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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 ch

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.
- xdennis 6y ago
  Your objective is terrible. The ability to eat as much animal products as you desire is synonymous with living in a first world country. A future where we can no longer do that is backwards.
  - ccmonnett 6y ago
    Your ability to eat as much food as you desire is synonymous with living in a first world country. The ability murder as many animals as you want is not the desired state I look for when thinking about the world in which my child to grow up. A future in which that is synonymous with status is backwards - to me.
    - xdennis 6y ago
      > murder Please show me the law.
      - ben_w 6y ago
        They’re clearly using the word in the moral sense rather than the legal sense.
        xdennis 6y ago
        So in the wrong sense? This squeamishness is a product of the infantilization western culture seems to be going through recently. Hopefully immigration from 2/3-world countries (e.g. me) helps fix it.
        ben_w 6y ago
        It’s a perfectly legit use of the word. Words are not defined by God; they get their meaning though use, and Merriam-Webster records one such use is “to slaughter wantonly”.
        amusedcyclist 6y ago
        A 'squeamishness' that comes from the reality that we don't need to kill animals to live comfortably anymore. The morality of a rich society is naturally different from the morality of poor country.
eatbitseveryday 6y ago
> stop thinking of certain vegan cheeses as substitutes for animal cheeses Why do we even begin with naming vegan food products after the items they are meant to represent? "Cheese" is made from milk. "Vegan cheese" as a label is specifically targeted at being "like milk cheese" and thus intends to replicate it. If you want > Why can't it just be treated as a food in itself? we should entirely dispense with imitating, and create an entirely new food category whose principle is "vegan" and not "like real food minus animal". Invent new stuff. Ferment things from plants but do not reuse any labels that are derived from animals. If you do not do this, people will still bring this up, because their expectations are intentionally shaped by how something is called. Don't call vegan cheese as "cheese" if you want it to shape its own path as a new sort of food product. edit: same with "cakes" which require butter and eggs in their traditional forms. Make something new but perhaps do not call it a cake? Make a new word that sounds catchy (we do all the time, and incorporate these into our language, e.g., Kleenex, google, "cloud" for servers, ...).
- fooblat 6y ago
  Where I live in the EU, a product cannot legally be labeled as cheese if it does not meet the official definition of cheese, which includes being made from milk. We also have lots of vegan "cheese" type products with funny names like "Keese" and "Cheez" and some are pretty good. I like keeping the names clear because no one gets confused and buys the wrong thing.
  - rusk 6y ago
    Em nope? There was a case brought by the farmers to try and outlaw this labelling but the case is still ongoing, if not thrown out already ... Maybe it’s the case in Your Country but it’s far from being a pan European thing.
    - fooblat 6y ago
      Em yes! "The European Parliament has voted in favour of an amendment (no.171) which would place further restrictions on the use of dairy food labels for plant-based products. The use of dairy terms, such as "cheese", "yoghurt" and "milk", for non-dairy products is already banned within the EU, following a decision by the CJEU in 2017, however, under the new amendment, these restrictions would go one step further by also prohibiting terms that liken plant-based products to dairy, eg "yoghurt-style", "butter alternative" or "cheese substitute"."[0] 0. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=588638a6-879c-446e-bd94-8eb8e7077ff1 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=588638a6-879c...
ianai 6y ago
Agreed. I explained benevolent bacon to someone as “you’re not going to think ‘wow it’s like I just ate bacon’ but you might think ‘ok I don’t need to eat bacon when I’ve had that’.” For me, anyway, certain key flavors and textures are there, but it’s still a new experience itself.
js2 6y ago
I tend to agree with this. I'm not a vegetarian, but if I were, I'd wouldn't eat imitation animal products anymore than I'd drink non-alcoholic beer. I'm happy to eat vegetarian food. It stands on its own as delicious. One of the best "burgers" I've ever had was made with black beans and wasn't trying to imitate meat. (It was at The Vortex in Atlanta years ago.) Imitation products that I've tried have always just left me wanting the real thing. Soy can be delicious prepared as soy and not trying to make it pretend to be meat. Tofurky. Yuck.
- smhenderson 6y ago
  I agree completely but one exception for me is using Boca burger as a sub for ground beef. If I chop them up, season them and then use the result in chili or something it really does give it, to me anyway, the "taste" and "texture" of ground beef. I know I'm tasting the seasoning I used and the infusion of other flavors from the chili more than the taste of the soy burger but my stomach doesn't care, to me it's just as satisfying as chili (or stew, etc.) made with beef.
  - js2 6y ago
    Here's an easy vegetarian chili recipe we've been using for years in my house: https://pastebin.com/84cwiJ02 https://pastebin.com/84cwiJ02
    - CobsterLock 6y ago
      Thank you! I'll have to try this. weird that it uses a less chili powder than I usually use in my meat chili (roughly 3 tbs for 2lbs of meat and a can of beans). Maybe I'm just used to a ton more spice. I could have been amping it up after going away from red meat
      - ENIanDEM 6y ago
        That could be because the chili molecule has polarity and clumps together in fatty environments, like meat sauces and yoghurt. Conversely it gets dispersed by water. That recipe probably has a bit less fat than what your usual meaty one has, so less chili goes further :)
chme 6y ago
There is a difference between imitating and replacing. Personally I would love a list of animal product ingredients and their suitable vegan replacements when trying to cook after some recipe.
kingsuper20 6y ago
