What is Vegan Cheese and is it Legit?

Alison Leber, The Roving Cheesemonger is a certified cheese professional and self-described curd nerd, but she’s not a snob. She’s cool with vegan cheese, even though most cheesemongers aren’t. “They have a problem with definition,” she says and they aren’t the only ones. “Calling them cheese alternative would solve a ton of problems,” but as food scientist and Johns Hopkins senior lecturer Dr. Kantha Shelke says, “I have always wondered if identifying these products as cheese alternatives dooms them to failure.” Calling vegan cheese an alternative or, worse, calling it “cheese” marks these products as wannabes, also-rans. True, the first wave of commercial vegan cheese was, at best “cheeze.” It was edible, but just. “It was ‘Let’s get in a lab with oil, starch, and a bunch of flavors,’” says Miyoko Schinner, founder of the plant-based cheese company Miyoko’s. “There was nothing craftsy, romantic or time-honed.”

John Winterman, cheese expert and co-owner of the Brooklyn restaurant Francie, still shudders remembering his first and only vegan cheese experience two decades ago. “I have no interest in any follow up tastings,” he says. “Vegan cheeses I am certain would be wonderful for the right person. I am not one of them.” But since Winterman wrote off vegan cheese, the market for these products has grown, on target to hit over $2 billion in sales by the end of the year and forecast to be a $7 billion industry in the coming decade.

Part of the uptick is attributable to consumer desire to reduce environmental impacts. Plant-based cheese comes out a clear winner compared to dairy as far as sustainability. The other game-changer since Winterman’s unfortunate vegan cheese experience is the product itself. Brands including Miyoko’s and Violife are producing plant-based cheeses using traditional artisanal methods. “We’re interested in producing cheese that honors the process,” says Schinner. She’s all about artisanal, going back to her 2012 book, Artisan Vegan Cheese, a DIY guide to making vegan cheese at home. Schinner’s process hasn’t changed now that she runs a multimillion plant-based cheese empire. It still involves culturing, coagulation, brining, and aging. The only thing that’s changed is scale, with the company producing 20,000 pounds of vegan cheese per day. As with traditional dairy cheese, it’s made from cultured milk, but it’s milk from nuts or oats.

Claudia Lucero takes Schinner’s original concept one step further. Her company Urban Cheesecraft offers cheesemaking kits, both traditional dairy and plant-based “I take a whole foods approach,” says Lucero, author of One-Hour Dairy-Free Cheese. “If we break down cheese, what are we craving? Tang, creaminess, the satisfaction of fat in your mouth, that salty, umami taste.” Lucero’s vegan cheese base is a cream made from nuts, seeds or pureed beans, heated and thickened with tapioca starch and agar, a gelatinous agent made from seaweed. Flavor comes from culturing, while nutritional yeast adds “a pleasing funk, some umami.”

Shelke says Urban Cheesecraft, Miyoko’s and similar artisanal cheesemakers produce “very good-tasting products, each with superb texture and taste. Their functionalities, however, never match that of conventional dairy cheese.” A nut isn’t a cow, there’s no getting around it. The structure of proteins and enzymes in appropriate bovine lacteal secretions differs from those in plant-based milk. Dairy cheese contains lactose, the naturally occurring sugar in milk. Lactose is a problem for two-thirds of the world’s population, who suffer from lactose intolerance. But in the plus column, dairy cheese contains protein, and the magical C-word — casein.

Casein is the dairy milk protein giving cheese its delectable texture, its stretch and melt. It even gives you something when you eat it — an opiate rush. “Cheese contains a number of exorphins, biologically active peptides,” explains Shelke.“They have a morphine-like effect.” No wonder people love cheese. Love, addiction, sometimes it’s a thin line. “There is no slam dunk [plant-based] replacement for casein,” Shelke states. “There are a multitude of ways to get the nutritional equivalence, but to get the nutritional equivalence along with the functionality and taste/texture of casein has not been achieved with a single product or even with blends.” It’s not for lack of trying. Some plant-based cheesemakers are going back to the lab and pinning their hopes on a casein stand-in made from GMO yeast. “That’s really fake,” says Schinner. “Millennials want clean ingredients, whole foods.”

Schinner’s R&D team is doing a deep dive into plants. Really deep. On a molecular level. “We’re beginning to understand there are plant proteins that can mimic casein. That’s pretty powerful.” Will they give you a dairy cheese high? To be determined. What’ s clear, though, is plant-based cheese has a history, even a pedigree, dating back to 16th century China. Made with fermented tofu, or whole soy, it’s high in protein, spreadable and robust on the palate. In other words, funky tasting. Maybe not everyone loved it, but they knew what to call it — furu or dofuru, and it wasn’t worth arguing about.

Today’s fight over what to call plant-based cheese is led by “dairy councils and dairy farmers,” says Lucero. “I don’t get into that. We know what we mean. People aren’t going to get confused if you say cashew cheese, nondairy or dairy free.” According to the FDA, cheese must be made using “lacteal secretion obtained by milking one or more healthy cow.” But by that definition, chèvre isn’t cheese, either.

Schinner had always intended to call her commercial product vegan cheese, but the California Department of food and agriculture shot that down when the company launched. Miyoko’s was able to stay in production by labelling its products as cultured nut products, right up there with lacteal secretians in terms of marketing appeal. Now, though, Schinner’s adamant — it’s cheese.

So what changed? Scale. Miyoko’s has grown along with plant-based cheese demand, no longer a “tiny, tiny company,” but a multimillion-dollar enterprise. “We finally got to the point to where, screw it, I’m going to call the product what it is.“ But even Urban Cheesecraft’s Lucero, who wrote the book on plant-based cheese, has to say, “Technically, it isn’t cheese.” Adds Leber “Vegetarian cheeses can be delicious, but call it cashew cheese or pate — that’s legit. Navigate it that way.” So is plant-based cheese truly cheese? Depends on who you ask. Is it an industry disrupt? You betcha.