everything else, our food choices have become political choices in the frothing maelstrom that is social media.

Plant-based alternative food, whether almond milk or plant-based burgers, is seen as a rebellion against an increasingly industrialized food industry and a threat to the Republic in some right-wing circles.

But really isn’t it about whose ox, or in this case dairy cow, is getting gored? Milk producers are worried plant-based “milks” are cutting into their markets. Plant-based “milk” buyers have perfectly valid reasons for buying the products other than sticking it to The Man (whoever He may be in this scenario.)

— EKF