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Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

• jjcon 6y ago
  > Vegan Cheese Is Ready to Compete With Dairy. Is the World Ready to Eat It? I’m vegetarian and my partner is vegan - I’ve tried every vegan cheese on the shelf. The answer is no because it’s not even close to ready. It might pass an initial taste test where you say, that’s not so bad, but then you pick up on all the things it’s missing. Sometimes the aftertaste is terrible, sometimes the texture or versatility. Maybe someday someone will crack it but what’s on the shelf today isn’t close. I’m not saying it’s all terrible but you aren’t going to convince many non vegans to eat it (like may be the case with the current beyond/impossible burger tech).
  • pcthrowaway 6y ago
    Which brands have you tried? There's a wild diversity, and I suspect even with dairy cheeses you could try many kinds and think it's "missing" something (compared to another type of cheese, or even the same cheese from a different producer) For example, a (dairy) farmer's cheese is going to be completely different from a blue cheese, which is completely different from a sharp cheddar. Each of those is "missing" something compared to the others. Quality vegan cheeses often try to mimic characteristics of different kinds of dairy cheeses, and often come very close. For some kinds of cheese, people actually find them indistinguishable from the classic dairy versions; for example, if you tried 5 kinds of Blue Cheese, you'd likely find differences between them, and might not even be able to identify which one was vegan.
    • jjcon 6y ago
      > Which brands have you tried? More than I could possibly recall. Violife, chao, follow your heart, miyokos, daiya, parmellas, go veggie, kite hill, Trader Joe’s brand > For some kinds of cheese, people actually find them indistinguishable from the classic dairy versions Not a chance that I believe this. Maybe as a minor ingredient in a larger meal but certainly not as a main ingredient or on its own.
      • jchanimal 6y ago
        Agree. However a homemade “cashew cheese” (flavor from nutritional yeast, cayenne, and turmeric) can be yummier than cheese, if not totally realistic. Why the store brands can’t meet that quality I don’t know.
        • Spivak 6y ago
          Cashew cheese is so freaking food. It's got the perfect texture for nacho cheese dip and buffalo chicken dip. I honestly think it's better than dairy as the base for creamy soups.
        • Skunkleton 6y ago
          Cashew cheese is really good, but it isn't at all cheese. It can be used in a few applications where cheese is normally used, but not in the vast majority of them.
        • raffraffraff 6y ago
          Anything that tries to be like actual cheese fails miserably and trends to be mostly fat (coconut) and starch with flavour added. Nutritionally terrible, usually very low protein compared with real cheese. At least with cashew cheese you are eating (mostly) cashews with some flavour added. Still higher in fat and lower in protein than a low fat cheese, but at least it isn't just starch and fat. I use the liquid from sauerkraut or picked gherkins, garlic, onion powder and some salt, with the obligatory nutritional yeast. Just think of it as a nice pate.
          • froh 6y ago
            Yes, and the lack of protein is horrible. When you are vegetarian, you partially substitute meat with cheese --- no way with these vegan look-like-cheese-somewhat products. it's like 1.3g of protein per 100g (pseudo pasta 'cheese') vs 32g per 100g (Parmigiano-Reggiano) or 23g per 100g for Emmental cheese.
            • blacksmith_tb 6y ago
    • na85 6y ago
      >For some kinds of cheese, people actually find them indistinguishable from the classic dairy versions; for example, if you tried 5 kinds of Blue Cheese, you'd likely find differences between them, and might not even be able to identify which one was vegan. Maybe for some people, in the same way that smokers drink Tim Hortons because they can't taste the difference. But plenty of us can tell the difference and for us, vegan cheeses taste horrendous.
      • La1n 6y ago
        >Maybe for some people, in the same way that smokers drink Tim Hortons because they can't taste the difference. Or maybe it's more like beer, most don't like it the first time but after a while you can start appreciating it?
  • dfgasdgsd 6y ago
    (partner is also vegan) - Miyoko Garlic Herb is the only one I've ever had that is "good" in my opinion. It's definitely not cheese, but as a picnic cheese/crackers situation I actually might like it more than a cheese version.
    • 8ytecoder 6y ago
      Miyako’s Mozzarella is good enough.
      • leadingthenet 6y ago
        > [...] is good enough There is no such thing when it comes to cheese. Cheese is love, cheese is life.
        • boston_clone 6y ago
          That’s just the morphine talking. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casomorphin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casomorphin
          • leadingthenet 6y ago
            I’m aware. The superiority of real cheese is demonstrated yet again!
    • jjcon 6y ago
      Totally agree on miyoko - the best tasting I’ve had and good in its own right kinda as it’s own thing
    • novok 6y ago
      If you removed the garlic and herbs would it taste any good?
      • PretzelPirate 6y ago
        Miyoko’s mozzarella is delicious, both cold and put on pizza. It doesn’t have any herbs added to it.
  • smt88 6y ago
    I'm not a vegan and have enjoyed vegan cheese on breakfast sandwiches. It works for me when it's not the only flavor.
    • Spivak 6y ago
      Yeah I don't think any substitute foods will fare well when eaten on their own but they shine when they're part of a larger dish. And if you're only eating real cheese when its by itself like on a charcuterie board that's already a huge improvement!
  • king_magic 6y ago
    Yep, they are all atrocious at this stage. Orders of magnitude worse than Beyond Beef* / Impossible* (as compared to actual meat). *just to be clear, I actually love both Beyond & Impossible's products. Extremely close to real meat IMO.
    • rorykoehler 6y ago
      I have eaten some that will easily surpass anything you will find in an American convenience store. Sure they aren’t for aficionados but that pass for accompaniment on wraps etc.
    • novok 6y ago
      I really don't get how people think impossible burger tastes like meat. It has the texture of a lentil patty with blood flavoring added.
      • Pfhreak 6y ago
        I mean, so do garbage fast food burgers, so maybe that's the bar they are comparing against?
        • novok 6y ago
          My personal example was a $15 restaurant where I tried out the impossible burger. Maybe it wasn't an actual 'impossible' burger or some early version.
          • eropple 6y ago
            Maybe give it another try, at least in some contexts. These days it's gotten into fast food, and IMO? I can tell the difference between an Impossible Whopper and a regular one, but both are about as good to me. I wouldn't miss it if the regular one went away.
          • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
            I didn't care for the first iteration of the Impossible burger either. I thought it tasted just like a Morning Star Farms Grillers Prime, making it nothing special in veggie-burger land. However, it seems to have improved significantly, to the point that twice now I've thought they accidentally gave me real beef, had a meet-eating friend confirm, and after talking to the waiter and cook and taking a much closer look decided I was wrong. I love Beyond burgers too, but they are more distinct from real beef as far as my >10yr vegetarian tongue can tell.
  • tartoran 6y ago
    > The answer is no, it’s not even close to ready. It might pass an initial taste test where you say, that’s not so bad, but then you pick up on all the things it’s missing. I tried these and agree. My wife is vegetarian and I started to rarely eat meat but cheeses are still a staple in our house. However, vegetarian burgers are ready for prime time. They are my new thing, if you didn't tell I'm eating vegetarian burgers I would swear I'm eating meat.
    • qudat 6y ago
      > However, vegetarian burgers are ready for prime time. Agreed. I eat meat but love veggie burgers.