>Why can't it just be treated as a food in itself? Exactly. Maybe the main problem is that it's hard to market 'Soylent Yellow'. If I were to become a vegetarian, I think I'd just buy a bunch of Indian cookbooks and stay away from IncrediblyMeatyPlantBasedBurger(tm).
- darkwater 6y ago
  Or ultra-processed junk food in general. Being a vegetarian is a good "excuse" (or side effect if you prefer) to avoid that kind of food but all those surrogates are basically following the trails of junk food. I understand their "gateway drug" behavior but still...
  - kingsuper20 6y ago
    I agree, and that is an odd thing. Our local way-overpriced health grocery story, which is always packed with people, is completely stuffed with health potato chips and health dessert items and health pre-made stuff with long ingredient lists. Maybe it's just the beauty of a free market, you can always make money on social behavior.
    - bfrog 6y ago
      Yeah don't get me wrong prepackaged food can be a big list of what!? On the other hand some of it really does seem reasonably made. At least until the Big Evil Food Co buys them out.
- vnorilo 6y ago
  This. As a flexitarian trying to increase veg protein to decrease my footprint I find I enjoy cooking with tofu, dried soy crumbs, chicpeas and home made seitan the most. They are also very versatile and do not introduce seven conflicting flavors and colors out of the box. Simple and been on the shelves since forever. Fake meats can be impressive as engineering but before long tend to feel weird, off and/or boring. Impossible does a great job of imitating meat, primarily the flavor of blood. But as I'm eating less meat, I'm tasting the blood more distinctly and find I actually don't enjoy it at all.
chevill 6y ago
>I guess I just see it as a fool's errand to try to approach vegan cheeses as imitations. I don't really think its a fool's errand for consumers to approach food as an imitation when its literally developed and marketed as an imitation/replacement. Eventually the imitations and/or authentic lab grown food might get it right. Until then people will rightfully complain about them when they are disappointed. Personally If I wanted to eat less animal products I'd just eat more fruit/vegetables/grains/rice prepared in traditional ways. They are delicious and likely to remain better than anything artificial at least for several more decades.
- Djvacto 6y ago
  Where I think the imitations are a bit more useful than home cooking (besides the fact that we do like to have some easy imitation meals sometimes), is levelling the playing field with stuff like fast food, BBQs, restaurants whose cuisine isn't typically vegan. Substituting the only meat part of, say, a burger is easy when there's, well, a substitute. While I also like black bean burgers, veggie patties, etc (though I can't personally handle portobello mushrooms as a patty, I know tons of people also love that), it's clear that people like having the pseudo-meat option. I know I do like having the option, especially for cooking when I don't want to make seitan or grounds or something from scratch, which involves following a whole other recipe just to reach my "base protein" that I then cook with.
dfxm12 6y ago
Why can't it just be treated as a food in itself? The producers of this stuff don't need to market to informed consumers like yourself. They need to go after the people who, while looking at items on a super market shelf, have no idea what to do with "cultured nut butter" but might have an idea about what "cashew cheese" is.
asdf3243245q 6y ago
It's because people are working with existing recipes they know and dishes they grew up on and have fond memories of. Thus having a good vegan version of those recipes often relies on having a reasonable ingredient substitution.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> 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. Naming the product "vegan cheese" isn't doing it any favors in this regard. A Chinese instructor told me once that tofu was the Chinese equivalent of Western cheese. ("And in as many varieties!") Nutritionally that seems basically correct. But you're not going to sell much tofu as a cheese substitute, or cheese as a tofu substitute.
- Kalium 6y ago
  I suggest looking up the process for making mozzarella at home. Then then process for making tofu at home. Your instructor was accurate on more than a purely nutritional level.
  - hnick 6y ago
    Is there a tofu equivalent of something like parmesan or brie? I can see how tofu relates to mozzarella or ricotta and I've reached that conclusion myself before, but there is a wide variety of cheeses. Apparently vegan-cheese varieties of those exist, but I'm curious if anyone took tofu there.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      The instructor claimed that there are a wide variety of textures and flavors of tofu, including soft and hard kinds. I cannot personally attest to this.
      - jdavis703 6y ago
        Indeed there are a variety. Most supermarket chains these days have a couple different types of tofu to choose from.
    - alisonatwork 6y ago
      There are several varieties of stinky tofu[0] that feature both a hard rind and soft center like brie. Some varieties of 豆腐乳 (Wikipedia translates this as fermented bean curd[1]) have strong flavor and creamy texture like blue cheese. I'm not sure there's anything quite as hard as parmesan (I assume you mean Parmigiano-Reggiano), but there are several smoked tofu varieties that taste similar to smoked gouda. Sadly in the west most shops only sell silky tofu and firm tofu, which are perhaps the most culinarily flexible, but they are far from the most texturally interesting or flavorful varieties. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinky_tofu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinky_tofu [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermented_bean_curd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermented_bean_curd
cwyers 6y ago
Because they're vegan cheeses. There's a lot of cultures with strong vegan food traditions, or at least, there's plenty of dishes that are naturally vegan. Vegan cheese doesn't fall into those traditions, it's a processed food product meant to provide a substitute for cheese without using animal products. That's really the only standard by which it can be judged, how well it succeeds at what it's trying to do.

