This is a very interesting point actually. Apple used to mean just any fruit in general as well. Deer used to just mean animal too. But I guess arguably the qu

This is a very interesting point actually. Apple used to mean just any fruit in general as well. Deer used to just mean animal too. But I guess arguably the question of whether confusion is being intentionally sowed has more to do with the how the the commonly understood meaning of words today than their historical meanings. Maybe a better statistic is: how often to people buy vegan/meat products mistakenly when trying to but meat/vegan products. It's obviously not an easy statistic to gather, but it is probably a bit more tractable than focusing so much on language in particular. I've certainly made this mistake myself.