    • sizzle 6y ago
      Impossible meat patty is ridiculously good. I wish I had this stuff growing up!
  • redisman 6y ago
    I’m also all in on the fake veggie meats but have not had a good cheese experience even in vegan restaurants. It’s always some strange bean sludge/mat. Would love to be proven wrong!
  • willcipriano 6y ago
    Wanted to make pizza with my two year old daughter a couple of weeks ago. Picked up some mozzarella at the store and when I went to use it noticed the well hidden plant logo and "plant based" text that was almost the same color as the packaging. Figured I'd give it a shot. It was inedible, completely ruined the pizza. My daughter took a bite and said "no, dad" I agreed and we threw it away and got a happy meal. I figure once everyone gets fooled once like I have it will stop selling.
    • da_big_ghey 6y ago
      i am not liking the way many of this is packaged. any other product and hackernews would be angry for the "deceptive packaging", but because the hackernews like this product, they are give it a freepass.
      • CoastalCoder 6y ago
        Are you sure there's really such a trend in HN discussions? I've never noticed it.
      • jethro_tell 6y ago
        have yet to read a comment that likes it :shrug:
        • mumblemumble 6y ago
          I'll chime in as liking it. Or at least, I like the ones that are made from fermented nuts. So, brands like Miyoko's and Treeline. I even make my own fake cheese in that genre at home sometimes. Others, like Daiya, I won't object to if someone else wants to put it on whatever we're cooking. I'm pretty lactose intolerant, so I can't speak to how it compares to dairy cheese; my personal take from the few times where I'll pop a Lactaid in order to participate in a pizza party is that, while Daiya fake mozzarella is meh, the stuff it's intended to mimic is even worse. I occasionally wonder if there is something to that casomorphin theory that the article mentions, and people who regularly consume dairy largely like it for approximately the same reason smokers like the taste of tobacco smoke. And then there are some brands, generally of more of a 1990s vintage, that are legitimately gross. Unfortunately, those seem to be the ones that are most commonly stocked in grocery stores, for Heaven knows what reason.
  • chronicsunshine 6y ago
    In Minneapolis, MN the Herbivorous Butcher makes vegan cheeses that are better than normal cheese. Unfortunately they also are expensive.
  • dheera 6y ago
    Non-vegan vegetarian here and I agree. The flip side of it is, the dairy cheeses next to the vegan cheeses don't pass my taste test either. What are they trying to imitate, shitty deli slices? I really want vegan cheese, but I want Parmiggiano-Regano, Brie, Smoked Gouda, Burrata, Pepper Jack, and Manchego, not deli slices. I don't even eat real dairy deli slices. Same thing for vegan yogurt. Every goddamn vegan yogurt brand makes the same 4 boring flavors: vanilla, strawberry, blueberry, and peach. The EXACT 4 FLAVORS I HATE. That's why I don't eat vegan yogurt. Why is there no pineapple upside-down cake, white chocolate raspberry, red date, and matcha? START with interesting flavors and I'll buy it in a heartbeat.
    • barbazoo 6y ago
      I recommend buying plain yoghurt and adding to it whatever you actually like. It's less waste usually, cheaper and exactly what you actually want to eat.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • morsch 6y ago
        Not sure that the "pineapple upside-down cake" flavoring is widely available.
    • jfengel 6y ago
      Do they not make plain vegan yogurt? That's how I eat cow's-milk yogurt: I get the plain stuff and add whatever jam/jelly I want to it. That doesn't have exotic flavors like matcha, and it's less convenient than a single-serve package, but it also means that I get to sweeten it to my taste. I've been thinking of trying some vegan yogurt (I'm a non-vegetarian who is drastically reducing my animal products and eats vegan more often than not). The plant-based milks have been getting pretty good and I had high hopes that they'd make a decent yogurt.
  • derbOac 6y ago
    So my wife and I are vegetarian and I love certain vegan cheese, the naturally cultured ones where you essentially have a plant product that is cultured with cheese bacteria. My experience with this stuff is similar to a lot of things in vegetarian diet, which is that the problems come about when you start trying to create imitations of animal products. I do not want to suggest that people "just don't like vegan cheese because they're expecting animal milk cheese" but I do suspect that if people would stop thinking of certain vegan cheeses as substitutes for animal cheeses, they would feel really differently on average. I also don't want to suggest substitutes don't work to a certain extent in certain cases. Impossible burgers, for example, have really pushed a lot of limits in that regard. But I do think that a lot of times trying to imitate just fails miserably. I tend think of naturally cultured cashew cheese as pretty good. I just think of it as a cultured nut butter, which it is. I still love animal milk cheese, but I wouldn't just expect to substitute cashew butter for chevre, for example, nor would I expect to substitute cashew cheese for either one. Maybe the article is poorly framed in that regard. I guess I just see it as a fool's errand to try to approach vegan cheeses as imitations. Why can't it just be treated as a food in itself?
    • woofcat 6y ago
      >Why can't it just be treated as a food in itself? It can but if the objective is to reduce the world's, and specifically North America's appetite for animal products. You need to either aim to replace the current products or await a culture shift away from what is easy and cheap today.
      • throwaway5752 6y ago
        We can also wait (not so long, either) for increasingly severe heat waves and droughts to harm the viability of the dairy industry in the US. That way scarcity and cost will take care of the job in a less gentle way, but there were be a lot of other incidental problems to cope with.
        • captainredbeard 6y ago
          I bet it would just cause a change in production conditions which would be poor for the animals. It would be far better to find sustainable ways to use the livestock to sequester carbon (c.f. Allan Savory TED talk) and limit their environmental impact instead of giving up good eating.
  • mssundaram 6y ago
    I'm tired of this laziness. I don't care about vegan cheese - I am vegan because it's better for me, the planet, and animals. Boohoo if I can't find some cheese that tastes exactly like cultured milk from a suffering animal.
    • distribot 6y ago
      +1 I've been vegan half my life and my recollection of cheese has mostly been replaced by the plant based alternatives. But I still think they've come light years from what we had back in '08. I think a key to being able to enjoy plant based facsimiles is to not judge it based it on how closely it approximates the dish, but rather how good it is on its own as a cousin.
    • pmoriarty 6y ago
      Unfortunately, the number of cheese eaters who'll be swayed by this sort of argument and who aren't already ethically vegan is probably close to zero.
    • ipaddr 6y ago
      Be careful thinking just going vegan is better for the planet. "The vegan diet is widely regarded to be better for the planet than those that include animal products, but not all plant-based foodstuffs have a small environmental footprint." https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200211-why-the-vegan-diet-is-not-always-green https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200211-why-the-vegan-di...
      • maccard 6y ago
        From your link, asparagus "the largest environmental footprint of any of the 56 vegetables they looked at, including its land use and water use", with 5.3kg of CO2 per kg of Asparagus. According to [0], "The average footprint of beef, excluding methane, is 36 kilograms of CO2eq per kilogram" - so even the worst vegetable imported from the farthest part of the world is 10x better per kg than beef. Also, I think that article you've shared is pretty clear that going vegan is better, it's just not 0 cost to the planet. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane [1] https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
  • throwaway5752 6y ago
    Great, but for lots of people that are lactose intolerant or allergic, it can be good enough. Some are better than others. I am not fond of Daiya, and prefer Violife. You also want to use less of it, and choose or modify recipes accordingly. Most of the grocery store available ones are more appropriate for ingredient substitution. Cultured products like Rind or Reine that are more appropriate for eating on their own are less available. In general, they are not cheese and it's not best to approach them as cheese as you would use dairy cheese.
