Copying from an earlier comment of mine, "American cheese" or "processed cheese" is often (but not always) a blend of materials none of which begins life as cheese:
> Typical formulation for Analogue Pizza Cheese, from Fundamentals of Cheese Science:
The list above is for "analogue pizza cheese" but that's just the most common use of this kind of "cheese": as pizza topping.
So, in a way, "vegan cheese" is not the worst kind of thing in the market that's labelled as "cheese" while not even close to the real thing.
Btw, many people who are not vegan or vegetarian eat this stuff and think it's cheese. I mean because it's on pizza. And it kiind of melts, right? What else do you expect to find sort of melting on top of pizza? Cheese!
So, yeah, 100%, you can totally and absolutely fool consumers by emulating the look, taste and feel of a real foodstuff. But usually that's because those consumers are so used to eating fake stuff anyway that they have forgotten what the real thing tastes like... if they ever even tasted it.
I make American cheese all the time. 90% of the ingredients are cheddar cheese. Lots of good burger joints do this too. But yes, there’s very bad versions as you’ve described.
The main idea is to take a mild cheddar and tame it further while changing its texture and to make it melt nicely. This is why any other cheese on a hamburger is inferior.
Cheddar should already melt nicely. Maybe we're talking about different cheeses called "cheddar"? I've never had American cheddar, maybe it's different than the English kind?
> Different names will used if need be and consumers will continue the trend of reducing their meat consumption for environmental, health, or ethical reasons.
Consumers are not reducing their meat consumption. Instead meat consumption is increasing:
> As a global average, per capita meat consumption has increased approximately 20 kilograms since 1961; the average person consumed around 43 kilograms of meat in 2014. This increase in per capita meat trends means total meat production has been growing at a much faster than the rate of population growth.
You are right. I was thinking of the decline in dairy consumption in the US, which has been decreasing. Per-capita cow's milk consumption has been decreasing for 70 years here:
The standard explanation is that those are aimed at ordinary consumers who wish to reduce their meat consumption but can't unless they taste something that tastes like meat (resp. dairy).
> I think “real” is a bit of a problem there because if vegan cheese is real it means it’s really vegan.
"Real vegan cheese" should not be a problem as long as you're selling a real product. The problems would begin if you were selling real cheese as "Really vegan cheese".
I don’t think the phrase “real vegan cheese” is linguistically clear in any way. Is the “real” about the “vegan” part, the “cheese” part, or the “vegan cheese” part? I.e. “real dog food” has nothing to do with the realness of the dogs, it’s about the “food”. But then in the sentence “real prada bag” the “real” is about the “prada” portion not about the “bag” portion. “Real” can modify either the modifier or the noun.
“Really” makes the sentence more clear, because it adds emphasis to the “vegan” modifier on “cheese” - it wouldn’t apply to the “cheese” part directly. I.e. in the sentence “really big cheese” the “really” is clearly adding emphasis to the “big”.
> Angel investors, venture capitalists, as well as increased investments from agrifood giants such as Cargill, Danone and Nestle, have helped boost growth to 19% per year.
Cargill, Danone and Nestle. Those companies, they are exemplars of environmentally responsible, ethical production of high-quality nutritious food that respects animal rights and human health:
> Cargill: the company feeding the world by helping destroy the planet
> Cost of environmental damage linked to Nestlé, Danone and Mondelez rises sharply
> "A lot of major global corporations have effectively outsourced their environmental impact to their supply chains," said Dexter Galvin, global director of corporations and supply chains at CDP, a nonprofit group that collects environmental data from companies. "It's a blind spot, which means that most of their carbon emissions, water use and impact on deforestation escape public scrutiny."
> Multiple reports have documented the widespread use of child labour in cocoa production, as well as slavery and child trafficking, throughout West African plantations, on which Nestlé and other major chocolate companies rely.[159][160][161][162][163] According to the 2010 documentary, The Dark Side of Chocolate, the children working are typically 12 to 15 years old.[164] The Fair Labor Association has criticised Nestlé for not carrying out proper checks.[165]
In September 2017, an investigation[215] conducted by NGO Mighty Earth found that a large amount of the cocoa used in chocolate produced by Nestlé and other major chocolate companies was grown illegally in national parks and other protected areas in Ivory Coast and Ghana.[216][217][218] The countries are the world's two largest cocoa producers.[219][220]
If you want variety of bacteria, then the highest is probably in milk kefir, and the second highest in aged, hard cheese.
Kefir, we don't even know how many or what bacteria it hosts, but we know it's a lot. Different studies have reported wildly different communities, but all of them with upwards of a dozen species. For example:
> Sequencing-Based Analysis of the Bacterial and Fungal Composition of Kefir Grains and Milks from Multiple Sources
Aged hard cheese, unless made with raw milk, is usually inocculated with a couple of strains of lactic acid bacteria, but during aging a varied flora develops, of "adventitious bacteria" and yeasts from the environment.
To be honest though, I made kefir for a couple of years and I've been making cheese for about four now and I make the occasional yogurt now and then, but I'm still not convinced about the health claims of "probiotics". And I'm not the only one to be skeptical:
> A growing probiotics market has led to the need for stricter requirements for scientific substantiation of putative benefits conferred by microorganisms claimed to be probiotic.[7] Although numerous claimed benefits are marketed towards using consumer probiotic products, such as reducing gastrointestinal discomfort, improving immune health,[8] relieving constipation, or avoiding the common cold, such claims are not supported by scientific evidence,[7][9][10] and are prohibited as deceptive advertising in the United States by the Federal Trade Commission.[11] As of 2019, numerous applications for approval of health claims by European manufacturers of probiotic dietary supplements have been rejected by the European Food Safety Authority for insufficient evidence of beneficial mechanism or efficacy.[8][12]
Btw, you know what elese has plenty of lactic acid bacteria, therefore probiotics? Sourdough. Alhtough if you make kefir, you can use it instead of sourdough as a bread starter.
> Typical formulation for Analogue Pizza Cheese, from Fundamentals of Cheese Science:
^ Upon cooking the blend to about 85°C using direct steam injection, condensate equivalent to about 7.0 g is absorbed by the blend.https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27169697
The list above is for "analogue pizza cheese" but that's just the most common use of this kind of "cheese": as pizza topping.
So, in a way, "vegan cheese" is not the worst kind of thing in the market that's labelled as "cheese" while not even close to the real thing.
Btw, many people who are not vegan or vegetarian eat this stuff and think it's cheese. I mean because it's on pizza. And it kiind of melts, right? What else do you expect to find sort of melting on top of pizza? Cheese!
So, yeah, 100%, you can totally and absolutely fool consumers by emulating the look, taste and feel of a real foodstuff. But usually that's because those consumers are so used to eating fake stuff anyway that they have forgotten what the real thing tastes like... if they ever even tasted it.