“Our cheese is so good they had to disqualify us” would be my new slogan so fast.
Wasnt that what they did with monty python’s holy grial when it was banned in norway*?
Anyone got the actual link to buy this cheese?
While we’re at it, I need recommendations for decent Mozzarella, Parmesan, and Asiago with a melting point below 300F.
I make a lot of Focaccia stuffed with cheese and jalapenos, as well as pizza, but it would be nice to be able to serve a guilt free option to my more discerning guests.
Parmesan - Follow your heart (https://followyourheart.com/products/dairy-free-parmesan-shredded) It does take a bit but low and slow works for us.
Mozzarella (Try it before you dismiss it, I know its a WTF moment) - https://www.miyokos.com/products/pourable-plant-milk-mozzarella I kid you not the promo images of the pizza is actually how it ends up, melts great and blends well. I actually use it in my eggs and my Wife’s “JUST egg” as I cook them and it ends up being amazing.
Sorry I don’t have an Asiago for you. If you ever find one please let me know.
If you don’t mind a little extra effort, Miyoko Schinner (founder if that “Miyoko’s Creamery” brand) also has a book out - “Artisanal Vegan Cheese” with an excellent meltable (not pourable) soy yogurt based mozzarella recipe.
Ohh that sounds great! Thanks for the heads up!
Since it was actually disqualified for being made from an ingredient that’s not approved for human consumption by the FDA you might not want to buy it.
It was disqualified before the announcement was made. Dairy farmers didn’t even know it was going to win.
That’s not true. There’s no reason to believe kokum requires GRS certification since it’s been historically and widely consumed on the Indian subcontinent.
The FDA not yet giving it GRS approval is not the same as it not being approved for human consumption.
A substance used in food prior to January 1, 1958, may be generally recognized as safe through experience based on its common use in food when that use occurred exclusively or primarily outside of the United States if the information about the experience establishes that the substance is safe under the conditions of its intended use within the meaning of section 201(u) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act
It’s not available yet, but here’s their home page.
A quick search: https://climax.bio/ and https://climax.bio/findus/
Really limited information on the actual products. Zero ingredients information too.
Looks like you gotta go to a restaurant to taste it. Meh. I just want some bean tacos when I’m back from work that have cheese in them.
Look, I dislike blue cheese purely for the flavor, but I’ll be damned i didn’t want to try this
You can really taste the feet.
Big Milk will not accept any threat to their cash cow! This is outrages!
Let me see if I get this right: they get disqualified for containing an ingredient that hasn’t been certified as edible (kokum butter) and is usually used in cosmetics, and there is no evidence of Big Cheese being the reason for the disqualification, other than the owner of the company saying it.
But it is still Big Cheese’ fault?
It’s even worse than that. The makers aren’t even sure what was in their product to begin with.
Zahn says the kokum butter shouldn’t be an issue anyway: The company has since replaced it with cocoa butter, which does have GRAS certification. Initially, he told the Post the cocoa butter version was what he submitted for the awards, but after this story was published he said he determined that it was in fact the kokum butter version. (According to Weiner, Climax submitted an ingredient list that included kokum.)
So it might have been labeled with having kokum butter, it might not. Who knows? Seems to depends what answer is needed at the time.
Also,
Climax, it turns out, wasn’t just a finalist — it was set to win the award, a fact that all parties are asked to keep confidential until the official ceremony in Portland, Ore., but was revealed in an email the foundation sent to Climax in January.
If I’m reading this correctly, out of all the contestants, only they knew they won. Makes it a further stretch that it was a dairy company that “out” them as they wouldn’t have known that the vegan cheese won.
My guess for the change about GRAS was it most likely was assumed everyone would only submit GRAS items, and since someone broke that non-spoken rule then they had to make it a clarified rule. It is something you’d just assume everyone made sure their food was most or less FDA approved (which is a logical assumption).
