Vegan cheese made from home-grown vegetable oils is healthier, greener and more “oozy”, scientists have found.
The cheese substitute is typically made from a combination of starch and solid fats like coconut or palm oil.
The fats give it the “sliceable, meltable” texture people expect from cheese – but also mean vegan cheese often ends up with a high saturated fat content.
Now a team at Heriot-Watt University (HWU) has developed a way of making vegan cheese slices from vegetable oils like rapeseed and sunflower, rather than the coconut and palm oil.
The work is as part of efforts to make the product healthier and more sustainable.
Good to see. Coconut oil is in so many processed vegan products, so it would be big bonus for peoples health if it was replaced by something better.
Would be nice, if we’d find a way to actually put proteins into there. Feels quite pointless to eat vegan cheese, when it’s just starch and fat. Might as well eat some more bread at that point. Or, you know, snack some nuts…
Violife have started making one with pea protein in which is decent as a general use cheese, and there are quite a few cashew based cheeses out there which tend to be more expensive deli cheeses, but also don’t feel like just eating solidified coconut oil.
Hmm, will have to see, if I can find that in the shops. Thanks!
“It won’t taste any better or worse than the current vegan cheese slices on the market
I’ll stick to nooch then, thanks.
nooch fucking rules. I love to absolutely bury a big bowl of popcorn in the stuff
It really goes well with popcorn i’ve discovered aswell. The other day I even put it on buttered bread instead of cheese, was super delicious actually!
Yay, more highly processed shit for people trying to eat a healthy diet. Now with more ooze.
Yay, more highly processed shit for people trying to eat a healthy diet. Now with more ooze.
- Vegan cheese already exists and is already highly processed. It’s an alternative to an animal-based food that’s also unhealthy and highly processed.
- People who eat a plant-based diet for health would be able to avoid it basically just as much as they could before if this takes off.
- Existing vegan cheese is typically made with coconut or palm oil, high in saturated fats.
- The innovation discussed in the article offers to raise protein while lowering unhealthy saturated fat content.
- Veganism isn’t about a “healthy diet”. It’s about the animals. There’s !wfpb@lemmy.world if you’re looking for a community strictly about healthy, plant-based dieting.
A plant-based diet that vegans adopt coincidentally can have a lot of health benefits (dependent largely on how closely you stick to whole foods), but coming in and complaining about unhealty, processed alternatives to unhealthy, processed animal-based foods is kind of like coming into a community about smoothies and complaining on a post about a new cookie smoothie because drinking smoothies is about health and liquefied veggies and fitness. It’s your choice if you want to use smoothies strictly to stay healthy (and good for you); some people just generically like and want to talk about smoothies and don’t care if they have a sugary, junk smoothie once in a while or even all the time.
TL;DR: You’re not in a healthy dieting community, so please don’t act like it if it doesn’t personally affect you.
thanks bro!
I thought vegetable oil is soy oil. Yet I was always confused because soy isn’t a vegetable.
Now they’re saying sunflower oil and rapeseed oil are vegetable oils. And neither are vegetables too.
And I always saw rapeseed oil referred to as “canola oil”, not vegetable oil.
I’m so confused.
soy isn’t a vegetable
Vegetable is a loosely defined culinary term, not botanical. “Plant-derived” would be more appropriate.
Canola is rapeseed oil processed to remove erucic acid , which is a toxin. This is using heat and solvents.
Plant and vegetable oils are interchanged in terminology. Vegans love to get stuck on semantics.
I didn’t know that’s what it meant. Is olive oil a vegetable oil? I mean, clearly it’s a plant oil.
Why can I get olive oil, canola oil, and vegetable oil as separate products? Shouldn’t the latter describe the two firsts? And why not call them “plant oils”? Isn’t “vegetable oil” confusing? A misnomer?
the vegetable oil I bought at the store recently is listed as “soybean oil” in the ingredients … I think soy is obviously a vegetable in this context.
I’d consider you (dandelion) a vegetable in any context.
even in a wine? even as a tea? even as your kid blows me?
Good point.
What’s your definition of a vegetable? Are brocolli, tomatoes, squash, zuccini and peas vegetables?
Sure.
Unless you refer to split peas. Those are legumes.
Soybeans are a type of legume which are part of the pea family, broccoli is a flower, and tomatoes, squash and zuccini all have seeds, making them fruits. There isn’t a real definition of “vegetable” much more specific than “plants we eat.”
Flowers and fruits can all be vegetables. A tomato (fruit) is a vegetable. An orange (fruit too) isn’t one.
Vegetables are actually the category of plant foods you put into savory meals and don’t provide much calories. Or do you consider bread a vegetable?
That would be the precise answer of a botanist.
I tried going vegan for a couple of weeks until I tried to find cheese that didn’t taste like ass. I actually liked Impossible Meat though. If they can’t make it taste better, don’t bother.
Veganism isn’t a diet though. It is a way of life aimed towards excluding consumption of things that result in animal cruelty, exploitation, or death.
I’m not vegan because the vegan cheese is good. I’m vegan because i value life and, among many reasons, the dairy industry is atrocious.