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.
xdennis 6y ago
Your objective is terrible. The ability to eat as much animal products as you desire is synonymous with living in a first world country. A future where we can no longer do that is backwards.
- ccmonnett 6y ago
  Your ability to eat as much food as you desire is synonymous with living in a first world country. The ability murder as many animals as you want is not the desired state I look for when thinking about the world in which my child to grow up. A future in which that is synonymous with status is backwards - to me.
  - xdennis 6y ago
    > murder Please show me the law.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      They’re clearly using the word in the moral sense rather than the legal sense.
      - xdennis 6y ago
        So in the wrong sense? This squeamishness is a product of the infantilization western culture seems to be going through recently. Hopefully immigration from 2/3-world countries (e.g. me) helps fix it.
        ben_w 6y ago
        It’s a perfectly legit use of the word. Words are not defined by God; they get their meaning though use, and Merriam-Webster records one such use is “to slaughter wantonly”.
        amusedcyclist 6y ago
        A 'squeamishness' that comes from the reality that we don't need to kill animals to live comfortably anymore. The morality of a rich society is naturally different from the morality of poor country.

eatbitseveryday 6y ago

> stop thinking of certain vegan cheeses as substitutes for animal cheeses Why do we even begin with naming vegan food products after the items they are meant to represent? "Cheese" is made from milk. "Vegan cheese" as a label is specifically targeted at being "like milk cheese" and thus intends to replicate it. If you want > Why can't it just be treated as a food in itself? we should entirely dispense with imitating, and create an entirely new food category whose principle is "vegan" and not "like real food minus animal". Invent new stuff. Ferment things from plants but do not reuse any labels that are derived from animals. If you do not do this, people will still bring this up, because their expectations are intentionally shaped by how something is called. Don't call vegan cheese as "cheese" if you want it to shape its own path as a new sort of food product. edit: same with "cakes" which require butter and eggs in their traditional forms. Make something new but perhaps do not call it a cake? Make a new word that sounds catchy (we do all the time, and incorporate these into our language, e.g., Kleenex, google, "cloud" for servers, ...).