The Washington Post article is much clearer about this whole issue (which is linked to in this badly written Boingbonk article.)
According to WebMD and the millions of people that eat kokum butter, it’s safe.
WebMD isn’t the FDA, neither are the millions who eat it.
Only the FDA can say if something is GRAS or not. No one else matters in this context. And this contest wants to follow the FDA guidelines.
People used to use makeup with arsenic in it. I dont trust democracy on this one.
Gift link for access: https://wapo.st/3xQCcYX
Here are more details (and more context is in the article):
"Someone had tipped off the foundation on something that disqualified Climax, Good Food Foundation Executive Director Sarah Weiner told the Washington Post. The complaint potentially arose from Climax’s use of the ingredient kokum butter, which has not been designated as GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the Food and Drug Administration. However, Zahn told the Washington Post that the company has replaced the ingredient with cocoa butter, which was the version he said he submitted for the awards (although Weiner contests this).
The Good Food Awards also didn’t require GRAS certification for all ingredients back when contestants submitted their products — rather, the foundation added this to the rules later on. Zahn claims the Good Food Foundation never reached out to Climax to inform the company of the new requirement, although Weiner told the Washington Post it attempted to. SFGATE could not reach the Good Food Foundation for comment in time for publication.
“It would have been very easy for them to reach out to us and tell us about the new requirements,” Zahn told SFGATE. “… The thing that’s upsetting to me is that they were kind of unprofessional by changing the rules a week before the event.”"
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/berkeley-vegan-cheese-good-food-awards-19431532.php
There are innumerable horror stories from cottage vendors bumping up against the money and strict gatekeeping of the nationally established conglomerates. This was in the US, but I know Canada also has, new, laws on the books to specifically prevent plant based cheeses from referring to their product as “cheese,” despite being the exact same process and a final product that you wouldn’t know side by side to the dairy version.
I’m not a vegan, but this is the just same ole regulatory capture bullshit that we’re seeing w ev cars, good imported rum, net neutrality and everything else
Kokum butter is edible and occasionally used to make chocolates and other confections.
None of them care about that. They only care about arguing against vegan foods.
Ew, blue cheese.
Bro, insecure meat eaters are such pieces of shit.
You know cheese isn’t meat, right?
You realize this wasn’t meat eaters but cheese makers, right?
Yes, and cheese often contains cow.
Holy shit, they put actual cows in cheese?
No. No they don’t.
no, they just foribly impregnate cows every single year of their life, take away their calves the second they are born to take the milk from their overloaded udders until they collapse or stop being comercially viable. Then they are killed. Just like their male children a few weeks after being born.
The milk industry is arguably more cruel than the meat industry. We should reject both
I mean, they do make cheeses with embedded bit of meat, but that’s usually pig (specifically bacon).
Oh what if you added bacon to pepper jack. Little bits of peppers in cheese is freaking delicious. Add bacon to it and it’s like a slice of jalapeno poppers lol
I made a jalapeno poppers soup that was really good recently. I’ll post the recipe if I find it again, or just Google “jalapeno poppers soup.”
They do, it’s called rennet
Most cheeses don’t use natural rennet anymore. About 70% of worldwide cheese production uses artificial “vegetarian” rennet. And you can easily look up those who still use rennet harvested from calfs so you can avoid them.
meatlets upset it tastes better
What has eating meat got to do with cheese?
Slice’m all up and put it on a board. Yum yum
a lot of cheeses use caft rennet.
Also cheese in general a by product of the meat industry. You can’t have a lactating cow without keeping it perpetually pregnant, Where do you think those calves go?
I promise you it ain’t a nice meadow where they get to live out the rest of their “natural” lives frolicking
And then when the milk eventually dries up the dairy cow gets deadded too… FUN!
I appreciate the response and see no reason to downvote you - and you are at a net positive so clearly more people are up voting.
Your bias is very clear, but then so is mine!
You’d think so. i’m not even vegan. i’m just concious about where my food comes from
Also cheese in general is a by product of the meat industry.