  • jandrese 6y ago
    I tried a sample of Vegan Cheese once and it immediately brought to mind Arthur Dent trying to get Tea out of the Nutrimatic. It was something almost but not quite completely unlike cheese. It made me wonder if the person who invented it had ever tasted cheese before or had just read about it in a book or something. If it had been something I bought from the store I might have thought it just had a short shelf life, but this was a sample from the vendor at a trade show. I tried it on the spot. Presumably it was as good as it was going to get. Also, that vendor was a complete jerk and set up their booth as far away from the water fountains as possible, so I was forced to hold that horrendous not-cheese taste in my mouth for several minutes while I rushed across the floor.
  • goseeastarwar 6y ago
    We suspected my 2 y/o son had a dairy allergy, so we started buying pizzas with vegan cheese to see if that relieved any of his symptoms. I thought the flavor was horrid, but my son happily devoured the pizza. Perhaps the best short-term solution is to stop trying to convince people these products are direct replacements. Maybe school lunches for kids that don’t know any better? I have no doubt it’s only a matter of time these companies develop vegan food on par with their meat counterparts, but we need to stop acting like they’ve unlocked the secret formula.
  • armoredkitten 6y ago
    I find the meltiness is really what kills it for me, in most cases. If you're wanting something to add to a charcuterie board or to put out with your appetizers, there are a lot of great cashew-based cheeses that do a pretty good job at mimicking softer cheeses. They're a bit pricey, but probably close to the price you'd spend on a quality dairy cheese. But once you start trying to melt vegan cheese...things get a little wonky. The consistency is just still not there, and yes, sometimes the aftertaste is pretty bad. I've found some that are bearable, but for the most part....I've just embraced cuisines that don't rely on cheese. Maybe some day we'll crack that (hazel?)nut, but we're still not there.
    • qudat 6y ago
      > If you're wanting something to add to a charcuterie board or to put out with your appetizers, there are a lot of great cashew-based cheeses that do a pretty good job at mimicking softer cheeses. Agreed! They are different but equally delicious.
  • sarsway 6y ago
    Not a fan of the substitutes either. Vegan meat is okay-ish, but it's obviously not meat and it doesn't have animal fats so it's never gonna be meat really. Also your just fooling your sense of taste, it will adjust eventually, and it seems the more fake meat you eat, the less tasty it becomes. I wish instead of pushing all these fake meat/dairy, we'd get a real vegetarian/vegan cuisine, like Indian/Oriental cooking, complex meals with lots of natural ingredients and spices, and have that become prevalent, as fast food, at the gas station and so on.
  • steviedotboston 6y ago
    I bet a huge percentage of vegan cheese sales are first time customers giving it a try. That will drop off real fast.
  • nerdponx 6y ago
    Vegan cheese is junk food. When you bake it into mac & cheese or melt it on a hamburger it does a great job. When you want to actually enjoy some cheese it's not even close to equivalent. It also has approximately zero nutritional value, although the nut-based cheeses I guess have some fat and protein. It's not really meant for regular people to enjoy. It's meant for vegans, people with dairy allergies, and other people can't or won't eat cheese to have the ability to enjoy the memory and suggestion of cheese. I personally am very very deeply grateful for the existence and excellence of Daiya in providing me with a melty cheese-like food product that reminds me enough of real cheese that I can have fun eating it. But I'm not about to suggest that vegan cheese is and equivalent for real cheese made of milk from a cow, goat, sheep, etc. It's a substitute. It's like Impossible meat. Yes, it makes a good burger, but you aren't going to get an Impossible Steak any time soon, and no it doesn't really taste like beef. It's still just chunks of soy protein (and it sits in your stomach the way you'd expect chunks of soy protein to sit).
    • boston_clone 6y ago
      How do you define junk food? Most animal-based products are more “junky” than vegan alternatives. No vegan meat substitute will have cholesterol, for instance. As for nutritional value, there are certainly good fats and carbs in those products. Absent some protein, sure, but to say they have no nutritional value is disingenuous.
  • auiya 6y ago
    >I’m not saying it’s all terrible I'll say it then - it's all terrible. There's so many great vegan foods out there, fake cheese is not one of them.
  • octopoc 6y ago
    Yep I eat vegan 80% of the time and I have to agree. For some reason, delicious fake meat is a lot easier to make than delicious fake cheese.
  • RacfeelBudkind 6y ago
    > Sometimes the aftertaste is terrible, sometimes the texture or versatility. These are both true of dairy cheeses too.
    • octopoc 6y ago
      I think what they're saying is that, unlike real cheese, there's always something wrong with the taste of dairy-free cheese. FWIW my experience has been the same.
      • RacfeelBudkind 6y ago
        What I'm saying is there's always something wrong with the taste of dairy cheese. Although, it's subtle, and you get used to it if you eat it enough.
  • thehappypm 6y ago
    On the contrary to most of these opinions, there's one vegan shredded cheese out there that makes delicious nachos. I can't recall the brand but it takes just like the gooey nacho cheese of my youth. Probably low-end nacho cheese didn't have any dairy to begin with :)
    • cheese_goddess 6y ago
      Nacho cheese is dairy. It's processed cheese so it's made with bits and pieces of real cheese mixed together, and with emulsifiers, colourings and flavourings to cover the fact that you're eating melted cheese scraps. Another reason for all the additivies is to make nacho cheese melt and run like a thin sauce, in a way that cheese doesn't. But with normal cheese you get other desirable organoleptic qualities that can't be reproduce with additives. For an example of the organoleptic qualities I'm talking about, watch this video: https://youtu.be/4CVzqJWkodA?t=834 https://youtu.be/4CVzqJWkodA?t=834 Look at how elastic the texture of that alpine style cheese is. Slices a few millimitres thick can be rolled into a cigar without breaking. That kind of texture cannot be reproduced artificially. And it can't be reproduced by "vegan" cheesemaking either. You need milk proteins for that and you need milk to be coagulated by rennet enzymes and the enzymes released by starter culture and ripening culture lactic acid bacteria while the cheese ages.
  • fillskills 6y ago
    I am not vegan, but lactose intolerant. Vegan cheese has changed my life. Mind you that I was not lactose intolerant till about 18yrs. So I have certainly tried most versions of dairy cheese. I love them both. Sometimes Vegan cheese' flavor and texture is suited and in other cases I would have preferred regular cheese. The fail case happens for me when I try to compare these new vegan X with original X at every single detail instead of judging each of them on their own merit.
  • ashes-of-sol 6y ago
    I think saying it's "not even close to ready" is way over the top. I've been vegan for two years and was a cheese lover prior to that, and I'm happy with the selection there is for doing things like mac and cheese, pizza, a slice on sandwiches etc. Is it a perfect stand in? No. Does it serve the purpose? Absolutely
  • rsj_hn 6y ago
    Indeed good cheese is hard to find as much American cheese has a plasticky texture and bland taste. I've only had success with small dairy farms and stuff imported from Europe. Mount Tam is good.
