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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

#281

Post by maccard »

mizzack wrote: post #170
maccard wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your link, asparagus "the largest environmental footprint of any of the 56 vegetables they looked at, including its land use and water use", with 5.3kg of CO2 per kg of Asparagus. According to [0], "The average footprint of beef, excluding methane, is 36 kilograms of CO2eq per kilogram" - so even the worst vegetable imported from the farthest part of the world is 10x better per kg than beef. Also, I think that a…

...conveniently ignoring that beef is 10x as calorically dense as asparagus.

Sweet potato is ~30% the calorie density of beef, and causes 0.01kg co2 per kg according to [0]. I didn't ignore the calorie density,I used the worst case comparison from the article the parent shared, and compared it against the worst case of meat.

[0] https://cigrjournal.org/index.php/Ejounral/article/view/3461

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

#282

Post by cheese_goddess »

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…

I don't know about OP, but I've been fooled into buying one of these margarine products instead of butter:

https://www.vitam.gr/proionta

And I was very annoyed. Mostly at myself.

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

#283

Post by thaumasiotes »

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…

> I do not want to suggest that people "just don't like vegan cheese because they're expecting animal milk cheese" but I do suspect that if people would stop thinking of certain vegan cheeses as substitutes for animal cheeses, they would feel really differently on average.

Naming the product "vegan cheese" isn't doing it any favors in this regard.

A Chinese instructor told me once that tofu was the Chinese equivalent of Western cheese. ("And in as many varieties!") Nutritionally that seems basically correct. But you're not going to sell much tofu as a cheese substitute, or cheese as a tofu substitute.

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

#284

Post by strken »

jodrellblank wrote: post #261
PKop wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why do we Because this is as much a political statement, and battle, as it is a personal dietary choice. As crazy as it sounds, a certain segment of people love to change the definition of words. It is not enough to not want to eat animal products themselves, they also are not content to allow others to have these things to themselves unmolested by grotesque artificial imitations. They want their non-thing to become…

Much simpler to assume that selling to omnivores opens a much larger market than selling only to vegans. Omnivores want to eat cheese, and are not looking for "fermented cashew cubes", but might try "cashew cheese" if it was with the cheese and (cheaper/healthier/prettier/recommended by a friend).

I wish vegan cheese would be more specific as to what it's imitating. "Cashew cheese" is less helpful than "cashew paneer (great in curries!)" or "melty cashew mozzarella" or something that describes what facet of real cheese they've managed to get right.

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

#286

Post by jviotti »

jjcon wrote: post #19
pcthrowaway wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It might be a matter of taste and also certain kind of cheese might be harder to replicate. My partner and I also tried a lot of vegan brands, and while we disliked most (they were fine but not comparable), we both found the "original" Violife line to be really good.

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

#287

Post by ENIanDEM »

CobsterLock wrote: post #274
js2 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That could be because the chili molecule has polarity and clumps together in fatty environments, like meat sauces and yoghurt. Conversely it gets dispersed by water. That recipe probably has a bit less fat than what your usual meaty one has, so less chili goes further :)

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

#288

Post by cheese_goddess »

screwt wrote: post #271
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.

Who said anything about liking or disliking the taste of meat? If you're vegan, you don't want to eat meat, for whatever reason. What sense does it make to then pretend to eat meat anyway?

If you like meat so much you just have to have it, then what sense does it make to be vegan? Be flexitarian. Eat meat once a year, every Easter Sunday. Eat vegentarian. I don't know! But at least accept the fact that you can't stand being vegan because you really want to eat meat and dairy.

For me, anyone who eats pretend-meat or pretend-dairy is a pretend-vegan. If you're going to go off meat to save the planet, or because you think meat is murder, then stick to your own morality and go without anything that is in any way "like" meat. Otherwise, you're just advertising the need to eat meat and justifying everyone else to keep eating it and ignore your pleas for the environment and the baby calves.

If you tell me "I'm vegan, but I have to eat something like cheese", the easiest thing for me to reply is "I'm not vegan and I have to eat cheese". It just makes a joke of the whole idea of being vegan.

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

#289

Post by tpoacher »

dqv wrote: post #232
tpoacher wrote: post #190

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?

Actually, sorry, I should have said 'grated' instead of 'ground'.

When I do it, I actually use a rotary cheesegrater in the finest setting (i.e. something like this: www.thebakerskitchen.net/images/products/detail/811642026798.jpg). This makes the nuts come out soft and flakey.

But, yes, presumably a food processor should be ok too.

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

#290

Post by outime »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #87
ulimn wrote: post #4

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.

Same. For me, dairy increase respiratory mucus production which makes me feel a little congested and increases the frequency amd severity of upper respiratory tract infections. It also hurts my digestive system. Both are subtle initially and ramp up with continued dairy consumption, so I can tolerate small infrequent amounts. I suspect many more people have similar issues but don't realise.

Yeah I have exactly this. I tolerate small amounts but I avoid it on a daily basis. And I do love cheese but ain’t worth it. Lactose-free (aka adding lactase) helps sligthly but it seems it’s not the only thing causing trouble to me. All in all, we’re lucky we have alternatives.
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