Its more the other way around. Meat is the by product of creating milk. Not all meat is a by product, but some.
Either way round you look at it, one supports the other
Mmmm, veal.
insightful
must’ve been the italians.
And before you ask, no it’s not racist, they claim to be the only legitimate source of a certain type of cheese, or more, maybe idk cheese lore lmao.
I think you are referring to the DOP system? It certifies that a food with a certain name actually respects the history and quality behind that name.
But you can always make up new names pr use generic names. For example “blue cheese” is not protected under DOP, however Gorgonzola is. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgonzola
I have found their website https://climax.bio/, and they only advertize this product as blue cheese, not Gorgonzola.
However, unlike you have suggested, the DOP system is proposed and managed by the EU, not Italy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origin and a more complete list of types of protected names: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_traditional_specialities_in_the_European_Union
Finally, the article states the rejection is because the lack of safety certificate, not related to geographical or traditional protection.
After initially being named a finalist, Climax Blue cheese was later disqualified by the Good Food Foundation, reportedly due to issues around one of the ingredients (kokum butter) not having GRAS certification. But Climax CEO Oliver Zahn accused the foundation of caving to pressure from the dairy cheese industry and changing the rules after the fact to disqualify his product.
“GRAS” stands for “generally regarded as safe” and is issued by the FDA https://www.fda.gov/food/food-ingredients-packaging/generally-recognized-safe-gras
I have found their website https://climax.bio/, and the only advertize this product as blue cheese, not Gorgonzola.
That won’t fly in the EU, cheese has to be made from milk and milk are the excretions of mammary glands (though some countries have grandfathered in things like coconut milk).
And before a vegan comes around and calls the whole thing nonsense: There’s been cases of salami pizza using non-cheese “cheese” but advertising it as cheese. If milk and cheese can be freely applied to animal and non-animal products then it’s a given that the likes of Nestle will try their darnest to confuse customers to make extra profit. For the vegans: Each time you want to buy a cheese-like substance you’d have to double-check labels because you never know whether it’s animal or non-animal, companies certainly will prefer “cheese” over another term because vegetarians and omnis are way more numerous.
I guess if you don’t want to make up a new word for vegan “cheese” Tofu is a good option? “Blue Tofu” doesn’t sound too bad.
kokum butter
…is apparently used in chocolate making as a cocoa butter substitute? Can’t find any online listings for the stuff outside of cosmetics, though, so I guess it’s not approved as foodstuff in the EU. Probably just a matter of going through the paperwork but someone’s going to have to do it. The Foundation disqualifying stuff that couldn’t be sold legally as food in the EU TBH doesn’t sound particularly sus, though granted they might want to have a separate award for experimental food.
Sorry I think they specify that it is “vegan blue cheese”, is that okay in the EU?
Nope. You also can’t call it I can’t believe it’s not cheese
Hum, interesting, do you have a source for that?
Paragraph 24, referring to the EU regulation that I’m too lazy to unearth right now the ECJ has to suffice:
Furthermore, it is clear from that wording that clarifying or descriptive terms indicating the plant-based origin of the product concerned, such as soya or tofu, at issue in the main proceedings, do not fall within the terms which may be used with the designation ‘milk,’ in accordance with point 1, second subparagraph (b), since the alterations to the composition of milk that the additional words may designate under that provision are those which are limited to the addition and/or subtraction of its natural constituents, which does not include a total replacement of milk by a purely plant-based product.
I would expect the same reasoning to apply to “I can’t believe it’s not” type of deals but I’ve never seen that kind of stuff anywhere in the EU anyway, also before that judgement, someone else would’ve tried it if it was legal. Probably just general misleading marketing kind of deal, the same kind of strictness that gave us “serving suggestion” in fine print on a pack of trail mix with a couple of raisins and nuts in a bowl. The package doesn’t include a bowl? Who would’ve thought?
i didn’t know that it was an EU body, but i suppose that makes sense.