  • MisterBastahrd 6y ago
    I've had vegan yogurt that is better than the alternative. But cheese? Half the Miyoko's products taste like a finely ground nut paste mixed with mold and spoiled milk.
  • senectus1 6y ago
    its not too bad provided you don't try to heat it. vegan cheese just doesnt have the same fat and sugar properties that normal cheese does.
  • laplacesdemon48 6y ago
    Have either of you tried Pleese? I believe they're mostly selling to pizzerias now [1] and not supermarkets. They aren't able to scale up mass-production quickly because they use a different approach/ingredients - "proprietary blend of bean and potato proteins" [2]. I eat regular cheese and have tried several vegan brands, this seems pretty close to me. But I'm no cheese connoisseur. [1] https://www.pleesefoods.com/availabilty https://www.pleesefoods.com/availabilty [2] https://www.pleesefoods.com/products https://www.pleesefoods.com/products
  • ryanmcbride 6y ago
    I agree, vegan and vegetarian food is always best when it's not trying to impersonate other food. The best you can hope for is "yeah I can eat this".
  • foerbert 6y ago
    This does not sound like my experience at all. I'm also vegetarian and lean towards being vegan when it's easy enough. And I can't remember the last time I actually bought dairy cheese at the market that wasn't on a prepared item. I do have a bunch of vegan cheeses in my fridge though. In fact I have frequently remarked recently how amazing all the new cheeses are that I've tried. You will get best results picking the cheese to meet your need, rather than simply trying to do anything and everything with the first thing you pick up. But even if you can't be bothered these days, it's mostly alright. I'm not even that worried about trying to melt a new vegan cheese these days. I don't have much faith it'll be particularly great, but I'm not worried about ruining anything either. I don't foresee people running out to grab some vegan cheese to put on their real meat, but even with a truly perfect vegan cheese I think you'd have trouble getting major market penetration in that demographic.
  • chrisandchris 6y ago
    I would say one who says vegan cheese might pass for an alternative to regular cheese has never tasted something that passes as actual cheese [in Switzerland/France]. A lot of cheese you can get on this world has IMHO nothing to do with cheese in terms of taste, texture and the knowledge required to create an actual good cheese.
  • bperson 6y ago
    Have you tried Spero sunflower cream cheese? I would say it is less like a cream cheese exactly and more like a new food on its own (like hummus or guacamole, but neutral and pair-able in taste like cheese or butter). The Goat on some toast with a dollop of jam will kill any cheese pastry envy. It is very good, even special. Vegan food is best when it draws inspiration without exact imitation and Spero really created something unique. https://sperofoods.co/ https://sperofoods.co/
• ncmncm 6y ago
  Maybe it's more of a Naissance?
  • dang 6y ago
    Hmm, we changed the title to "The Vegan Cheese Renaissance" (a phrase from the article) in keeping with the site guideline: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait". But "renaissance" seems to be baity in its own right, so I've taken another crack at it above - now using language from the subheading.
• ulimn 6y ago
  I have dairy allergy and all I can say is that I am so happy that these products are getting better and better. Where I live (Europe) there are a lot of different ones available and quite a few are on the level of a cheap normal cheese. But in the end: at least it’s something.
  • TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    Same. For me, dairy increase respiratory mucus production which makes me feel a little congested and increases the frequency amd severity of upper respiratory tract infections. It also hurts my digestive system. Both are subtle initially and ramp up with continued dairy consumption, so I can tolerate small infrequent amounts. I suspect many more people have similar issues but don't realise.
    • outime 6y ago
      Yeah I have exactly this. I tolerate small amounts but I avoid it on a daily basis. And I do love cheese but ain’t worth it. Lactose-free (aka adding lactase) helps sligthly but it seems it’s not the only thing causing trouble to me. All in all, we’re lucky we have alternatives.
      • borepop 6y ago
        Me three. I used to get colds that would regularly ripen into sinus and ear infections, and I haven't experience a single such infection in several years since switching to about 95% plant-based eating.
• agogdog 6y ago
  I'd be vegan if not for cheese, so I hope they can catch up with the beef replacements (which I am 100% happy with at this point). IMO they're not there yet, but are getting closer.
• endisneigh 6y ago
  Leaving aside for a moment the morality of eating meat and dairy - is there actually any (health) benefit to the heavily (and I mean heavily) processed dairy alternatives compared to just eating regular cheese?
  • La1n 6y ago
    Not all vegan cheeses are heavily processed, the cashew based type mentioned in the article tends to be not processed more than a normal cheese would be.
    • nxpnsv 6y ago
      With a cashew cream & agar agar base its not so hard to make a cheese approximation by yourself. Really not a lot of advanced processing needed. It gets harder if you want a more accurate emulation though
    • jandrese 6y ago
      It should be noted that cheese is almost all process. It's just what it is. Unprocessed cheese is just milk.
  • Accacin 6y ago
    I'm vegan, and probably not. I've heard that most vegan substitutes are processed heavily so not really more healthy (and probably less healthy than non-vegan options). However, I do still eat them on occasion. Sometimes after a 30km run, all I think about is burgers so when I get home and sit and have vegan burger with vegan cheese. It may not be as good as the 'real thing' but it hits the spot :)
    • barbazoo 6y ago
      After 2 years or so of eating vegetarian I don't think that meat burgers are actually better. First of all, a burger is all about toppings and condiments. And vegetarian patties have come such a long way, texture and flavor wise, it blows my mind. Compared to the boring and ever the same taste of meat it doesn't even come close for me.
• fader 6y ago
  I had some bad experiences early on with vegan cheese substitutes, so I wrote them off years ago. Recently I was eating my "standard" sandwich order from a local restaurant. It actually tasted so much better than normal that I asked if they had changed anything, only to find out that they had used their vegan cheese substitute by mistake. I'll be giving these cheese substitutes another shot in the future!
  • jfk13 6y ago
    I can't help suspecting this says something about the quality of cheese your local place uses.
    • whimsicalism 6y ago
      Or their preference?
  • ashes-of-sol 6y ago
    The food science has been coming leaps and bounds year over year. I've only been vegan ~2 years and in that span Daiya released a new recipe that really closed the gap for great meltability
• ben_w 6y ago
  Just before the pandemic, I was thinking about how cheese was made from milk and how soy milk could (with the right extras) be a pretty decent milk substitute, and wondered if you could make a cheese alternative by applying the milk-to-cheese process to soy milk. Then I realised this already exists and is called “tofu”. The smoked tofu I find around Berlin is pretty good even cold, tastes similar to some smoked hard cheeses, and works in sandwiches. I’ve not even considered trying it on pizza though.
  • redisman 6y ago
    Smoked tofu is good- I wish there were more smoked veggie meats and cheeses. Definitely not something I’d want on a pizza in lieu of mozzarella though
    • Spivak 6y ago
      I think that's because it's got the wrong melting profile. Cashew cheese with either gelatin (if you're okay with that) or tapioca starch compares a lot better. And once it sets you can smoke it too!
    • ianai 6y ago
      I really like Miyokos “artisan vegan cheese, smoked English farmhouse.” It comes as a little round. Ingredients list is all recognizable names, too. Does not even attempt to melt though. It’ll kind of crisp up.
