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

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

#291

Post by missblit » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

cheese_goddess wrote: post #288

screwt wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stan…

I mean maybe they just like the taste?

I don't really understand it either because I'd usually rather have tasty veggies than imitation meat, but what someone finds tasty is what they find tasty and they don't need to justify it.

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

#292

Post by cwyers » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 10:54 PM UTC

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…

Because they're vegan cheeses.

There's a lot of cultures with strong vegan food traditions, or at least, there's plenty of dishes that are naturally vegan. Vegan cheese doesn't fall into those traditions, it's a processed food product meant to provide a substitute for cheese without using animal products. That's really the only standard by which it can be judged, how well it succeeds at what it's trying to do.

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

#293

Post by milesvp » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #279

tpoacher wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bah! I think you may be right. A quick google corroborates it was referenced in english as early as the 14th century. I’ve been annoyed at the term milk for non lactose based liquids for a while now. I’d assumed it was modern marketing usurping the term. Now I have to find some other thing to be mildly annoyed at.

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

#294

Post by cheese_goddess » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

missblit wrote: post #291

cheese_goddess wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stan…

I mean maybe they just like the taste? I don't really understand it either because I'd usually rather have tasty veggies than imitation meat, but what someone finds tasty is what they find tasty and they don't need to justify it.

You mean maybe they just like the taste of pretend-dairy, not as a reminder of the taste of dairy, but as something new? Then why call it "vegan cheese"? That just smacks of self-deception to me.

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

#295

Post by Clewza313 » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 10:56 PM UTC

eatbitseveryday wrote: post #72

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…

> 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…

Fun factoid: in Chinese, there are different terms for soy juice (豆浆 doujiang), freshly made from soy and meant to taste like it, and Western-style soy milk (豆奶 dounai), which adds in all sorts of weird additives, particularly oil, and ends up tasting like neither. The latter did not exist in China until the concept was imported from the West, and remains far more niche (coffee shops, packaged drinks) than the original.

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

#296

Post by cheese_goddess » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 11:00 PM UTC

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.

Mrrweelll... to be fair, the kind of mass-produced cheese most people recognise as "cheese" these days is not that great either. And most commercial cheese basically tastes the same, no matter what it says it is. That's because it's made with the same industriallly produced lyophilised lactic acid bacteria cultures. The job of those cultures is to give cheese its tastes and flavours and since everyone buys the same brands from the same few makers, everybody's cheese tastes the same.

What's worse, outside the EU you can find cheese with names like "feta", "parmesan", "mozzarella", "camembert" etc, that are nothing like the real deal (pet peeve: feta sold in the US is made with cow's milk). So most people who eat cheeses with these names outside the EU are eating substitutes of very inferior quality. From there, to eating plant-based "cheese" and feeling like you eat the real deal it's not such a big distance.

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

#297

Post by airstrike » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 11:02 PM UTC

qudat wrote: post #184

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…

> Basically, in the quest to return to a more healthy, natural diet, some folks end up moving to foods that are more and more processed. Is less processing always more healthy? It's often touted as such but adding some processing can unlock nutrients vs eating raw, right? Spinach for example, when eaten raw, has less bioavailable iron than if it were "processed" by steaming.

There's a difference between what the parent means by "processing" and simply cooking.

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

#298

Post by Djvacto » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

chevill wrote: post #146

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…

>I guess I just see it as a fool's errand to try to approach vegan cheeses as imitations. I don't really think its a fool's errand for consumers to approach food as an imitation when its literally developed and marketed as an imitation/replacement. Eventually the imitations and/or authentic lab grown food might get it right. Until then people will rightfully complain about them when they are disappointed. Personally…

Where I think the imitations are a bit more useful than home cooking (besides the fact that we do like to have some easy imitation meals sometimes), is levelling the playing field with stuff like fast food, BBQs, restaurants whose cuisine isn't typically vegan. Substituting the only meat part of, say, a burger is easy when there's, well, a substitute.

While I also like black bean burgers, veggie patties, etc (though I can't personally handle portobello mushrooms as a patty, I know tons of people also love that), it's clear that people like having the pseudo-meat option.

I know I do like having the option, especially for cooking when I don't want to make seitan or grounds or something from scratch, which involves following a whole other recipe just to reach my "base protein" that I then cook with.

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

#299

Post by cheese_goddess » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 11:10 PM UTC

asdf3243245q wrote: post #239

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.

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.

Sorry if this sounds too grumpy, but if you're outside the EU then you don't know what "real feta" tastes like because you've only tasted imitation feta from cow's milk. Real feta is made in Greece with sheep and optionally up to 20% goat's milk and even a lot of the feta that is exported from Greece with the PDO symbol on it is awful and tasteless, like a block of watery, salted gypsum. So I can understand why you'd say you think Violife "feta cheese" is more delicious than "real" feta. Because that's not real feta, either.

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

#300

Post by CarelessExpert » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

andor wrote: post #109

CarelessExpert wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly true. But, as an example, the Impossible Burger notably has more fat and significantly more salt than its meat-based brethren. Sure, it may be purchased due to a perceived variety of other benefits (sustainability, animal rights, etc) totally unrelated to the healthiness of the product, but it's objectively not a healthier option.

The Impossible Burger has about 12% fat which is quite lean. As far as I understand, the meat in most burgers is around 20% fat. Adding things like breadcrumbs, eggs or onions to the patties will of course change the amount.

> The Impossible Burger has about 12% fat which is quite lean. As far as I understand, the meat in most burgers is around 20% fat.

Depends on the beef. I looked the numbers up before I commented, and a simple beef burger made with lean ground beef weighs in at 11% fat, slightly less than the Impossible version (though yup, I admit, basically equivalent, which is what I should've said).