Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

> 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).

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.

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?

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.

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.