  • danans 6y ago
    Rügenwalder Mühle makes vegetarian/vegan cheeses in Germany that are quite good when eaten cold, but probably don't melt well. I generally prefer cheese cold or at room temperature anyways, and I wish I could get Rügenwalder Mühle in the US, but it seems like they don't export. https://www.ruegenwalder.de/vegetarische-und-vegane-produkte https://www.ruegenwalder.de/vegetarische-und-vegane-produkte
    • ben_w 6y ago
      I really like their vegetarian stuff, but their vegan stuff doesn’t work so well for me. The closest brand in the U.K. (and, I think, the USA) is Quorn, which I’ve missed since moving here.
• guyzero 6y ago
  I eat a number of different vegan meat substitutes and they're all fine but vegan cheese is still much, much further from the real thing. That said, I Don't think cheese needs to be a huge part of anyone's diet, so simply reducing your intake is fine.
• CarelessExpert 6y ago
  There's something unexpected about this aspect of veganism, which is often embraced by those wanting to lead a healthier lifestyle, resulting in the development of more and more advanced food processing technologies designed to synthesize the experience of foods being excluded from the diet. Basically, in the quest to return to a more healthy, natural diet, some folks end up moving to foods that are more and more processed. That's not meant to be a criticism! In my mind it's just a bit of a surprising outcome and makes me wonder how folks who consume these products square that circle in their minds.
  • cavisne 6y ago
    The justification is that they are temporary/bridging foods while transitioning to a whole foods diet. There is not much evidence of this working among vegan influencers (who fill their videos with meat and dairy mimicking meals) but that could be distorted by most product placements being such foods.
    • CarelessExpert 6y ago
      I wonder about that claim. I've never seen the Impossible Burger, for example, pitched as a bridging mechanism. It seems to be purely about food substitution with no expectation that someone would phase that substitute out as they adapt to a plant-based diet. I feel like the pitch is "hey look, you can be vegan/vegetarian and not miss the meat-based foods you love so much!" i.e., you can have your vegetarian cake and eat it, too. But that then gets back to, why switch at all? If it's about ethics, these products make sense. If it's about health, it makes a lot less sense to me.
  • hvna 6y ago
    This is something I've noticed as well. Sometimes ingredient lists are a mile long. Less so here in Europe than what I've seen in America, but nevertheless it is shockingly less natural. I have always though that it makes more sense to just create vegan foods from what you have rather than recreating the things you are choosing not to eat. Warning though, I am not a part of the vegan club, so it is all just opinion.
• werdnapk 6y ago
  There has been countless times when I've reached for some cheese on the shelf and then finally noticed the words "cheese product" on the packaging and realize that I didn't actually grab what I intended to... so I put it back and look for one with the correct labeling. So perhaps deceptive marketing/packaging is how it's gaining in sales?
  • Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    "Cheese product" doesn’t necessary mean vegan. It could be that it contains cow milk, just not to an extent required to legally be sold as "cheese" according to the given country’s legislation.
    • RacfeelBudkind 6y ago
      In fact, in the US at least, "Cheese product" nessesarily means it isn't vegan. Vegan cheese products also tend to be pretty upfront about not actually being cheese too, because they're marketing to people who don't want cheese.
  • Pfhreak 6y ago
    I strongly doubt that. If the product was inferior, you'd maybe see one purchase from someone accidentally buying it, but it wouldn't be sustained. People want this stuff. We've transitioned our house to vegan milks because, quite frankly, we like them better and they don't have the same awful externalities that milk production has. We still use some butter and cheese, and some vegan butter/cheese. There are definitely recipes where it doesn't matter which cheese/butter you use, and some where it does.
• kayodelycaon 6y ago
  As someone allergic to dairy, just being able to find more vegan products at my local grocery store is wonderful. Dairy-free chocolate is a lot easier to find. Sadly, vegan replacements for dairy products generally don't hold up, but having something close is better than nothing.
• Shadonototro 6y ago
  lot of fake food propaganda on the internet lately fake meak was proven to be non-healhtly, and now fake cheese if i want cheese i'll buy cheese, stop trying to sell me fake things as X, because it clearly is not the same thing meat and cheese are what they are because the animals eat plenty of things and they are living creatures, you can't replicate this can we stop promoting pseudo VC startups, they clearly are only interested in making money, STOP also only americans will use "cheese" as a universal word what kind of cheese? do they know it's not yellow and it doesn't come from an aluminum tube?
  • TomatoDash 6y ago
    > fake meak was proven to be non-healhtly Here [0] is a series of nine short videos (with text transcripts and links to all scientific sources) on plant-based meat substitutes' health and environmental impact. The reported findings go against your claim. [0] https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-environmental-impacts-of-plant-based-meat-substitutes/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-environmental-impacts-o...
    • incrudible 6y ago
      Nutritionfacts is ideologically driven[1], advocating a plant-based diet. What exactly did you expect? Actual "nutrition facts" are few and far between. I could selectively cite all kinds of studies that go for or against veganism. They're all flawed in some way, so people can just dismiss what they don't want to hear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Greger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Greger
      • TomatoDash 6y ago
        They advocate a whole-foods plant-based diet. Meats/cheeses made out of plants aren't whole foods though. Generally we have to think critically and scrutinize sources cited and if they back up claims made. Do you have some such specific objection in this case?
  • Pfhreak 6y ago
    Fake meat was never made because of the health benefits. People want impossible burgers because they are unhealthy and taste like burgers. > meat and cheese are what they are because the animals eat plenty of things and they are living creatures, you can't replicate this I mean, you certainly can. Look at the companies making 'clean' meat and fish.
• tbwriting 6y ago
  Heavily-subsidized dairy takes up multiple grocery store aisles: crickets Vegan cheese simply appears: "we've been INFILTRATED"
  • barbazoo 6y ago
    Exactly. On the topic of grocery store real estate. It blows my mind how much space meat products take up. Huge shelves of beef, pork, chicken in all forms and stages of processing. It's crazy to me the degree of reliance and attachment to animal products we've been coerced into.
    • shigawire 6y ago
      Aren't humans omnivores? I don't think we've been coerced into animal consumption so much as that is the default state (if available).
      • barbazoo 6y ago
        We sure are. But there is no reason to keep eating meat other than personal preference. We don't have to eat meat and given the environmental impact, maybe we shouldn't anymore. Sure things taste different but who cares, we've enjoyed the privilege for a long time, so let's move on. What I mean is that there is huge amounts of money out there working hard on preventing us to move on through commercials and lobbying, things like that. Recently, right wing conservatism even started using meat consumption as a signal to show that you're not a liberal.
    • curtainsforus 6y ago
      You have canines. We're evolved to eat meat.
• novok 6y ago
  One thing I really don't like about a lot of these meat / dairy alternatives is how they use cheap PUFA oils with their bad health effects vs something better like coconut or avocado oil. I would also put butter / ghee / tallow to the list, but then it's not vegan.
• pmoriarty 6y ago
  Is there a good vegan substitute for hard, sharp cheddar cheese, or for blue cheese or gorgonzola? I've never seen anything that comes even remotely close.
  • Pfhreak 6y ago
    No, not yet. Most of the vegan cheeses target shreds/singles. I would bet someone is working on it, but that it's probably a niche product at best. I think there are other food items that have that funky, umami tang that those cheeses have though. Plenty of cultures have built up some interesting flavors in vegan food stuffs with lactobacillus.
