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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

#271

Post by screwt »

cheese_goddess wrote: post #263

I don't understand why you need to imitate something that isn't vegan or vegetarian, when you want to eat vegan or vegetarian. There is a metric shitton of vegan and vegetarian dishes from the entire world's cuisines that you could be eating right now insteaed of a substitute for something you've decided never to eat again. Why pretend-eat what you don't want to eat in the first place? That's just mad. Go eat Indian…

Easy! People have lots of different reasons why they may choose not to eat meat or dairy. "Not liking the taste" is one possible reason. If that particular one isn't your reason, then you may still miss the taste/texture of certain foods, so having a substitute helps.

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

#272

Post by rsj_hn »

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…

Indeed good cheese is hard to find as much American cheese has a plasticky texture and bland taste. I've only had success with small dairy farms and stuff imported from Europe. Mount Tam is good.

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

#273

Post by scarmig »

Ma8ee wrote: post #253
js2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We drink a lot of non alcoholic beer. I want something more exiting than water even on work day lunches and I don’t like sweet drinks and I’m trying to reduce my caffeine intake. Not that much left to choose from then.

There's a product called Hop Water that hits a perfect spot for me. No alcohol or calories in it, and it is refreshing and hoppy enough to drink either by itself or to cut the oilyness of many bar-type foods.

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

#274

Post by CobsterLock »

js2 wrote: post #216
smhenderson wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here's an easy vegetarian chili recipe we've been using for years in my house: https://pastebin.com/84cwiJ02

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

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

#275

Post by cheese_goddess »

tpoacher wrote: post #215
DangitBobby wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's wrong with calling the vegan almond milk "almond-based milk alternative" if it's not actual milk? Because that would be crippling for an advertising perspective. It sounds like something out of a satirical sci-fi dystopian environment. The goal is to encourage people to choose it as an alternative to dairy milk, not to use the most precise label.

I get it. But it could have easily been a play on the word 'milk/milky', without calling it 'milk' per se. Like "Nilk" or "Plantmilk" or something. E.g. lactose-free dairy milk is marketed as 'delac'. It's not that hard.

Lactose-free dairy milk is milk with added lactase, an enzyme that is used by mammals to digest lactose in milk. Now, children, remember from dairy science class: lactose is a complex sugar made of two siple sugars, glucose and galactose. Lactase breaks lactose down to its constituent simple sugars so that they can more easily be absorbed by picky mammalian guts.

Fun fact: lactose-free milk still has all the sugars that made up its original lactose content (you could even argue it still has all its lactose, if you wanted to be really obstinate). Glucose in particular registers as sweeter than lactose and for this reason many "lactose-free" milks have messages on the packaging informing consumers that they have "no sweetener added".

Lactose-free milks also tend to be Ultra Heat Treated, which enhances the sweet taste by means of the Maillard reaction. See wikipedia.

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

#276

Post by cheese_goddess »

tpoacher wrote: post #203
Djvacto wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, do you have a link or image of what that "almond milk" you used to have was? Obviously searching for the various possible terms gives results mostly from recent times, about the vegan almond milk.

Well, admittedly, I'm thinking in my native language, which is Greek, and where "almond milk" was basically milk mixed in with "Soumada" [1]. Whereas if you say "almond milk" now even in greek, it'll probably refer to the vegan stuff, and you'll have to literally say "milk with the taste of almond" for the other one. Soumada is very tasty, a bit like amaretto but without the alcohol. I haven't had it in years ... A s…

> Well, admittedly, I'm thinking in my native language, which is Greek, and where "almond milk" was basically milk mixed in with "Soumada" [1].

"Αμυγδαλόγαλα"; I confess I've never heard that word but maybe it's just an old word?

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

#277

Post by DangitBobby »

mywittyname wrote: post #252
DangitBobby wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's wrong with calling the vegan almond milk "almond-based milk alternative" if it's not actual milk? Because that would be crippling for an advertising perspective. It sounds like something out of a satirical sci-fi dystopian environment. The goal is to encourage people to choose it as an alternative to dairy milk, not to use the most precise label.

Food is very highly regulated. And for good reason. It seems totally feasible to require a new product to have a new name, even if it's kind of like an existing product. Think: ice cream. Ice cream is a regulated product with a formal legal definition. Places making cheaper ice cream substitutes were forced to come up with names to distinguish their products: soft serve, Frosty, FroYo, etc. It takes the consumer all…

Im sure there is a happy middle ground here where nut juice could be called something both attractive and accurate, but not all foods are protected like that. Milk chocolate is not really chocolate, lots of things with "pie" in the name aren't really pie, lemon "bars" are not really bars, choco tacos are not really tacos, peanuts are not actually nuts, and numerous other examples. If they made it illegal to label nut juices as milk, it would due to lobbying from dairy and not from a general protection of accurate food labeling.

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

#279

Post by JoeAltmaier »

tpoacher wrote: post #180
eatbitseveryday wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't mind people calling something "vegan cheese" or "vegan milk" or "milk alternative" etc. But I do mind people calling it "cheese" or "milk" intentionally when it's a vegan alternative, revelling in the confusion, just to give the impression that they're interchangeable and it's really no big deal if you get the vegan version instead. Like, wtf is almond milk? When I was a kid, almond milk was super tasty, and…

Huh? Almond milk goes back 500 years and has always, always been made of only almonds. It would be very strange to rename it after 200 generations and several civilizations have come and gone.

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

#280

Post by isatty »

TchoBeer wrote: post #266
cheese_goddess wrote: post #263

I don't understand why you need to imitate something that isn't vegan or vegetarian, when you want to eat vegan or vegetarian. There is a metric shitton of vegan and vegetarian dishes from the entire world's cuisines that you could be eating right now insteaed of a substitute for something you've decided never to eat again. Why pretend-eat what you don't want to eat in the first place? That's just mad. Go eat Indian…

Lol why are you so mad that people want to eat vegan cheese. Maybe people just enjoy eating vegan cheese.

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