Vegan cheese that tastes like cheese? These startups may have cracked the code.
Vegan cheese that tastes like cheese? These startups may have cracked the code.
Next-generation cheese makers are using precision fermentation and AI to pursue the final frontier in plant-based foods.
Hopefully the texture improves with the newer formulas. I'm lactose intolerant and started buying the Daiya brand a few years ago. It's been great as long as I use it in something where it can fully melt. If it's not melted, the texture is all weird and just kind of unappealing.
But that does keep me from standing over the sink and eating handfuls of it at 2am, so maybe that weird texture is for the best? š
Honestly, IMO Daiya is off even if it is melted. It's just kinda... gluey? It's got a okay cheese like taste, as well as a cheese like texture, but it's somehow way too sticky at the same time.
Of the few that I've tried, I felt like dairy-free Babybel was the closest to actual cheese.
I don't have any issues with vegan cheeses in general, they usually taste fine, but they don't taste like cheese.
Iāll just take something that modestly melts and doesnāt taste so much of coconut oil. Since becoming near-instantly lactose intolerant in 2019, this has been my been my biggest gripe, as almost every vegan cheese maker uses the stuff and I think it makes the cheese taste awful.
I think the vegan cheese we have in my country either taste like mustard or cardboard
Fascinating. I guess Iād be curious to know which brands those are.
And, for what itās worth, I think Iād take mustard or cardboard over coconut oil. š
Big shout out to Gustav cheeses here in Canada. They have a bunch of lactose free options and they are tasty have good texture and melt right.
I've yet to have a normal tasting (or feeling) vegan cheese or butter. The butter is always sort off, like the little shitty butter packs you get at diners that come on a cardboard trough with a film of paper over the top, and the cheese is like weird texture uncanny valley cheese. I'm going to propose a heretical perspective: real meat and real cheese are great, most vegan alternatives (impossible Burger aside, because for a burger it's as legit as any frozen patty) are a pale approximation. I'd rather eat vegan or vegetarian meals that highlight things that are already vegan or vegetarian instead of eating a chemistry set.
Like sure, let's do vegetarian cooking options, but I don't want to have to add vegan processed protein extract to make it palatable. If plant protein works then use it, if a recipe needs animal protein, yeehaw let's do it, but maybe not every single meal. I don't need every vegan or vegetarian product to be bacon or cheese shaped or flavored, and it's starting to seem like a fools errand. Anyone who unironically uses the word "carnist" may miss the point here, but what if we kept things clean and simple so that, instead of faking cheese, we brought the gospel of the roasted Brussels sprout (or the cricket flour or whatever) to the masses to offset pork and beef every meal every day?
Really, "vegan cheese that tastes like the real thing" -> Unless you get your cheese from a plastic wrapper in a box, I fucking doubt it, lol.
My biggest complain with all these vegan alternatives, is the price. If you are selling fake chicken thats the same price as regular chicken, It is exploitation.
If everything was equal (scale of production, subsidies, decades of shipping logistics worked out) Iād agree, but I donāt think vegan cheese is anywhere near that.
A good start would be to remove subsidies for livestock and their feedstocks. I think that would already bring the cost of vegan alternatives a lot closer.
Thatās because veganism is predominantly an upper class and upper middle class phenomenon. So these products are marketed as luxury goods. They take a ton of R&D and capital investment to develop and the sales volumes are very low.
Exploitation?
I really think these companies should try and split the men's and women's preferences for taste tests. There is a strong idea of meat and cheese being tied to manhood, and I have a suspicion that while men might prefer the taste, even in a blind test, they would lie about it to avoid being thought of as a "soy boy". I really do think the new age of fake meats is less about taste, and more about identity.
EDIT: I will say though, for cheese the gap is real. Personally very happy these companies are closing it, because I'd buy it.
vegan cigarettes are still cigarettes even if animals aren't being tortured.