  • mtlewis 6y ago
    Here in the UK, there’s a product called Veganzola made by a small company called Honestly Tasty. It’s incredibly close to the cow’s milk version.
  • h0l0cube 6y ago
    From the article: > Given McAthy’s expertise and scholarship on the subject, it’s not surprising that Blue Heron has been producing the vegan cheese world’s most dairy-esque products since 2016: its dried herb- and wine-powdered rounds look nearly indistinguishable on a cheese board from dairy. But that’s not actually McAthy’s intention. > “My personal goal has always been that I really want to try to create or expand the boundaries of cheese-making, period,” she says. “So that means I’m happy to use the analogous term that people have a reference point for” — some of her cheeses resemble blues and Camembert — “but I’m just trying to create new cheeses.” This brings up the question of what cheese really is, exactly, and what vegan cheesemakers might be proving is that it’s simply fermented milk. Could be cow’s or goat’s milk, or it could be cashew. The article talks a lot about artisanal cheese makers applying traditional dairy processes to nut-based cheeses
• pharmakom 6y ago
  Much like vegetarian meat alternatives, I find it depends on how critical of a component it is to the meal. Meat substitute burgers are pretty good! But you can’t fake a steak. Similarly, a vegan cheese pizza just isn’t up to scratch.
• underseacables 6y ago
  I’ve always found it interesting that vegan “cheese” is still considered cheese. Should it be cheese-food? or imitation cheese?
  • adeelk93 6y ago
    What is “cheese”? Is a Kraft American Single “cheese”? What about Cheese Whiz? Certainly there’s a lot of debate about “cheese” even before getting into vegan
    • phonypc 6y ago
      There's no real debate about those products. They're not cheese and can't be labeled as such.
    • proc0 6y ago
      When you have to put "with real cheese!" on the label, it's not that real cheese.
  • xdennis 6y ago
    The EU has protections these sort of brand dilutions. You can't call it cheese if it doesn't come from milk and you can't call it milk if it doesn't come from a teat.
    • La1n 6y ago
      Which is weird to me, coconut milk has been "milk" for over 300 years. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coconut%20milk https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coconut%20milk
      • kuratkull 6y ago
        Which is why it's basically the only exception. No other non-milks are allowed that. Good
        • 6y ago
• pengaru 6y ago
  Mmmmmm, more processed food options, joy!
  • danimal88 6y ago
    OG cheese is obviously a processed product. I have never seen a cheese cow but perhaps that just me
    • pengaru 6y ago
      I don't deny it, and Vegan cheese aspires to bring processed cheese to those who otherwise wouldn't go near it for containing animal products, rejoice! More products for the grocery aisles best ignored.
    • scollet 6y ago
      All you need is a backhoe and a rocket ship that can carry a backhoe.
• jl6 6y ago
  I have tried all the easily available vegan cheeses and have found them tolerable at best, except for one occasion where a food truck served a plant-based burger with smoked vegan cheese. I don’t know which type of vegan cheese it started as or how they smoked it, but they did achieve something that was more than tolerable. Just. Until the tech improves I will prefer to stick to burger toppings like sliced tomato, avocado and onion. Much, much better. And for pizzas, it’s better just to go without.
  • sova 6y ago
    In Colorado, there is a local company making small batches of vegan cheese that they also mail out for large enough orders. It's not going to melt like normal cheese, but it does a much better job than the other ones I have tried. Their cheddar is really good. It seems like a hard recipe to crack and this company is the closest to it so far in my opinion. https://www.peacefulrebelvegancheese.com/ https://www.peacefulrebelvegancheese.com/
• _wldu 6y ago
  Prehistoric humans made cheese (and beer). This helped society to grow. To call these things 'processed' when they have been made by humans using simple things (and have been for ages) is disingenuous at best and ideologically driven at worst.
  • ipsum2 6y ago
    I don't see that claim made anywhere, unless you're referring to "the cheesemaking process".
  • margalabargala 6y ago
    The article does not call cheese (or beer) processed. That adjective is applied exclusively to the vegan cheese substitutes.
• subculture 6y ago
  There's certainly a trope of "...but I can't give up cheese" and as someone who went from vegetarian to vegan: Yeah, cheese is hard to replicate. But also: your body and tastes adapt. After a few weeks off of dairy our memories of those old textures and mouth feel start to fade and are replaced. Humans don't like changes in patterns, but at the same time are relatively quick to adapt to new ones. There's real addiction at play with dairy as well [1]. Those young calfs get the dopamine hit to attract them to their mom's milk. For humans, it fuels our addition to dairy, whose importance as a food group was manufactured because it created another revenue stream after post-war food industrialization [2]. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpellmanrowland/2017/06/26/cheese-addiction/?sh=7943d4723583 https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpellmanrowland/2017/06/2... [2] https://www.vox.com/2015/4/19/8447883/milk-health-benefit https://www.vox.com/2015/4/19/8447883/milk-health-benefit
  • ThaDood 6y ago
    This is a great point. My evidence is anecdotal but I became a vegetarian about 5 years ago. I used to hate all of the meat substitutes as the tasted "off". Now, after a few years of not eating meat, I could not tell you what chicken or meat would taste like and I have grown fond of some of the alternatives.
  • proc0 6y ago
    We have blood sausages, why wouldn't we drink some animals milk. Humans have been also eating entrails and brains for a long time, so milk is just another ingredient in the omnivorous diet of humans. You point out the for-profit incentives of dairy industry, but surely you don't think that it is much different for non-dairy/vegan products. Of course they are also pushing for same kind of acceptance at societal level, which means $$$.
    • whimsicalism 6y ago
      > for-profit incentives of dairy industry The fact that demand for dairy was "manufactured" is somewhat orthogonal to whether or not it is for-profit. Vegan cheeses aren't subsidized at 73 cents on the dollar, dairy is.
• swiley 6y ago
  I'm happy some people want to be vegan and I try to be careful and buy cage-free eggs and stuff because the way animals tend to be abused on farms can be pretty upsetting. Please don't lie when you're selling me food though (or play games to trick me into buying your stuff.) I tried amazon fresh a couple times and accidentally bought the plant based "meat" which was pretty much inedible (if I wanted a vegetarian diet I would just eat vegetables not some crazy processed garbage.) I no longer buy food from Amazon because of this.
• mtlewis 6y ago
  Here in the UK there’s a number of small companies making some really delicious vegan cheeses, and some of them are starting to show up in organic supermarkets. Anyone based in London who’s interested in exploring what’s available should make a visit to La Fauxmagerie in Shoreditch - they have all the best stuff. Otherwise, some brands to try are Honestly Tasty, I Am Nut OK, Kinda Co, and Tyne Chease, all of whom I believe have online stores. These companies are all getting extremely close in terms of flavour, but I’ve not personally tried anything that replicates a stringy melty mozzarella to top a pizza. That’s the holy grail for me.
• rsync 6y ago
  I am not a vegan but I do eat vegan meals from time to time ... I would prefer that we develop and maintain true vegan foodstuffs and recipes rather than create vegan versions of animal products. I am interested in eating an interesting new dish that was designed to showcase vegan ingredients. I have no interest in eating fake cheese pizzas and fake hamburgers.