fooblat 6y ago
Where I live in the EU, a product cannot legally be labeled as cheese if it does not meet the official definition of cheese, which includes being made from milk. We also have lots of vegan "cheese" type products with funny names like "Keese" and "Cheez" and some are pretty good. I like keeping the names clear because no one gets confused and buys the wrong thing.
- rusk 6y ago
  Em nope? There was a case brought by the farmers to try and outlaw this labelling but the case is still ongoing, if not thrown out already ... Maybe it’s the case in Your Country but it’s far from being a pan European thing.
  - fooblat 6y ago
    Em yes! "The European Parliament has voted in favour of an amendment (no.171) which would place further restrictions on the use of dairy food labels for plant-based products. The use of dairy terms, such as "cheese", "yoghurt" and "milk", for non-dairy products is already banned within the EU, following a decision by the CJEU in 2017, however, under the new amendment, these restrictions would go one step further by also prohibiting terms that liken plant-based products to dairy, eg "yoghurt-style", "butter alternative" or "cheese substitute"."[0] 0. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=588638a6-879c-446e-bd94-8eb8e7077ff1 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=588638a6-879c...

ianai 6y ago

Agreed. I explained benevolent bacon to someone as “you’re not going to think ‘wow it’s like I just ate bacon’ but you might think ‘ok I don’t need to eat bacon when I’ve had that’.” For me, anyway, certain key flavors and textures are there, but it’s still a new experience itself.

js2 6y ago

I tend to agree with this. I'm not a vegetarian, but if I were, I'd wouldn't eat imitation animal products anymore than I'd drink non-alcoholic beer. I'm happy to eat vegetarian food. It stands on its own as delicious. One of the best "burgers" I've ever had was made with black beans and wasn't trying to imitate meat. (It was at The Vortex in Atlanta years ago.) Imitation products that I've tried have always just left me wanting the real thing. Soy can be delicious prepared as soy and not trying to make it pretend to be meat. Tofurky. Yuck.

smhenderson 6y ago
I agree completely but one exception for me is using Boca burger as a sub for ground beef. If I chop them up, season them and then use the result in chili or something it really does give it, to me anyway, the "taste" and "texture" of ground beef. I know I'm tasting the seasoning I used and the infusion of other flavors from the chili more than the taste of the soy burger but my stomach doesn't care, to me it's just as satisfying as chili (or stew, etc.) made with beef.
- js2 6y ago
  Here's an easy vegetarian chili recipe we've been using for years in my house: https://pastebin.com/84cwiJ02 https://pastebin.com/84cwiJ02
  - CobsterLock 6y ago
    Thank you! I'll have to try this. weird that it uses a less chili powder than I usually use in my meat chili (roughly 3 tbs for 2lbs of meat and a can of beans). Maybe I'm just used to a ton more spice. I could have been amping it up after going away from red meat
    - ENIanDEM 6y ago
      That could be because the chili molecule has polarity and clumps together in fatty environments, like meat sauces and yoghurt. Conversely it gets dispersed by water. That recipe probably has a bit less fat than what your usual meaty one has, so less chili goes further :)

chme 6y ago

There is a difference between imitating and replacing. Personally I would love a list of animal product ingredients and their suitable vegan replacements when trying to cook after some recipe.

kingsuper20 6y ago

>Why can't it just be treated as a food in itself? Exactly. Maybe the main problem is that it's hard to market 'Soylent Yellow'. If I were to become a vegetarian, I think I'd just buy a bunch of Indian cookbooks and stay away from IncrediblyMeatyPlantBasedBurger(tm).

darkwater 6y ago
Or ultra-processed junk food in general. Being a vegetarian is a good "excuse" (or side effect if you prefer) to avoid that kind of food but all those surrogates are basically following the trails of junk food. I understand their "gateway drug" behavior but still...
- kingsuper20 6y ago
  I agree, and that is an odd thing. Our local way-overpriced health grocery story, which is always packed with people, is completely stuffed with health potato chips and health dessert items and health pre-made stuff with long ingredient lists. Maybe it's just the beauty of a free market, you can always make money on social behavior.
  - bfrog 6y ago
    Yeah don't get me wrong prepackaged food can be a big list of what!? On the other hand some of it really does seem reasonably made. At least until the Big Evil Food Co buys them out.
vnorilo 6y ago
This. As a flexitarian trying to increase veg protein to decrease my footprint I find I enjoy cooking with tofu, dried soy crumbs, chicpeas and home made seitan the most. They are also very versatile and do not introduce seven conflicting flavors and colors out of the box. Simple and been on the shelves since forever. Fake meats can be impressive as engineering but before long tend to feel weird, off and/or boring. Impossible does a great job of imitating meat, primarily the flavor of blood. But as I'm eating less meat, I'm tasting the blood more distinctly and find I actually don't enjoy it at all.

