Cycling UK Forum

Come on, own up, who's tried it?

This was my very faint-hearted New Year Res., that I would at least try this stuff. I emphasise the word 'try'. So I diligently purchased two blocks picked at random: one called 'Violife Epic Mature' and the other 'Applewood smoked'. We tried them both, toasted, today.

My point is, having forsaken meat, cheese is the most planet-busting thing we regularly consume. Overall production emits a whopping 13.5 Kg of CO2 per Kg of cheese - worse than both chicken and pig meat (though not as bad as beef or lamb).

I just felt we ought to do something. Not this, though. Was definitely a one-off try-out... The best I can do to describe them is, one of them was like some heavily-processed fake-Farmer-Jack that we once bought in a convenience store in America (there was nothing else). The other - words fail me!

Of course, if technology were to come up with an exact taste-alike for Roquefort, Stilton, Manchego, Gouda, Wensleydale, Comté, Parmesan....

661-Pete wrote:Of course, if technology were to come up with an exact taste-alike for Roquefort, Stilton, Manchego, Gouda, Wensleydale, Comté, Parmesan....

Doesn't really need to be exact though does it...
I mean, cheese comes in so many flavours and textures some of which IMO are genuinely worse than the vegan equivalent.

Many years ago I thought I was lactose *intolerant so I tried vegan cheese and it was dire.
However I had some not that long ago and it was "OK".
(Some of the meat substitutes are astonishingly good now - although you'd never describe them as healthy).

*Turns out it wasn't lactose but soya.
Which was a tricky one since I'd swapped out all my milk based stuff for soya based stuff...

I did unknowingly consume vegan yogurt, it tasted queer

Vocab: CSO, YSO..
Cheese-Shaped Object, Yogurt-Shaped Object &c

Oxymoron?

Wild horses won't drag me to within a country mile of "vegan cheese"...

simonineaston wrote:Wild horses won't drag me to within a country mile of "vegan cheese"...

Whaddabout cows?

I should've thought of that... bet they've got better pulling power than 'orses. And as for sheep or goats... no chance!

The other day, I passed a shelf in a local supermarket on which sat a product labelled 'vegetable-based sea-food product'. It stayed on the shelf...

simonineaston wrote:Wild horses won't drag me to within a country mile of "vegan cheese"...

Our daughter is vegan due to health issues.
She has found that vegan cheese on the whole to have a "funny taste". She says that it's "something they are working on and they've not got it right yet".

She's started eating dairy again now, so it's difficult to say if they have got it right now!

Personally, me and Mrs Mick F haven't tried it. Can't say we'd bother either!

I have tried it. A number of times over the years. I keep hoping that technology, or research might have come up with something better.

It's pretty horrid stuff.

I really like cheese, and am not inclined to give it up at this point. Also, with me being vegetarian, and various food intolerances & dislikes in our house, it's already difficult to manage meals. Without dairy, I would need to prepare some additional food, or something just for me, to ensure that I get enough of some nutrients.

I do my best to buy stuff from local, ethical dairies. I also eat some goat dairy products, including cheese, which is better than cow.

simonineaston wrote:Wild horses won't drag me to within a country mile of "vegan cheese"...

I always find such attitudes "odd".

I mean, I understand you might not like it but you haven't tried it and afaik there's no ethical reason not to try it.
Can't say it's something I'd recommend so I'm not defending it but there are lots of genuine cheeses I think are actually worse!

There are some dairy products I've found it pretty easy to move away from.
I use either oat milk "Oatley" or unsweetened coconut milk "Koko" on my cereal and IMO they taste better than milk which I find too sweet.
Haven't found a substitute for milk in my tea though...

But cheese is a difficult one although as I said above they are actually better now than they used to be.

there's a well-known parents' motto to which I subscribe, thus: "don't yuk somebody else's yum" which is sound advice. And while I respect somebody's right to find vegan cheese proper yummy, as far as I'm concerned, cheese is what you get when you combine the milk of domesticated mammals, time-honoured selected natural bacteria and a ton of skill and nobody-but-nobody is going to plonk some splodge out of an industrial laboratory on my plate and tell me it's an acceptable substitute. End of.

+1 Simon!

simonineaston wrote:there's a well-known parents' motto to which I subscribe, thus: "don't yuk somebody else's yum" which is sound advice. And while I respect somebody's right to find vegan cheese proper yummy, as far as I'm concerned, cheese is what you get when you combine the milk of domesticated mammals, time-honoured selected natural bacteria and a ton of skill and nobody-but-nobody is going to plonk some splodge out of an industrial laboratory on my plate and tell me it's an acceptable substitute. End of.

At some point we're going to get a lot better at mimicking the biological processes that produce a lot of our animal based food and I suspect real cheese will quickly become a minority product.
Once you can produce milk by mimicking the process such that there's no actual difference in taste who would want to drink the muck a real cow turns out?
It's not like there isn't stuff in there that you'd rather not ingest...

The whole dairy thing is bizarre imo.
I mean nature saw fit to turn off our tolerance to lactose once we're weaned.
For some bizarre reason some of us decided we'd push the limit of feeling a bit pukey to persuade it to turn it back on again...

I'm a big fan of cheese but there must be a reason mammals evolved to turn it off in the first place...

I don't mind people liking veg cheese or whatever. But they shouldn't call it cheese. It isn't. Call it something else as a newly invented product, but not cheese.