  • retrac 6y ago
    Exactly. Fried onion rings will beat fake-mozzarella sticks every single time, simply because that dish was designed and intended to be vegetable-based from the beginning. Want to make classic onion rings full vegan? Substituting vegetable oil for lard is far less drastic than trying to come up with a substitute for cheese. Pizza? There are many pizza recipes that do not involve cheese at all! Try a no-cheese pesto or something. It makes little sense to me. But I suppose I have relatively few food cravings. If you're trying to avoid dairy and and every week you just need cheese sticks or pizza, then I guess that's the market this is aimed at?
  • xeromal 6y ago
    If you just eat an a local indian restaurant, you can find many dishes that are vegetarian from the source.
• slicktux 6y ago
  I’ve made vegan Mac-N-Cheese before and I’ll tell you it was really good!
• linuxftw 6y ago
  Lots of vegan cheeses are made from Almonds. In the US, most Almonds are grown in California using irrigating diverted from major waterways. Don't eat Almonds from California, they are contributing to a major ecological disaster in the state.
• tpoacher 6y ago
  Pro tip when it comes to pasta / pizza. Forget about vegan cheeses on pizza/pasta. They taste crap. What tastes really good is ground nuts. I sprinkle a mixture of ground pine nuts, cashew nuts, and tiny bit of pecan, (-/+ possibly some macademia nuts) and it tastes great. When ground properly in the right proportions, this mixture also has that nice fluffy, "cheesy" feel to it (i.e. it's not rough to the touch, it's soft and spreadable). Different experience from actual cheese, but very tasty. Whereas whenever I've tried vegan cheese on pizza/pasta, they always leave an ugly aftertaste, have a disgusting texture and stick to my teeth and throat, and leave me bloated and feeling like crap afterwards.
  • csours 6y ago
    This is what I'm more interested in: Don't try to replace animal foods directly, create great plant based foods. I'm not vegan or even vegetarian, but I am interested in reducing my animal consumption.
    • whimsicalism 6y ago
      I mean, ground nuts are a classic "replacement" for cheese, so I don't really see how this is at all different from what the vegan cheeses are doing.
      • tpoacher 6y ago
        Presumably the person you replied to means they'd prefer healthy plant-based flavours that shine as flavours in their own right, rather than synthetic imitation foodstuffs that just happen to be vegan-compatible.
        • whimsicalism 6y ago
          I don't know where the line between "healthy plant-based flavours" and "synthetic imitation foodstuffs" starts and stops is I guess my difficiulty. Most vegan cheeses I have are just fermented ground up nuts or soy.
  • 6y ago
• bondant 6y ago
  Most of the vegan "cheese" I tasted were honestly quite bad, they seemed to be plastic imitations of standard milk cheese. But once I found one named Cicioni [1], and it was absolutely awesome! But sadly I have a hard time finding it in shops. :( [1] https://www.casadelfermentino.com/en/brand/cicioni/ https://www.casadelfermentino.com/en/brand/cicioni/
• Taylor_OD 6y ago
  I used to eat and enjoy vegan cheese but it isnt really like normal cheese. I liked it because it was a bit stringier and went well with mac and cheese.
• chmod600 6y ago
  A lot of the time I feel like health food is really just a way for manufacturers to cheap out and then sell something at a premium. Margarine is vegan, but it was always just marketed as "cheap". Discerning or well-to-do consumers would just pass it up. Now, people will put up with things that are very cheap to make, taste horrible, and are very expensive to buy. That creates a problem: the food is becoming about the story and not the taste. That's not going to lead to good products; only good stories and packaging to tell the story. And bad products won't make for wide adoption. Asking your customers to sacrifice gets you a small band of loyal customers, like a cult. But good products stand on their own and don't ask for sacrifice... think Tesla.
  • RacfeelBudkind 6y ago
    > A lot of the time I feel like health food is really just a way for manufacturers to cheap out and then sell something at a premium. Probably, but vegan cheese isn't marketed as health food. > Margarine is vegan I wish.
    • danShumway 6y ago
      > Margarine is vegan Some of it is, it's just not safe to assume it always is unless you check the ingredients. But that's the case for a lot of foods that fall into the sometimes-but-not-always-vegan category.
    • 7steps2much 6y ago
      > > Margarine is vegan > >I wish. While not all margarine is vegan quite a lot of them are. Though you have to look out and read the packaging to make sure you don't missgrab.
  • armchairhacker 6y ago
    A lot of "health food" is a scam, and isn't even healthy. It's actually kind of absurd how if you look at even the junk food aisle, you'll see tons of advertisements for "all-natural", "organic", "30% less sugar", "with vitamin B". The vegan cheese isn't an exception: some of them are actually pretty good, but most are really processed with a lot of added oil. Although most vegans do seem to realize and accept this, because it still has the benefit of being vegan. If you want real "healthy" food, get whole foods: vegetables, meats (or good vegan meats, look for protein / calories ratio), fish, yogurt, beans. Fruits and even grains are ok, as are nuts and nut butters - just watch your portions. Even a bit of cheese or olive oil is good because they actually have nutrients. Ironically, all of these are usually packaged plain and don't mention "low-carb" or "good source of vitamin B12".
• dnhz 6y ago
  Miyoko's is good. Available at Whole Foods and even some products at Target. Miyoko cheddar-style cheese slices have a nice tang to them. The coconut oil and tapioca starch kind of stuff (Daiya, etc.) is alright for pizza, but it's not great. It's expensive too. This kind of stuff should be cheaper to make than dairy cheese. Unfortunately cheese and cheeze are both high in calories, sodium, and fat.
• danimal88 6y ago
  So far, I'm sold on Soft/Spreadable cheeses from Miyokos. I don't remember having had any real winners on the hard cheese side yet but I will keep trying different ones until someone cracks it. I'm actually most excited for the CRISPR'd yeast approach to cheese (food more broadly) approach because I feel like we will be able to get a culinarily equivalent product (eventually...) but perhaps remove some of the less healthy components (saturated fats and others) for a superior product with a lower carbon footprint.
• parski 6y ago
  I was really into fromage before I transitioned to a plant based diet several years ago and I do miss cheese quite a lot. The vegan imitations are, as stated all over this page, lackluster at best. However, I think there is one exception, at least from what I've tried. That is Parveggio. It's a grated parmigiano imitation and it's super tasty! I use it on pasta, lasagna, etc all the time. I highly recommend it to vegans and non-vegans alike.
• bioinformatics 6y ago
  Also, it's so delicious that you can eat the package for extra flavour.
• tohnjitor 6y ago
  "Vegan" products don't belong with the products they're impersonating and marketing them as such is fraud.
• ChrisArchitect 6y ago
  really wanted to post this one again eh is this an april fool's joke?
• ggm 6y ago
  Only time I had some was in vegan quesadillas in San jose. The cooking process caused some material change and the more astringent, chemical qualities came to the fore. I've seen molten plastic with more cheese like qualities. It was a 3/10 experience. I would try again, but there would have to be improvement.