You say if they can’t make the vegan cheese taste better then don’t bother, which is also problematic. The OP talks about how it is aimed to be more sustainable and mentions current vegan cheeses might use palm oil. Palm oil can be vegan if ethically sourced but the problem with the industry is that is not sustainable and leads to deforestation.
But even if you are not vegan, choosing to eat non-meat and non dairy alternative foods for even some of your meals can have a positive impact on the environment and your health.
I acknowledge that the vegan lifestyle is more ethical, but what about insects? I’m not being facetious.
I read an article that they may be able to grow meat from cloned cells in a lab. Does that change the ethics? I think so.
What about insects? They are animals.
Lab grown meat / cloned cells are still initially extracted from animals. There is inherent exploitation and/or harm done to the animals. Some vegans may believe this utilitarian approach is ok. I do not.
My point about insects is that any type of farming, even organic farming, kills insects, often unintentionally, even if one is being mindful not to. What then? Eat dirt? No living thing can live without killing something else. It’s the nature of life.
Wouldn’t you agree that endeavoring to do less harm (eating cloned meat, eating vegan once or twice a week, eating less meat) is better than nothing?
In that regard farming is a bit similar to road traffic. Some animals, even humans, will inevitably die in road traffic, and our civilization is dependent on it so there’s no way around it really. But that doesn’t mean it’s fine to just run them over on purpose.
Farming is flawed and will always negatively affect nature and animals. But putting animals on cramped factory farms is worse, for both the animals and the environment. It also requires even more farming since farm animals eat tons of feed before they’re slaughtered and all that has to be grown too.
Wouldn’t you agree that endeavoring to do less harm (eating cloned meat, eating vegan once or twice a week, eating less meat) is better than nothing?
Yes, absolutely. I’m excited for cloned meat because it will make it easier for people to drop the factory farmed stuff.
I’ll probably stick to the pea/soy protein based meat alternatives as they are similar enough by now for many categories, but for those who want “real” meat without the suffering, it will be great. I just hope they can make it cheap enough to have a large impact.
I will once again and ask you the question you asked:
Wouldn’t you agree that endeavoring to do less harm […] is better than nothing?
Your comment is arguing against itself by suggesting insects are not worth the same level of endeavorment to no harm as other animals.
This goes back to the definition of veganism i shared, where it’s a way of life to exclude animal exploitation, cruelty, and death, as much as possible. I can’t prevent killing every insect, but i can go out of my way to not kill them. I can let my yard grow wild, i can plant plants that create a vibrant ecosystem for various insects. I can let a jumping spider live on my desk and visit me during lunch because it’s not bothering me. This is not an exhaustive list.
Ive already excluded animal meat from my diet, why would i introduce animal exploitation so i can eat lab grown animal meat?
You seem to be thinking on a global scale when you poise your question. I’m not. I’m thinking about me as an individual and my own way of life.
So why do you, specifically, need to consume meat so badly that this need must have at least some level of animal exploitation if not cruelty and death as well? And if you don’t already, are you willing to eat only lab grown meat going forward? If not, why not?
These can be rhetorical questions, mostly because i don’t come to vegan communities to debate or convert non-vegans so I’m unlikely to respond again. But if you’re being genuine in reducing harm then giving some thought to those questions i think will help you better live your beliefs.
Shamefully i referred to myself as basically fitting the label “meatlover” before going vegan. I feel like if i did it, everyone can. Sure cheese replacement does not taste as cow cheese and deaths still occour but those deaths aren’t the product and if I wanted more such deaths I’d just eat tons of meat as they need to be fed and grow using a substansial amount of food.
The less animal products the better but you are able to make a choice not to voluntarily exploit them. Also while im not sure if you are implying that you want to wait until lab grown meat is available to the end consumer. If you do thats kind of saying “I will only make such choice if there is basically no effort in doing so” to me.
I actually feel like a hypocrite. While I am eating a lot less meat these days, It’s more due to economics than morality, I’m ashamed to say.
Lab grown meat / cloned cells are still initially extracted from animals. There is inherent exploitation and/or harm done to the animals.
This is such an extreme view that I usually hear from persons not eating mushrooms either because it’s some sort of sentient life.
Level 5 vegans, not eating anything that casts a shadow
I have already excluded animal exploitation by not eating meat. Why would i reintroduce animal exploitation by consuming such a product?
It’s really not that extreme. And in my comment, the part you didn’t quote, i acknowledged some vegans may think the trade off is worth it, but i do not.
But thanks for the disingenuous mushroom nonsense. I love it when meat eaters come into a vegan space to insult me
That’s my point with why it is an extreme point of view, taking a cell from an animal would hardly anyone call exploitation. The ones I hear argue in that way are those who don’t eat mushrooms because of aforementioned reason, and I guess not yeast either. I mean really?
I left that out yes, because it’s irrelevant? Glad you love when meat eaters come into a vegan space to insult you. Weird thing to say and I’m unsure what it has to do with anything.
never heard of anyone not eating mushrooms
>I actually liked Impossible Meat though
Why “liked” past tense? Is there something stopping you from eating it now? Last I checked there’s nothing in the rules stopping non-vegans from eating vegan products.
highly processed, expensive shit.
Too expensive the last time I checked.
