Describe the taste of “milk”?

What used to be an absolute — milk tastes like milk, just as water tastes like water — has evolved as alternatives to the cow’s milk the majority drank as kids have hit the market.

Soy “milk.” Almond “milk.” Cashew, coconut, flaxseed, hazelnut, macadamia nut, oat, pea, peanut, pecan, quinoa and walnut “milk.”

Even hemp “milk.”

Now the United States Senate, which clearly has nothing better to do, is considering bipartisan legislation that would strip those products of the one thing that ties them all together.

The word “milk” itself.

Speaking of governmental officials who have nothing better to do, someone had to come up with a name for this proposal and — in a title that could only have been conceived in a subcommittee — came up with this:

“Defending Against Imitations and Replacements of Yogurt, Milk, and Cheese to Promote Regular Intake of Dairy Everyday Act.”

We’ll save you the trouble. The first letters (more or less) spell out the DAIRY PRIDE Act.

We know what you’re thinking … that this is utterly, err, utterly ridiculous. But this group of senators are dadgum serious about showing their constituencies back in their dairy-laden states that they’re looking out for their best interests.

And, while they’re at it, the DAIRY PRIDE Act takes on those purveyors of alternative cheeses and yogurts.

Supporters of the bill say that it will both protect the interests of dairy farmers while ensuring that customers get what they’re paying for, nutritionally, when they pick up a half-gallon of something with “milk” on the label.

“It is unfair for non-dairy products to capitalize on milk’s nutritious brand,” says Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

For its part, the Food and Drug Administration recently issued a draft of guidelines that would require alternative milks to include package labeling explaining the difference between such products and those from a dairy.

That, however, doesn’t go far enough for the senators behind the Defending Against Imitations and Replacements of Yogurt, Milk, and Cheese to Promote Regular Intake of Dairy Everyday Act.

“A food is a dairy product only if the food is, contains as a primary ingredient, or is derived,” the bill’s text reads, “from the lacteal secretion, practically free from colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of one or more hooved mammals.”

No exceptions were noted for milk from a whale or, for that matter, a human mother — unless, apparently, the mother in question has hooves.

Yes, on many levels this is hard to swallow … perhaps not as silly as the three years Ohio State University spent to gain trademark rights to the word “The” (which they pronounce “Thee”) in front of the school’s name, but silly nonetheless.

After all, those apparent charlatans peddling “hamburgers” made from “impossible” meats are still thriving. Then again, you don’t see the ham industry up in arms over the beef industry appropriating their nutritious brand.

You would have to be immensely insecure to believe that exercising control over certain words, through legal or legislative means, will somehow flip a switch in a consumer’s brain about their decision to consume.

If you want to drink pea milk, you’re going to drink pea milk, whatever it’s called — but at least the dairy state senators are doing their voters a solid.

Or at least a lacteal secretion.