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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

#471

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There are several varieties of stinky tofu[0] that feature both a hard rind and soft center like brie. Some varieties of 豆腐乳 (Wikipedia translates this as fermented bean curd[1]) have strong flavor and creamy texture like blue cheese. I'm not sure there's anything quite as hard as parmesan (I assume you mean Parmigiano-Reggiano), but there are several smoked tofu varieties that taste similar to smoked gouda. Sadly in…

Yeah, furu is shockingly close to cheese in flavor. It's very pungent and salty, so you can't just just chop off a huge slice and eat it like you would cheese, but you could probably blend it with creamier tofu/soy milk to make something similar to normal cheese.

> It's very pungent and salty, so you can't just just chop off a huge slice and eat it like you would cheese

You can do this with feta, which is soaked in brine. How salty is furu?

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

#472
post #392

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70/30 beef from a local butcher. No additives.

Why put something else than meat though? I never understood this.

That's not what 70/30 means. It's the lean to fat ratio. So 70% lean, 30% fat beef went into the hamburger.

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

#473
post #406

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Where in my reply did I mention forcing lactation on people? That is right, nowhere. Perhaps you need some remedial reading comprehension.

Perhaps... but I was talking about cows.

Where in my reply did I mention forcing lactation on cows? My comments were directed at the statement that all mammals need to give birth to lactate, which is incorrect.

If you are having difficulty ascertaining this point, you definitely need remedial reading comprehension.

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

#474

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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…

Chocolate, is in fact "protected like that." The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) contains a section on Cocao, and foods must meet the legal requirements to be called milk chocolate, otherwise, they'd have to be called something generic a "confectionery" or given a brand name, like "Meelk-Shock-o-Lock®".

Lots of foods are regulated by the FDA or USDA. Mayo, yoghurt, butter, bread, etc, etc. If you search the FDA or USDA site, you'll find the requirements that must be met for a company to use such terms. That's why Miracle Whip is called a "dressing," in the USA instead of Mayonnaise.

The CFR contains a subsection specifically for frozen pies (though, one of the Trump administrations last acts was to gut this). Lemon bars must contain lemons, per food labeling regulations. Peanuts have a section too.

And yeah, industry lobbyists are largely the creators of legal definitions for foods. If you're a beef producer, you certainly don't want other companies to be able to sell ground up bugs as "ground beef" and undercut your prices or give consumers a bad impression of your product.

I will concede, tacos are not regulated.

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

#475
post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps... but I was talking about cows.

Where in my reply did I mention forcing lactation on cows? My comments were directed at the statement that all mammals need to give birth to lactate, which is incorrect. If you are having difficulty ascertaining this point, you definitely need remedial reading comprehension.

[flagged]

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

#476
post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in my reply did I mention forcing lactation on cows? My comments were directed at the statement that all mammals need to give birth to lactate, which is incorrect. If you are having difficulty ascertaining this point, you definitely need remedial reading comprehension.

[flagged]

Ah, the good old ad hominem.

FYI, I am Gen X.

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

#477

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I totally get ethical vegetarianism, and appreciate that much animal abuse can occur within the dairy industry, but I don't think that's inherent. Of course, believing that and shopping ethically requires a great deal more selectivity and research (and willingness to pay more for food whose provenance can be trusted). Not to pick a fight, but I don't get the basic argument that 'all animal husbandry = unnatural explo…

> animal abuse can occur within the dairy industry, but I don't think that's inherent There is no economical way to do it otherwise. I honestly don't care that much about animal abuse (I do think that animal agriculture is often environmentally unsustainable), but you can't really play pretend about "some milk not involving abuse"

In the very next sentence I observed that purchasing dairy without supporting abuse involves paying more in both time and money.

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

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> animal abuse can occur within the dairy industry, but I don't think that's inherent There is no economical way to do it otherwise. I honestly don't care that much about animal abuse (I do think that animal agriculture is often environmentally unsustainable), but you can't really play pretend about "some milk not involving abuse"

In the very next sentence I observed that purchasing dairy without supporting abuse involves paying more in both time and money.

From where can you purchase such dairy, I would love a source.

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

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one: because you love cheese but you also love animals and so don't want to contribute to their suffering. In my experience people tend to become vegan: 1. for the animals; and/or 2. for the planet; and/or 3. for health. I have never heard another vegan say they became vegan because they didn't like the taste of cheese.

I have. Rather, the vegan I know didn't like the taste of meat. But of course what I said had nothing to do with being vegan because you don't like the taste of cheese. What I said was, if you like the taste of meat and cheese so much so that you can't do without a substitute of it, then why are you vegan? If you are vegan, for good ethical or environmental reasons, then why do you need to eat pretend-meat and preten…

This logic makes utterly zero sense. It can't be refuted because it is a non-argument.

> Either you are vegan and you don't want to eat meat or dairy, or you want to eat meat or dairy and you're not vegan.

This is some strange version of the No True Scotsman fallacy. Why can you not want to eat meat and dairy and yet be vegan anyway? Why can someone not be vegan for ethical reasons, and yet still miss the taste of cheese? That makes them not a "true" vegan, in some weird definition, but who on earth cares? The person is still not eating cheese. The end result is the same, whether you gatekeep the name "vegan" or not.

> You can't have it both ways. You can't preach to me that eating meat is murder and then turn your back and scoff down a pretend-sausage because you like meat. That's hypocritical.

This is where you've gone off the deep-end. Eating a pretending sausage is not "murder," and whether you like meat or not doesn't suddenly make eating the pretend-sausage "murder." No one's ethics are being violated because someone eats a soy product, unless it's ethics against the eating of soy, which is irrelevant to this discussion.

> And it only encourages people to eat more meat anyway.

[Citation needed]

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