Regardless, it was a bit of humor, so don’t think too hard about it.
That’s how capitalism works
The dairy industry is so pathetic.
Agreed.
They need to moooove over
Now I have this goddamn commercial in my head, thirty years since I last heard it. Thanks.
Maybe. But nothing in this story suggests that as “the dairy industry” did nothing more than disqualify a cheese made using non-GRAS ingredients.
What’s pathetic is Big Vegan telling lies to try and discredit an ancient and valuable industry.
There’s nothing ancient or valuable about a relatively new industry that’s built on lies and unnecessary suffering and death for all.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=roIWg4ntj9k&pp=ygUTZGFpcnkgaW5kdXN0cnkgbGllcw%3D%3D
In the first 45 seconds of that video it says we’ve been consuming milk for 10,000 years - and yet you say it’s not ancient?
Compared to the other 90% of our evolutionary history? Not by a longshot.
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/flashback-friday-the-problem-with-the-paleo-diet-argument/
Holy shit, there’s a decent vegan cheese? I like my meat but I understand that the current status quo isn’t sustainable, and cheese is the number two thing the vegan industry has been struggling with making a good substitute for (number one being bacon.)
Yeah. I’m a vegetarian and the only things preventing me from being full vegan are cheese and ice cream. Once I can tackle those addictions, I’ll be very happy going full vegan.
I’ve had vegan ice cream before that was so much better than any ice cream I’ve had before but I don’t remember which brand it was and I’m so mad about it. It had this really nice chewy bouncy texture. So good vegan ice cream exists. Now if only I can find it again.
I get the cheese argument, but the dairy-free ice cream these days is wild. Oatly, and a few others have some incredible offerings.
It’s been a few years since I tried any. Thanks for the suggestion!
The vegan market is thriving atm, go try!
Oh boy have I got an ice cream for you. wicked kitchen
That looks good! Thanks!
My local store had five different brands of mint chip vegan ice cream. I’ve still only tried two and I think they’re great.
Have I got a book for you - Artisan Vegan Cheese
I just wish the US government would shift subsidies from meat and dairy to alternatives. The modern stuff is very good, it just costs like twice as much! Last time I went grocery shopping, the oat milk was almost the same price as the cow milk, so I bought two gallons, because it also keeps much longer than cow milk.
Holy shit, there’s a decent vegan cheese?
Yeah, try the Follow Your Heart brand. I think the name is pretty cheesy (pun intended) and it usually costs more than common brands like Daiya, but it tastes significantly better and melts more like actual cheese.
Yeah but it’s blue cheese
Blue cheese is a bit strong for most people, I can respect that, I’m one of those people. The trick is knowing what to pair with blue cheese to help balance it out a bit.
You want my recommendation for how to enjoy some store-bought blue cheese? Try it on a burger, with some sliced avocado instead of lettuce. The meat and the dense fruit balance out the blue beautifully, you get all the nice taste of a blue cheese without feeling like your mouth got nuked from orbit by smelly cheese.
I also hate avocado.
You’re a monster and you should feel bad.
Avocado’s a silly thing to try to sell blue cheese to a blue cheese hater with anyway, it’s almost completely flavorless. What you want is a bright, tart fruit, like a strawberry or an apricot. The sugar and tang of the fruit kind of countersthe funkiness and complements the creaminess of the cheese. Could be fresh fruit or in a jam/compote or whatever. Throw that shit on a cracker and enjoy the ride! Or continue to hate it, lol, that’s also acceptable.
Or a fig! Figs are great with any flavourful cheese!
I don’t hate it, I just don’t get it. It just tastes like plant.
A slice of pear might work. Or even apple but you’d have to fry it first
It being strong is not the only reason it is disliked. Usually its the taste that people dont like
The best kind next to feta
I love you.
