Vegan cheese has quietly but steadily infiltrated mainstream supermarket shelves

If vegans can redefine "cheese" then why can't I redefine "vegan"? You're saying that only vegans can distort commonly used terms to promulgate their beliefs? They can sell "vegan" cheese as propaganda for their ideals but I can't just say, well then, you're not vegan because you're eating cheese?

Why not?

A lesson I learned early in life is this: just because someone is upset with what you're saying, doesn't mean your 're right, or that they're upset because you're right, or even that they're upset about what you think they are.

For example, what I find annoying in your comment is the casual attribution of thoughts, emotions, morals and life experiences to me that you have no way to know I have. But you go ahead and make the assumption I do anyway and then triumphantly proclaim you defeated my "logic".

For example, I am not a carnist. I don't even know what that is.

I don't believe it's immoral to kill another animal to eat its meat. I don't believe it's immoral to kill another animal violently to eat its meat. Killing another animal requires violence that cannot be reduced to zero. And if you don't know what you're doing, you'll make matters worse because the animal will know what you're trying to do and then it'll try to run away and resist and cry for its mother. I know this very well. I know where my food comes from. I see my food running around when I look outside the window. I don't have any cognitive dissonance to work through.

Maybe you've eaten too many animals. I'm prepared to bet you have, especially if you come from North America or Western Europe, where people eat way too much meat and don't really know what to do with food unless it has meat in it. I do not come from such a culture and I haven't eaten too many animals.

Finally, I don't know how I'd react if you refused to sit at the same table as me because I'm eating meat. Probably, I'd think your'e a bit of an entitled prick, but be upset about it? Why?

You're making too many assumptions about my motives and experiences, when all I've said is that if you are vegan then you should stick to your principles and not eat meat or dairy. Are those not your principles? Or are you the kind of vegan that's OK with eating meat and dairy?

> But hey, I spent years performing mental gymnastics to justify the suffering I contributed to by eating meat and dairy, so I can see where you are coming from ;)

You can't. You have no idea where I come from. I never had to perform any mental gymnastics because I don't believe I contribute to any suffering by eating meat.

For example, maybe you "come from" (to be literal) such a place as North America, Argentina, or Western Europe, where people eat way too much meat and have no idea how to eat without meat? If so, then I grew up eating half or less the amount of meat you eat, and still do as an adult, I don't eat beef, most of the dairy I eat is not from cows bred in industrial farms, like yours, and I do not have to worry that I'm eating too much meat, or contributing to the destruction of the environment, as you would.

The bottom line is that you have some moral ideology that is yours and matches your life experience, but it doesn't match mine and I don't need to share it. And I don't need to make mental gymnastics to avoid sharing it, I just have no raeson to share it in the first place.

But I do have rasons to wonder why vegans, who don't eat meat and cheese, eat meat and cheese. Unless what they eat is not meat and cheese, in which case why call it meat and cheese?

> For example, I am not a carnist. I don't even know what that is.

"Carnism is the invisible belief system, or ideology, that conditions people to eat certain animals." ( https://carnism.org/carnism/ )

> you should stick to your principles

You're measuring vegans by principles they're not claiming to have, such that eating plant-based meat and dairy substitutes is ethically wrong.

This is additionally double-standards: Criticizing someone who tries to reduce harm for not being perfect (because of this alleged transgression of eating plant burgers, wtf?!), while giving a free pass for those who don't care. Surely it is better to try to reduce suffering and harm than to be indifferent?

> Or are you the kind of vegan that's OK with eating meat and dairy?

No. But I'm fine with plant milk and plant burgers, because those are not made out of animals or animal products. I like the taste and, most importantly, it has made vegan eating more accessible for my non-vegan family.

(Actually, I'm not too much into Beyond Meat, because it tastes too much like flesh for my taste, while I love Linda McCartney sausages. But that's just my own taste buds, and I don't worry too much about what tastes other people like.)

> I love that you can get all the taste without the violence and suffering.

I don't believe you can, because I understand how cheese works and nut paste doesn't work that way. If you want nut paste to behave in a way that reminds of cheese, you have to stuff it full of gums and emulsifiers and stabilisers and all the additives that go into typical over-processed junk food. Cheese works the way it works because of a confluence of factors that developed over millions of years of evolution of mammals, and the bacteria that live in our guts and help us digest our food, including our mothers' milk. For example, did you know that cheese is made naturally in the stomachs of ruminants? When a young ruminant drinks its mother's milk, that milk ends up in the fourth stomach, the abomasum, where it is fermented by lactic acid bacteria and coagulated by proteolytic enzymes, pepsin and chymosin, and turns into cheese. I'm not sure why that is done so. Obviously the fermentation, that breaks down sugars, and the proteolysis, that breaks down proteins, helps the animal digest its milk, but why coagulate it also? One possible reason is that it helps the animal digest the milk slowly while it runs away from predators.

The same processes are also in effect in the human stomach and while I'm not 100% sure about this, human babies likely also make cheese in their little stomachs.

Bottom line is, cheese has evolved along with mammals over millions of years and there is no other process that we know that can create the same kind of substance. The vegan cheese substitutes we're discussing in this thread don't even come close.

As to vegan "meat", that's just vegetables. Why do you need to eat vegetables and pretend to eat meat? In another comment you accuse me of cognitive dissonance, but what is the mental process that allows you to eat cauliflower and call it a steak? To me it sounds like self-dellusion, make-believe.

But even if you really could reproduce the taste of meat and cheese "without the violence and suffering" as you say, then I'd think you just want to have your steak and eat it.