@GrumpyGouda I thought you might be interested in this:
Bit of a daft name “vegan cheese” when the definition of cheese from Wikipedia is:
“Yellow or white, creamy or solid food made from the pressed curds of milk”
So if there’s no milk products in it, it’s not cheese. It’s a bit like “vegan meat”…
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Or Almond Milk etc.
if you look very closely in the space between vegan and cheese, you’ll see very small text which reads: “alternative or substitute for”.
The Coop are selling some the New Roots “Vegan Cheese” products, for example: New Roots Vegan Creamery Soft White (120g) online kaufen | coop.ch
The main ingredient is cashew nut.
Did some googling and found this quote that probably describes vegan cheese better than the author intended
"I’ve recently gone dairy free and have found a vegan coconut feta that is delicious. It doesn’t taste like feta. "
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To be fair, tasting better than goat is a pretty low bar… 
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I disagree. Cheese doesn’t have to include dairy no matter what Wiki says. In the UK Lemon Curd is often called Lemon Cheese (OK, that contains butter). Quince Paste (or membrillo) is often called Quince Cheese and is vegan (I sold it at Paxton & Whitfield, cheese supplier to the late Queen and the then Prince Charles in London last year). Also, peanut butter contains no dairy, and here now in NL Peanut Butter is called pindakaas - Peanut Cheese.
Vegan cheese really is the next big thing and like AF beer is improving all the time. There’s a massive market for it as the one food that vegans really miss, is cheese.
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That is the main challenge for Vegan cheese producers. mainstream cheese shops won’t stock it for some time because of allergy problems (they would have to have separate storage, display, cutting and cleaning areas for it). The 2nd problem they are facing is shelf life, most vegan cheese has a very short one.
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The jury is still out there on this 
most people dont realise how much addititives need to be inside their vegan “cheese” or “burger” to bind it, give it texture and flavor. You take a real cheese and it should have only milk, rennet, starter cultures and salt. The list of ingredients in non-dairy cheese usually reads like a chemistry exam. Admittedly, its even worse with vegan “meat”, but still.
I personally believe that all these “alt-proteins” are an intermediary step. They’re more unnatural and manufactured than almost anything on the food shelf, so not sure why it should be the better choice.
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In all fairness grumpygouda has mentioned the products with a short shelf life which in my book (rightly or wrongly) reads as if the products have less additives to…none?
Technology is improving and packaging and distribution conditions too can have a huge impact on the shelf life aspect. Of course, you need consistent investments but if the market is huge, why not? The commercial ones I have tried in a few occasions are based on cocos oil and its taste is predominant so I didn’t find them very tasty.
Disclaimer; personally I will never give up my cheese but I can see why this is the next big thing. I once ate some “vegan cheese” from someone (I think it was from an artisan small factory in Poland) and it actually tasted pretty good. It’s nice to have options and besides that many people have adopted this life style for (debatable!I know!!) health benefits so who am I to judge that.
Yes, the jury is out there but grumpygouda is spot on…
What you mean is preservatives, but additives is much broader. I’m talking about binders, emuslifiers, texture improvers, flavor enhancers, etc. Natural cheese doesn’t need any of that because it has casein, which binds it together. It uses rennet to separate the curdles from the whey which removes a lot of the water. If you dry it enough, just like charcuterie, the water level becomes too low for pathogens to develop. In artificial cheese, you don’t have casein, so you need something to glue it together. Because whatever ingredients are used in artificial cheese, you definitely need some emulsifier, because water and oils need to be kept together, which is “natural” in milk, but doesn’t happen naturally with coconut oil and water
Etc etc etc. To each his own, I’m all for a wider, educated choice on the food shelf. As long as people know what it means, where its coming from and how its made
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After watching that vegan infomercial on Netflix, it would appear that however much they tried to portray their results, the main benefit for health for a vegan diet was that it just didn’t contain many calories compared with a non-vegan diet so it’s quite easy to lose weight with it.
Vegan cheese could tip the scales in the other direction as nuts are incredibly calorific (although they do have many health benefits too).
Personally, I’d rather eat nuts as I do now as they come and not heavily processed.
As for environmental considerations, vegan cheese uses mainly nuts - cashews and almonds and these use a lot of water to grow:
- Almonds need 16000 Litres for 1 Kg nuts
- Cashews need 14200 Litres for 1 Kg nuts
A cow needs (on average) 628 litres of water to produce 1 Litre of milk.
(obviously there are other factors involved).
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Yes, but I picked on the grumpy gouda’s ideas. My feeling was they use a lot of coconut oil/fat as binders/emulsifiers and it does not give a nice flavour.
I have bought vegan cheese in 2-3 occasions out of courtesy for some guests and didn’t really read the labels. I don’t know which additives they use or if all vegan cheese is made the same way.
Oil is not an emulsifier. You need an emulsifier to keep water and oil from separation egg whites for example are an emulsifier, but they’re with a very short shelf life so used by chefs, but not in the industry. A very common emulsifier is soy lecithin.
I did say I don’t know what this cheese contains. Yes, you’re right though, thanks. Anyway, the ones I tried had a lot of coconut fat and it was simply too much.
@Gaburko, you made me curious. This is what you can find in general stores (variations of)
It’s worth reading the labels. When the main ingredients are water and coconut fat…and it is classified as a class “E” product…(nutritional value) then maybe you just buy a jar of good coconut fat and that’s it. 
Reference point in terms of meh products: frozen pizza is usually classified as “C”; “E” is the last one on that scale. 
Characteristics
Vegan Lactose-free
Ingredients
Wasser, Kokosöl, modifizierte Stärke, Kartoffelstärke, Lupinenmehl 2.5%, Kochsalz, Säuerungsmittel: Citronensäure, Aroma, Konservierungsstoff: Sorbinsäure.Allergens
Lupins and products thereofTrace ingredients
Kann enthalten: CashewnĂĽsse, Gluten, WalnĂĽsse, Soja.
Emulsifiers to be avoided
- lecithin.
- polysorbate 80 (PS80)
- carboxymethylcellulose (CMC)
- carrageenan.
- maltodextrin.
As you can see it doesn’t contain any of these but it’s still a very meh product.
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