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Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

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Re: Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

#61

Post by pessimizer »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #17

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 pro…

I'd love for vegetable products to be processed skillfully enough that I wouldn't miss animal products. It's not the amount of processing that bothers me, it's the types of processing (and the types of additives.) Processed foods are on average terrible, but any particular heavily processed food might be wonderful for you.

This is almost the most important technology being developed right now IMO. Meat is killing us through environmental degradation and disease jumps from domesticated animals to humans. When I hear a "horror story" in the news cycle about there being no meat in a Taco Bell taco or somesuch, I'm like "if only."

Re: Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

#62

Post by woofcat »

derbOac wrote: post #55
jjcon wrote: post #2

> 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. Mayb…

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 chee…

>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.

Re: Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

#63

Post by throwaway5752 »

jjcon wrote: post #2

> 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. Mayb…

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.

Re: Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

#64

Post by novok »

king_magic wrote: post #25
jjcon wrote: post #2

> 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. Mayb…

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.

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.

Re: Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

#65

Post by jandrese »

jjcon wrote: post #2

> 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. Mayb…

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.

Re: Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

#66

Post by anigbrowl »

autarch wrote: post #33
CarelessExpert wrote: post #17

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 pro…

> There's something unexpected about this aspect of veganism, which is often embraced by those wanting to lead a healthier lifestyle ... I'm not sure what you base this statement on. There are many people whose initial motivations for going vegan were ethical, either to avoid funding animal abuse, environmental degradation, or both. That was why I went vegan 23.5 years ago, and why I'm still vegan. I eat mock meat an…

I totally get ethical vegetarianism, and appreciate that much animal abuse can occur within the dairy industry, but I don't think that's inherent. Of course, believing that and shopping ethically requires a great deal more selectivity and research (and willingness to pay more for food whose provenance can be trusted).

Not to pick a fight, but I don't get the basic argument that 'all animal husbandry = unnatural exploitation' given the symbiosis between species like ants and aphids etc. which I can just go and observe in my yard at this time of year.

Re: Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

#67

Post by nxpnsv »

La1n wrote: post #13
endisneigh wrote: post #6

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?

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.

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

Re: Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

#68

Post by Skunkleton »

jchanimal wrote: post #36
jjcon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

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.

Re: Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

#69

Post by Shadonototro »

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?

Re: Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

#70

Post by goseeastarwar »

jjcon wrote: post #2

> 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. Mayb…

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.

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