Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by darkwater » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

kingsuper20 wrote: post #119

derbOac wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? 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).

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...

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

#132

Post by willcipriano » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

mumblemumble wrote: post #118

willcipriano wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fig…

I'm curious, which brand was it? Can you find a picture of the packaging? I'm morbidly curious to see what this alleged train wreck looks like. I've honestly never noticed a brand that I thought was hard to identify. They usually prominently feature language like "alternative" or "-style shreds" or whatever. I'm not even sure why one of these companies would try to make the nature of the product well-hidden. Their go…

Looks like they updated the package: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Plant-Based-Mozzarell...

The one I had that plant based logo was a quarter of the size and it did not have leaves like that on the front. Also that white plant based text was a few shades lighter than the background (that was previously sky blue) making it hard to read. Admittedly I should've seen the "style" part and looked further, also I should've questioned why it was the one of the only shredded cheese left in the fridge. It isn't like I was defrauded but that certainly wasn't what I intended to buy, good on them for fixing it.

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

#133

Post by xdennis » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

underseacables wrote: post #100

I’ve always found it interesting that vegan “cheese” is still considered cheese. Should it be cheese-food? or imitation cheese?

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.

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

#134

Post by incrudible » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

TomatoDash wrote: post #91

Shadonototro wrote: post #69

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 on…

> 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-o...

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

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

#135

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

werdnapk wrote: post #41

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?

"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.

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

#136

Post by subculture » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

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/2017/06/2...

[2] https://www.vox.com/2015/4/19/8447883/milk-health-benefit

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

#137

Post by xdennis » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

ccmonnett wrote: post #127

xdennis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> murder

Please show me the law.

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

#138

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

barbazoo wrote: post #99

dheera wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yogur…

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]

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

#139

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

TomatoDash wrote: post #116

anigbrowl wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 explo…

Abuse is only one among several other arguments presented for ethical vegetarianism. For example see https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol19/iss1/1/

But I'm not questioning ethical vegetarianism, I'm talking about veganism's opposition to any kind of dairy farming over and above that.

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

#140

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

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…

There is a wing of the ethical-vegan community who disapprove of meat substitutes, arguing that we will never truly do justice to our animal brothers and sisters until we have lost the very appetite for their flesh. So, it is not just those who eat vegan out of health concerns, who are concerned about meat substitutes.