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Full disclosure: 2.5y ago I worked at HC for 8m

You're right that the FDA definition of mayonnaise requires egg. This comes from depression-era laws where people were passing fraudulent products off as the real thing. I think those laws still matter, but kind of miss the point here.

As a different way to look at it, imagine a sort of food Turing Test. If it looks like the thing, it behaves like the thing in every meaningful way, and its taste is indistinguishable from the thing, is it not the thing? Maybe, maybe not, but I think it's an interesting question worth exploring.

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> You're right that the FDA definition of mayonnaise requires egg.

Wikipedia says "Mayonnaise is a thick, creamy dressing often used as a condiment. It is a stable emulsion of oil, egg yolk, and either vinegar or lemon juice, with many options for embellishment with other herbs and spices." Random House says "a thick dressing of egg yolks, vinegar or lemon juice, oil, and seasonings, used for salads, sandwiches, vegetable dishes, etc." Oxford Learner's Dictionary says "a thick cold white sauce made from eggs, oil and vinegar, used to add flavour to sandwiches, salads, etc.". Merriam-Webster says "a dressing made chiefly of egg yolks, vegetable oils, and vinegar or lemon juice". Oxford dictionary says "A thick creamy dressing consisting of egg yolks beaten with oil and vinegar and seasoned."

Who's definition of mayonnaise doesn't involve eggs? How would you even define it except by mentioning eggs?

You could just replace "egg yolk" with "egg yolk or a similar substitute" — this is actually what many "optionally vegan" recipes do. I mean, the Wikipedia page for cake also mentions eggs — are cakes made without egg considered not to be real cakes either?

From the consumers perspective, a definition centered around the production process is not very useful. One could try to define it by the measurable attributes of the final product.

"From the consumers perspective, a definition centered around the production process is not very useful. "

According to this viewpoint, it would be okay to label Kool-Aid and orange Fanta as "fruit juice". No.

Sure, but you're missing the larger question. If presented 2 dishes, one is traditional mayonnaise and the other is HC mayonnaise. If you can't tell the difference in how they behave/taste/whatever, are they not both effectively mayonnaise?

I'm not arguing that you're wrong about what mayonnaise is, I'm adding a wrinkle to the concept of defining a food product.

I don't have much of a dog in this fight, I personally care that it "does what it says on the tin" rather than fits a dictionary or other definition. That said I understand the counterpoint, I just think it's not quite as black-or-white.

Not if mayonnaise is defined--as it currently seems to be--as a product with egg in it.

That's sort of the crux of the matter, when we say "mayo" we mean the thing with egg in it, not anything that resembles the thing with egg in it.

If you'd like to say, "let's stop defining mayo as the thing with egg in it," then maybe that's a discussion worth having, but it's a different issue than just, "can't we call this other thing that isn't mayo, mayo?"

That seems like a valid way for the world, society, and our language to work. But it's not how they currently work.

There are a ton of laws that govern how you label food, many of them explicitly passed to stop the exact thing you're suggesting. And these laws both stem from and reinforce a strong cultural/linguistic assumption that if you say "noun" you mean a noun, and if you say "adjective noun" you mean a noun that differs from normal examples of that noun by some specific characteristics.

Hence, we have "vegan cheese", "turkey bacon", "butter with canola oil", "non-dairy creamer", "vege burgers", "sugar-free cola", and a host of other examples. When a company (now owned by Unilever) went to launch a low cost spread they believed tasted just like butter onto the market, they didn't call it "Super Butter", they called it "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!".

Or if you prefer, flip it around: Hampton Creek has gone to some lengths to brand their vegan mayo in such a way that it looks as much like normal, non-vegan mayo as possible; so much so that they've ended up in disputes with the FDA and been forced to modify their packaging. It would have been cheaper and easier for them to have just said "vegan mayo" and called it a day, but they didn't. Why? Well, probably in part because they believe that some customers would choose to not buy "vegan mayo" if given a choice. Packaging that exists merely to deceive consumers is problematic, even if the consumer's in question are trying to make misguided or short sighted decisions.

(This is highly analogous to the ongoing debate about GMO labelling. Producers of GMO ingredients say that food containing them is indistinguishable from food that does not, so no label is or should be required. But many customers, rightly or wrongly, would rather avoid GMO foods. It's not clear to me what the right decision there is, but I don't think it's correct to pretend there can't be a valid debate.)

Before mobile phones were invented, no definition of the phone did include:

- can be carried in your pocket - are wireless - have high-resolution screens - are supercomputers, by standards of 1984 - can send video just as easily as voice

Some words describe function, not a list of ingredients.

Some words change meaning over time.

Sometimes the thing described changes drastically, like bananas http://www.businessinsider.com/banana-fruit-changes-history-...

We didn't create a new word to describe iPhone.

Just Mayo has more in common, functionally speaking, with egg-based mayonnaise than iPhone has with rotary phone or Tesla with Ford's Model T.

An iPhone can make a phone call. Therefore it is a phone. Things that do the same things as iPhones without the phone functionality are called iPods.

"Just Mayo has more in common, functionally speaking, with egg-based mayonnaise"

Mustard, catsup, ranch dressing, and many other condiments also have a lot in common with mayonnaise functionally. That doesn't make them mayonnaise.

Who's definition of mayonnaise doesn't involve eggs? How would you even define it except by mentioning eggs?

I agree that mayonnaise should be defined by the ingredients, but I bet a majority of people who eat mayonnaise (or Miracle Whip thinking it is mayonnaise) don't know it is made from egg yolks. For those people the definition would be a white creamy spread that goes on bologna sandwiches. Their definition is external (taste, look), not based on the ingredients.

That's basically a "No True Scotsman" argument against innovation and doing better by the environment.

I almost bought their stuff once. The bottle looked nice, and I was looking for mayo. I was not looking to experiment, so buying their stuff would a a case of me buying something because it pretends to be something else. I want things to be called what they are. They could have called it "I don't believe it's not mayo" or something but they decided to try to trap people. I would feel cheated even if it does taste like mayo, I don't want vegan mayo in my chicken salad.

"Behaves like the thing in every meaningful way" needs to include nutrition -- and even then, sometimes where it came from and how it was made are also part of what it is. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellation_d'origine_contr%C3...)

The nutrition, for mayonnaise, is "all fat with a tiny smidgen of protein"... not so hard to replicate.

I've never seen an appellation applied to mayonnaise, have you?

"All fat with a tiny smidgen of protein" is an interesting way of describing egg yolks and olive oil. (Not saying that Helleman's is anything more than soybean oil and 3% egg solids, though.)

That's what the nutrition label for mayonnaise says, yes. It also says what kinds of fat. I didn't make this up, the FDA/Congress did.

> You're right that the FDA definition of mayonnaise requires egg. This comes from depression-era laws where people were passing fraudulent products off as the real thing. I think those laws still matter, but kind of miss the point her

It comes from companies like HC still trying to lie on the labels.

This is why you can buy other spreads which are similar, but are not called "mayonnaise."

This is why you can buy margerine and other butter substitutes under names other than "butter".

This is why you can receive entertaining fantasy fiction on Fox but not have it called New... never mind.

That it is just as awful as real mayo isn't a great defense for putting a picture of an egg on the packaging.

We better solve this fast. A lot of omnivorous people are quick to denounce vegan meat substitutes as fake. As in fraudulent kind of fake. This happens when people complain about how Taco Bell uses fake meat (i.e. soy) in their beef tacos for example.

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