Win win
Shredded cheese substitutes aren’t bad, especially if you plan on just melting it anyway. I’m not sure i would be willing to use vegan cheese on a cheese and cracker plate, but plenty of the stuff out there is suitable for melting on top of a sandwich, or in potatoes.
If you skip the mass produced stuff, there are plenty of great naturally fermented plant-based cheeses. But in my experience it always feels like something is missing, which probably has to do with dairy’s addictiveness. How do you compete with drugs?
Better drugs. We need to start putting crack in the vegan cheese it’ll still be plant based after all.
Cr…cregan?
psilocybe-infused artisinal almond cheese. 🧑🍳🤌
The dairy and meat lobbies are something else. It’s like smoking in the fifties.
It’s well established that there are serious health concerns when you consume animal produce (not to mention environmental and animal welfare ones), yet the industry keeps pushing back on plant-based alternatives.
I’ve heard of potential health issues from red meat consumption, but all animal products? That’s a first for me. Do you have any sources to share on this?
Try watching the documentary “You are what you eat” on Netflix, it’s a good intro that covers the health risks of other animal products as well.
I don’t get much time to watch videos these days so I’m not going through the Netflix series. Though it looks like it’s based off this paper, and that I can look through.
They studied 22 pairs of twins, intervened by changing their diets so that one gets a vegan diet and the other an omnivore diet, then measured a bunch of stuff via blood and stool samples. I don’t see mention of how they correct for multiple hypotheses, but I’ll just give them the benefit of the doubt here.
They found statistical significance in two places
- LDL-C: Participants all start out in a healthy range, and they stay in a healthy range. So while the vegans improved on this measure, it also tells us that omnivores are perfectly healthy as well.
- Fasting insulin levels: Same as LDL-C. Start off healthy, ended up healthy. We see the vegans having lower fasting insulin, but we don’t know if that’s a good thing or not when they’re already starting at 12.7 μIU/mL.
So basically, the conclusion from the paper is that vegan and omnivore diets are both perfectly healthy, but you might gain slight benefits from going vegan.
Thanks for looking that up. I’m no dietician or medical expert myself, so I have to go by the more easily digestible media. That does run the risk of being more sensationalised.
One thing I did take away from the Netflix series was that both the omnivore diet and vegan one were designed to be well-balanced. Everything in moderation works well, I suppose.
Technically it can’t be all animal products, since honey is about 98% sugar, and despite the hate campaign currently hitting carbs, sugar is not quite as harmful (in and of itself) as it’s made out to be.
But if we’re referring to all animal products in the sense of meat, dairy, and eggs - those three foods have nutritional properties that are all very similar and they do have some overlap in terms of health issues.
The biggest thing they have in common is being a package deal with high amounts of saturated fat and cholesterol. Heart disease is generally the industrialized world’s number one killer, and all three animal foods initiate the onset and progress the state of heart disease.
Then there are issues that are less settled, like to what degree do these foods cause various cancers?
And then this one is even more in need of further study, but there might be a link between these foods and autoimmune disorders.
https://www.pcrm.org/news/health-nutrition/meat-bad-you-and-environment
https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/processed-meat
https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/health-concerns-about-dairy
https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/health-concerns-with-eggs
I’m aware that there’s evidence of saturated fats having undesirable effects on your health. But plenty of meats are low in saturated fats (e.g. skinless chicken breast, or fish).
Relatively low if you compare it only to other meats or animal products. So while you can choose animal products that might progress these chronic metabolic diseases slower, you are still advancing them. But there are lots of factors that complicate things. For example the health impacts of animal products also depend on how you cook them, and what you eat them with. Cured meats are unanimously considered one of the worst things you can consume, right up there with smoking. Steamed fish would probably be about the least harmful (except that fish have some of the highest levels of bioaccumulated toxins and heavy metals). Actually, bugs are likely the least harmful, for those who are comfortable with that. Eating a source of fiber mitigates some of the harm from animal products as shown in this video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C08mqjMuwyY
Further complicating things is that single nutrients often behave differently depending on context. For example antioxidants other than some of the essential vitamins have never been shown to produce their purported effects outside of laboratory conditions, and some supplemented sources of antioxidants have even been shown to be a little harmful. But when we test the whole foods that contain those antioxidants, we get data like how increasing leafy green consumption has been correlated with a longer life expectancy.