• cheese_goddess 6y ago
  >> A coagulant is typically added to turn the milk proteins into solid curds — in many cheeses, that coagulant is an enzyme called rennet, which is traditionally taken from an unweaned calf’s stomach lining, although vegetarian rennet, derived from molds or plants, is used in some cases. "Traditionally" rennet was taken from an unweaned milk animal's stomach (not just a calf's stomach. Some people make most of their cheese from ewe's and goat's milk). Fast-forward a couple thousand years and in modern times, most rennet in commercial cheeses is the product of fermentation by cute little bacteria cultured in cute little bacteria incubators: ... Because of the above imperfections of microbial and animal rennets, many producers sought other replacements of rennet. With genetic engineering it became possible to isolate rennet genes from animals and introduce them into certain bacteria, fungi, or yeasts to make them produce recombinant chymosin during fermentation. The genetically modified microorganism is killed after fermentation and chymosin isolated from the fermentation broth, so that the fermentation-produced chymosin (FPC) used by cheese producers does not contain a GMO or any GMO DNA. FPC is identical to chymosin made by an animal, but is produced in a more efficient way. FPC products have been on the market since 1990 and, because the quantity needed per unit of milk can be standardized, are commercially viable alternatives to crude animal or plant rennets, as well as generally preferred to them in industrial production.[12] ... Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennet#Fermentation-produced_chymosin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennet#Fermentation-produced_c... But, somehow, everytime I read an article about vegan cheese it seems to lead with the outdated information that rennet is, like, normally, made with the stomach lininig of unweaned calves.
  • h0l0cube 6y ago
    > everytime I read an article about vegan cheese it seems to lead with the outdated information that rennet is, like, normally, made with the stomach lininig of unweaned calves From the article: > What Perfect Day is doing isn’t new, exactly: Pandya, who is vegan, points out that for a long time, dairy cheese wasn’t even considered vegetarian because of its use of rennet. When vegetarian rennet was developed in the 1970s and commercialized in the 1980s, “it wasn’t done for any profitability reason or consumer trend reason or anything to do with animal welfare,” Pandya says. “It was just economics — like, it just made more sense to use the latest in fermentation and biotechnology to figure out a way to make that enzyme without the extraction from an animal.
• cheese_goddess 6y ago
  I don't understand why you need to imitate something that isn't vegan or vegetarian, when you want to eat vegan or vegetarian. There is a metric shitton of vegan and vegetarian dishes from the entire world's cuisines that you could be eating right now insteaed of a substitute for something you've decided never to eat again. Why pretend-eat what you don't want to eat in the first place? That's just mad. Go eat Indian (meaning food from a dozen different places in and around India, including Bengali, Bangladeshi, etc). Eat a mediterrannean diet. Eat a North African diet. But why do you have to eat something vegan and call it cheese? That just doesn't make sense.
  • TchoBeer 6y ago
    Lol why are you so mad that people want to eat vegan cheese. Maybe people just enjoy eating vegan cheese.
    • isatty 6y ago
      Read the username
  • screwt 6y ago
    Easy! People have lots of different reasons why they may choose not to eat meat or dairy. "Not liking the taste" is one possible reason. If that particular one isn't your reason, then you may still miss the taste/texture of certain foods, so having a substitute helps.
    • cheese_goddess 6y ago
      Who said anything about liking or disliking the taste of meat? If you're vegan, you don't want to eat meat, for whatever reason. What sense does it make to then pretend to eat meat anyway? If you like meat so much you just have to have it, then what sense does it make to be vegan? Be flexitarian. Eat meat once a year, every Easter Sunday. Eat vegentarian. I don't know! But at least accept the fact that you can't stand being vegan because you really want to eat meat and dairy. For me, anyone who eats pretend-meat or pretend-dairy is a pretend-vegan. If you're going to go off meat to save the planet, or because you think meat is murder, then stick to your own morality and go without anything that is in any way "like" meat. Otherwise, you're just advertising the need to eat meat and justifying everyone else to keep eating it and ignore your pleas for the environment and the baby calves. If you tell me "I'm vegan, but I have to eat something like cheese", the easiest thing for me to reply is "I'm not vegan and I have to eat cheese". It just makes a joke of the whole idea of being vegan.
• pstuart 6y ago
  This project is promising: https://www.realvegancheese.org/ https://www.realvegancheese.org/ I think they've gotten to casein protein production but the site is kind of light on progress details.
• Sigmoid 6y ago
  Vegan food will never be able to match to a natural human diet. https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/veganism-is-the-pinnacle-of-bugmanism.html https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/veganism-is-the-pinnacle-of-b...
• bfrog 6y ago
  Some of the newer vegan cheeses are pretty damn good, gooey pizza goodness is in the realm of possible
• asah 6y ago
  just tasted the stuff... and I have to say I'm impressed. Eat it right out of the package.
• adrusi 6y ago
  If you want to make vegan cheese that actually tastes like cheese, the best approach is going to be to use something like Perfect Day's milk, which synthesizes milk proteins using some sort of genetic engineering or other. This could, in the long-term, enable better cheese production than present techniques, since cheesemakers have greater control over the chemical composition of their dairy. That said, I think there's potential for plant-based cheese-like products to be delicious in their own right, without trying to perfectly mimic existing cheese products. I don't think the techniques are there yet, but that's to be expected, conventional cheesemaking has been honed by millennia of experience. As an appreciator of fine cheeses, I'm excited to try the delicious creations of food scientists working with cheese cultures and plant-derived materials. Unfortunately, the vegan cheeses on supermarket shelves are not aiming at the fine cheese market, and instead trying to compete with dirt-cheap sliced/shredded cheese, and that's not what interests me.
• fumar 6y ago
  My spouse and I cut out dairy and meat products due to health reasons. We are vegan now. Our bad cholesterol dropped over 35% and saved one of us from having to go on heart medication. We were already health conscious millennials but genetics are always pushing their own agenda. We gotten used to good vegan cheeses not Daiya and the previous gen of dairy alternatives. It helps to live in a major metro.
• bigmattystyles 6y ago
  I hate how they can obfuscate the fact that they're not dairy. Via their labels and shelf placement. I've bought them on accident. It's always obvious to me on first taste, but from the superficial supermarket look, it is not. I'd think they get the 'wings' treatment. https://www.thompsoncoburn.com/insights/blogs/food-fight/post/2020-09-09/boneless-wings-or-saucy-nugs-viral-video-provides-lesson-on-food-labeling-laws https://www.thompsoncoburn.com/insights/blogs/food-fight/pos...
  • wumpus 6y ago
    You might be surprised to learn that "milk" and "cheese" have been used to refer to non-dairy products in many cultures and places over thousands of years. In Western Europe, it's tied to meatless Fridays and Lent, so it's a religious freedom issue. And in many other religions worldwide, too. Sorry you were confused! Poor behavior by your grocery store.
    • bigmattystyles 6y ago
      Yea, but aren't those items obviously not milk or cheese?
      • wumpus 6y ago
        Almond milk? It's kind of like the shitty non-fat milk from powder that I drank as a kid. If I hadn't become lactose intolerant after I turned 50, I wouldn't touch almond milk unless I was making a Renaissance recipe. Given that I wanted to use it for cappuccino, I had some fun learning about the history of almond milk.
• juloo 6y ago
  As a french, I'm sometimes offended by what Americans call "cheese". If I'd wanted to make a non-dairy pizza, I'd just remove the cheese and find other interesting ingredients. The world is too vast and beautiful to eat what the Americans call cheese.
• gweinberg 6y ago
  Next: vegan head cheese.