For those of you who do not know me personally, I was vegetarian for about 10 years and vegan for about 2. So here and there I go back and forth between animal products and vegetarian/vegan. In the moments when I am on my vegetarian/vegan mode I tend to supplement my cheeses.
I was feeling brave the other day at Whole Foods so I decided to try a Vegan Cheese called Daiya. The label read:
- Free of top 8 allergens, including dairy (casein, whey and lactose), soy, gluten, eggs, peanuts and tree nuts (excluding coconut)
- 0 mg of cholesterol per serving
- Trans fat free
- Vegan, free of all animal products
- Kosher
- Free of artificial ingredients and preservatives
- Free of hormones & antibiotics
(They should have added disgusting to this list)
My initial reaction was one of skepticism. Can this be as good as the real thing? Or can the flavor mimic the real thing? Finding good vegetarian/vegan products takes a lot of trial and error, ladies and gents, this was an error.
I should have known by how the shredded "cheese" looked from the package that I may have been in for a surprise. But it was on sale and I couldn't resist a sale. I went ahead and bought the sliced "Swiss" flavor and fantasized about this "cheese" all the way home on my train ride.
When I got home I made myself a gluten free wrap and added the "cheese" to it. Let me tell you about this "cheese"; First it melted, so kudos to them for THAT. But the flavor OMG... not good, not only was it incredibly sweet tasting, it just tasted like stuff. There was no exact flavor. The only thing about the flavor that I can say was that it tasted like things put together to make something taste like something, but not quite accomplishing the goal. I ate it because it was already in the wrap, but as I type this the package is sitting in my fridge waiting to be returned to Whole Foods.. TODAY.
My personal opinion is this; sometimes you cannot duplicate the real thing and that's fine. But don't fool customers with this "Swiss" flavor labeling. Just call it something else. Like "Vegan Concoction that Melts".. But don't compare it remotely to cheese. Please. -1 Stars.. BAD Daiya.. BAD BADDD Daiya..
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