switching to vegan diet - cheese substitutes?

[skwiskwis]

Hi folks, I'm new to this vegan thing and giving it a try. I followed a sort of "modified vegetarian" diet for a long time - allowing for things like fish, dairy, cheese...I'm in the process of giving that up and going fully vegan. I've tried other diets too: Atkins was a disaster, I gained weight on that and could never make it work trying to stay semi-vegetarian and do Atkins at the same time.

The cheese problem: I crave the stuff..this has been part of the reason why my longstanding attempt to lose my middle-age gut hasn't gone anywhere. This despite being a bodybuilder and hiker.

I know vegetarian cheese substitutes exist, and I bought a bunch of food yesterday at the supermarket's "vegan" section including one of the more common vegetarian cheese substitutes, only to notice today that it contains in the ingredients: Casein, lactic acid, whey, butterfat, and powdered milk. *Sigh* - going completely vegan is going to be tougher than I thought just finding the products.

So...what are some good cheese substitutes that are fully vegan?

[spike]

HI, welcome to VF.
Scheese and Cheezly are two vegan brands of "cheese". You can get different types like cheddar style, mozarella style etc. I use cheezly, it seems to melt well on pizza etc.

[beforewisdom]

People have more potential for making change than they give themselves credit for. If your goals include losing weight and improving your health I highly recommend toughing out missing cheese.

Cheese is worse than many meats for your cardiovascular health and waistline. Vegan cheese substitutes are little more than highly processed blocks of vegetable oil so they are not any better for weight control or health.

If you don't care about those things the consensus seems to be that these two brands are currently the best:

Follow Your Heart
Sheese

[puppydog]

yeah cheese subs seem to be basically oil, and not the best for a healthy diet, but ... anything made by tofutti is really good, imo.

[abbie]

It may not be the healthiest thing but it tastes damn good if you get it right/buy the right bland- it can be just enough to satisfy the craving.

Tofutti cream cheeze hits the spot, as does swedish glace cream cheeze. both very similar to normal.
Rice/tofutti sliced cheeze is good in sandwiches if you like processed cheese in the flat plastic packet thing. Gross if you think about it but kinda yummy if you dont.

The juice bar near me has started selling vegan cheese sandwiches- its great. I think they use melting cheddar cheezly and make it into a panini. It sort of melts.....and tastes just lovely.

my advice is not to expect cheese substitues to taste like cheese...just appreciate them for their own taste instead.

[buzz]

The juice bar near me has started selling vegan cheese sandwiches- its great. I think they use melting cheddar cheezly and make it into a panini. It sort of melts.....and tastes just lovely.

I dream about such things! What is the name of the juice bar? St Andrews is needing visited now

Re vegan-cheese, I think redwoods cheezly mozerella is da bomb, currently on at least 3 blocks a week, and the habit is ever increasing. The gouda is good too. Both good melted, and just on bread or crackers or whatever. I tried Scheese and nearly spewed my ring. Redwoods got it right, the Scheese guys tried too hard imo

[spike]

Abbie, where do you get Swedish cream chesse?
A couple of the Asdas, and Sainsbury's, I think, round here used to sell it but I've not seen it for years - I thought they'd stopped making it.
I prefer it to tofutti cos iirc it's about a quarter of the price!

[skwiskwis]

Thanks, I'll have to look for those brands. May have to check Whole Foods or Trader Joe's which I usually don't go to because they are too far away. (One thing about Whole Foods - I'm a bit of a pro-labor, fair trade fanatic and haven't heard good things about their anti-union stance, so am hesitant to go there). The stores local to me, walking distance, are Safeway, Giant, and Harris Teeter, which as I've found don't carry a wide vegan selection and even there you have to check ingredients carefully. There is also a vegan store 45 minutes away in Rockville, MD which I will have to make a trip to.

As for the fat issue - my understanding is the distinction between saturated and unsaturated fats is the important one, not the fat itself. Regular cheeses are full of the saturated stuff, while the vegatarian substitutes I bought have 0 saturated fat, the fat content is all unsaturated. At this point I want to go entirely vegan, not just veggie and assume the same is the case with vegan cheese substitutes, no saturated fat.

[erske]

As for the fat issue - my understanding is the distinction between saturated and unsaturated fats is the important one, not the fat itself. Regular cheeses are full of the saturated stuff, while the vegatarian substitutes I bought have 0 saturated fat, the fat content is all unsaturated. At this point I want to go entirely vegan, not just veggie and assume the same is the case with vegan cheese substitutes, no saturated fat.

If you want to avoid a high cholesterole saturated fat is to be limited, but it realy has no bearing on loosing unwanted bodyfat...
My sheese I have in front of me have 30% fat and 18,2 of that saturated, so not that great in that compartment eighter...

[mangomagic]

For cream cheese I recommend Tofutti
for other cheese I recommend Cheezly

Having said that, when i went vegan there were no fake cheeses and so I just focused on rediscovering other foods/flavours that were previously masked by cheese. I experimented and discovered just how great avocado is for creaminess and that hummus on pizza is good and actually pizza without cheese is not that bad either.

[bronco]

Let's not forget that nutritional yeast is great for replacing cheese in many situation, like on pizza, pasta etc.

[abbie]

I dream about such things! What is the name of the juice bar? St Andrews is needing visited now

Its called Zest! They chalked "We now to vegan cheese! Try our paninis, on hot food and other vegan sandwiches". Although the panini was £4.25. Eeesh! Had to make sure they knew there was demand though....

I tried Scheese and nearly spewed my ring. Redwoods got it right, the Scheese guys tried too hard imo

Agree! Solid scheese is sick! But they were marketing lots of kinds of soft scheese at the vegan festival in london and these were delish! Yet to see them for sale anywhere, though.

Abbie, where do you get Swedish cream chesse?
A couple of the Asdas, and Sainsbury's, I think, round here used to sell it but I've not seen it for years - I thought they'd stopped making it.

Damn! I was hoping that I lived in some kind of blackhole for this one and it was available elsewhere. It was sooo good. Maybe we should send an email and find out if they have stopped making it?

Ooo just remembered, the cheezly with cranberries is immense!

[Jupiter]

Just a little warning about Trader Joe's "soy cheese"...like a dumbass I saw it in their vegetarian section and didn't think to read the ingredients because I figured that 1) no one who didn't have a problem with dairy would buy anything labeled "soy cheese" and 2) no one in their right mind would label something "soy cheese" and have it hanging out with vegan stuff if it had milk in it. I was so impressed with the spinach dip I made with this cheese...it got all bubbly and brown and was a big hit at a party. Next time I went to buy the cheese, though, I actually read the ingredients and it has MILK in it! Eeeeeks! Makes no sense...

Whole Foods does have a brand (can't remember the name off the top of my head) that is vegan and actually melts, but over the last month or so I've completely lost my taste the fake stuff (meats and cheeses). I second whoever said that pizza tastes great with no cheese on it

BTW, I'm from the Washington DC area too, skwiskwis

[Webb]

Yeah that stuff can get you, I was about to grab one because it looked pretty good and it said dairy free so I thought I was good but then I saw Casein.

[Hiking Fox]

Soya cheese that contains dairy products seems to be an American thing. I've certainly never heard of it anywhere else.

As for cheese cravings, there was a really similar thread to this a few months ago and people posted recipes. I posted one for maccaroni cheese that's really popular whenever I make it. Try doing a search. If no joy, I'll try and find it for you.