Fluff time: is it chocolate milk, or is it just chocolate flavored milk?

I’d say for legal purposes in labelling and advertising, it’s chocolate-flavored milk; chocolate milk (which is what my mother always called it) is simply a shortened, easier-to-say term.

I agree with @Pachy

The FDA won’t let something be labeled “chocolate” unless it contains all of the constituants of the cocoa bean, i.e. both the cocoa solids and the cocoa butter. Chocolate flavored products usually contain only the cocoa solids (aka cocoa powder).

^ So chocolate milk get to be chocolate milk because it has both ingredients from the start while it was in soime huge vat before it was packaged?

@Hypocrisy_Central No, it was not allowed to be labelled or advertised as “chocolate milk” because it never had both ingredients. The dairy used cocoa powder instead of whole chocolate to get the chocolate flavor (same goes for chocolate syrup). That’s a perfectly reasonable way to make something taste like chocolate; the cocoa butter would just jack up the fat content and mess with the texture of the product, so it’s a good thing that they didn’t use whole chocolate. But cocoa powder isn’t chocolate in the FDA’s book.

@thorninmud That’s interesting. So, when I say white chocolate isn’t chocolate, I’m actually technically correct from what you are saying. I wonder why they can call
it chocolate?

@thorninmud No, it was not allowed to be labelled or advertised as “chocolate milk” because it never had both ingredients. The dairy used cocoa powder instead of whole chocolate to get the chocolate flavor (same goes for chocolate syrup).
So, by legal definition, not actuality, it is not chocolate milk unless the grind up actual chocolate, or melt it, and add it to the milk, if what they use is made from chocolate but not the actual chocolate then it is just ”chocolate flavored” milk?

@JLeslie Actually, in 2002 the FDA broke down and created an exception for white chocolate (which contains only the fat of the cocoa bean, not the solids), so that it could be labelled as “white chocolate” instead of the ridiculously clumsy “white confectionery coating”. This was basically a concession to conventionally accepted nomenclature.

Of course, “Chocolate milk” is also also conventionally accepted nomenclature, but at least the current standard does allow the word “chocolate” to appear (followed by “flavored”), whereas the word “chocolate” wasn’t allowed to appear at all in connection with white chocolate before the rule change.

The FDA and HHS is not picky enough about some labeling and then picky about chocolate (or was picky about chocolate). There is some humor in it.