chevill 6y ago

>I guess I just see it as a fool's errand to try to approach vegan cheeses as imitations. I don't really think its a fool's errand for consumers to approach food as an imitation when its literally developed and marketed as an imitation/replacement. Eventually the imitations and/or authentic lab grown food might get it right. Until then people will rightfully complain about them when they are disappointed. Personally If I wanted to eat less animal products I'd just eat more fruit/vegetables/grains/rice prepared in traditional ways. They are delicious and likely to remain better than anything artificial at least for several more decades.

Djvacto 6y ago
Where I think the imitations are a bit more useful than home cooking (besides the fact that we do like to have some easy imitation meals sometimes), is levelling the playing field with stuff like fast food, BBQs, restaurants whose cuisine isn't typically vegan. Substituting the only meat part of, say, a burger is easy when there's, well, a substitute. While I also like black bean burgers, veggie patties, etc (though I can't personally handle portobello mushrooms as a patty, I know tons of people also love that), it's clear that people like having the pseudo-meat option. I know I do like having the option, especially for cooking when I don't want to make seitan or grounds or something from scratch, which involves following a whole other recipe just to reach my "base protein" that I then cook with.

dfxm12 6y ago

Why can't it just be treated as a food in itself? The producers of this stuff don't need to market to informed consumers like yourself. They need to go after the people who, while looking at items on a super market shelf, have no idea what to do with "cultured nut butter" but might have an idea about what "cashew cheese" is.

asdf3243245q 6y ago

It's because people are working with existing recipes they know and dishes they grew up on and have fond memories of. Thus having a good vegan version of those recipes often relies on having a reasonable ingredient substitution.

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> 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. Naming the product "vegan cheese" isn't doing it any favors in this regard. A Chinese instructor told me once that tofu was the Chinese equivalent of Western cheese. ("And in as many varieties!") Nutritionally that seems basically correct. But you're not going to sell much tofu as a cheese substitute, or cheese as a tofu substitute.

Kalium 6y ago
I suggest looking up the process for making mozzarella at home. Then then process for making tofu at home. Your instructor was accurate on more than a purely nutritional level.
- hnick 6y ago
  Is there a tofu equivalent of something like parmesan or brie? I can see how tofu relates to mozzarella or ricotta and I've reached that conclusion myself before, but there is a wide variety of cheeses. Apparently vegan-cheese varieties of those exist, but I'm curious if anyone took tofu there.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    The instructor claimed that there are a wide variety of textures and flavors of tofu, including soft and hard kinds. I cannot personally attest to this.
    - jdavis703 6y ago
      Indeed there are a variety. Most supermarket chains these days have a couple different types of tofu to choose from.
  - alisonatwork 6y ago
    There are several varieties of stinky tofu[0] that feature both a hard rind and soft center like brie. Some varieties of 豆腐乳 (Wikipedia translates this as fermented bean curd[1]) have strong flavor and creamy texture like blue cheese. I'm not sure there's anything quite as hard as parmesan (I assume you mean Parmigiano-Reggiano), but there are several smoked tofu varieties that taste similar to smoked gouda. Sadly in the west most shops only sell silky tofu and firm tofu, which are perhaps the most culinarily flexible, but they are far from the most texturally interesting or flavorful varieties. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinky_tofu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinky_tofu [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermented_bean_curd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermented_bean_curd

cwyers 6y ago

Because they're vegan cheeses. There's a lot of cultures with strong vegan food traditions, or at least, there's plenty of dishes that are naturally vegan. Vegan cheese doesn't fall into those traditions, it's a processed food product meant to provide a substitute for cheese without using animal products. That's really the only standard by which it can be judged, how well it succeeds at what it's trying to do.