And it’s similar for saturated fats and animal products. In the most established science on the matter you’ll see they don’t just talk about saturated fat alone - the science appears to show a relationship between the ratio of saturated and unsaturated fats consumed, particularly polyunsaturated fats. This book describes that science quite well-
https://www.redpenreviews.org/reviews/eat-drink-and-be-healthy/
But going back to that nutrients vs whole foods, there might be more than just the fats at play. This piece by Colin Campbell is a bit of a manifesto against nutritional reductionism, and suggests that the animal proteins themselves might play more of a role than we had thought:
https://nutritionstudies.org/is-saturated-fat-really-that-bad/
When you put whole diets to the test, what starts to become most consistent is how the most whole-plant-dominant diets by far achieve the most remarkable results. It’s apparent in the Adventist Health Studies, the Esselstyn Heart Disease Reversal diet, as well as Dean Ornishes full lifestyle intervention program. The latter two claim they can reverse heart disease, which is a controversial claim. More study is needed to prove whether that’s true or false, but regardless it’s still apparent that these fully plant-based dietary interventions do more than any others to restore people to good health.
And it’s a thing where science and personal experience match. If you check out the online whole-food plant-based support communities, you see people routinely report almost miraculous changes to their health and wellbeing in a matter of weeks or even days. It’s the kind of thing that once you experience it fully enough, you don’t want to go back.
https://adventisthealthstudy.org/studies/AHS-2/findings-lifestyle-diet-disease
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/departments/wellness/integrative/esselstyn-program
They’re going to get hit with the Streisand effect.
Vegan blue cheese
So just the mold without the dairy? 🤔
The article suggests it’s bacteria creating the milk from plants rather than cows and then normal cheese past that
However the article also says the dairy industry wasn’t the one complaining about it
It was disqualified for having an ingredient that was not GRAS(generally regarded as safe). Even GRAS is a pretty low bar for food safety.
Huh, turns out asbestos is actually delicious too
I mean, asbestos is dangerous if broken down and inhaled, so as long as you just eat it and you don’t choke on it…
Ground chests are also probably not okay to inhale, but here we are eating them whole. Why not dip some of that 'bestos in guac? Should solve all issues tbh.
Not true. It’s considered safe by WebMD, and it’s been studied as a food for a long time. It is chemically similar to cocoa butter.
So it’s been approved by more reputable organizations than the FDA.
Web MD is crap. Also GRAS is a term that only the FDA can bestow. So yeah it’s not GRAS.
Here are more details (and more context is in the article):
"Someone had tipped off the foundation on something that disqualified Climax, Good Food Foundation Executive Director Sarah Weiner told the Washington Post. The complaint potentially arose from Climax’s use of the ingredient kokum butter, which has not been designated as GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the Food and Drug Administration. However, Zahn told the Washington Post that the company has replaced the ingredient with cocoa butter, which was the version he said he submitted for the awards (although Weiner contests this).
The Good Food Awards also didn’t require GRAS certification for all ingredients back when contestants submitted their products — rather, the foundation added this to the rules later on. Zahn claims the Good Food Foundation never reached out to Climax to inform the company of the new requirement, although Weiner told the Washington Post it attempted to. SFGATE could not reach the Good Food Foundation for comment in time for publication.
“It would have been very easy for them to reach out to us and tell us about the new requirements,” Zahn told SFGATE. “… The thing that’s upsetting to me is that they were kind of unprofessional by changing the rules a week before the event.”"
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/berkeley-vegan-cheese-good-food-awards-19431532.php
