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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

#231

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> murder Please show me the law.

Yeah veganism is 100% a first world privilege.

Let me introduce you to South Indian cuisine... yes, it's not actually 100% vegan, but it goes to show that you don't need to be a Marin County millionaire to eat healthy plant-based food most of your life.

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

#232

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…

Thanks for the tip. When you say grind, do you mean like put it through a food processor?

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

#233
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.

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

#234

Mmmmmm, more processed food options, joy!

OG cheese is obviously a processed product. I have never seen a cheese cow but perhaps that just me

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.

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

#235
post #182

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Who the hell eats asparagus for its caloric density? You get plenty of calories from the hollandaise sauce and the potatoes. Given our sedentary lifestyle, low caloric density seems like an advantage, if anything.

We were comparing carbon input to food output, gram for gram. Caloric/nutrient density is completely relevant. You've thrown that basis out the window by adding additional foods and reframing the argument.

And yet you have merely restated that caloric density is relevant, not explained why it would be. (Nutrient density wasn't your original point.) Asparagus is not grown or eaten for it's calories.

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

#236
post #141
post #71

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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

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.

Quorn products are vegetarian, but many are not vegan - many of them have eggs, milk, and cheese in them.

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

#237
post #81

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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 lef…

> I wouldn't eat imitation animal products anymore than I'd drink non-alcoholic beer. And nor shall I drink anything with corn syrup as that's simply an imitation sugar product, nor do I eat chipotle burritos since they're a pale imitation of actual burritos. I eschew Cavendish bananas entirely since, just like a boca-burger tries to mimic a real burger, the Cavendish banana tries to mimic the real banana. You can ta…

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

#238

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 addicti…

Yeah, I've found moving to new foods to be relatively painless if done incrementally. Took just two weeks to convert my toddler son from cow's milk to soy milk (Silk brand, for the curious).

First day, it was 90% / 10% dairy/cow. Second day, it was (eyeballing) 85% / 15% dairy/cow.

You get the idea... Didn't even notice the transition.

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

#239
post #19

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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" somet…

> 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.

I find Violife feta cheese to be more delicious than real feta for snacking, and can devour a pack in one sitting if I'm not paying attention. It's a bit different from real feta, in that it's a lot less briny. Thus in recipes like Greek salad real feta is still better.

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

#240
post #55
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…

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.
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