Is cheese vegan, this is the question we work day and night to answer here at vegancheese.co. We have now added nearly 1000 vegan cheeses to the site to show that yes, some cheeses, nearly 1000 at the time of writing, are in fact, vegan.
This is amazing, as it means you can have your cheese without harming any animals and help the environment at the same time!
Is cheese vegan, this is the question we work day and night to answer here at vegancheese.co. We have now added nearly 1000 vegan cheeses to the site to show that yes, some cheeses, nearly 1000 at the time of writing, are in fact, vegan.
This is amazing, as it means you can have your cheese without harming any animals and help the environment at the same time!
You can discover all of them at our one of a kind vegan cheese discovery tool.
Not all cheese is equal and most importantly, vegan. The supermarket chilled aisles are still lined with non-vegan cheeses, most of which are vegetarian, which isn't vegan.
When we went vegan a few years ago, we found cheese to be the hardest to quit, we just didn't look for alternatives that were vegan and to see if cheese was vegan, it indeed is, as we now know and have spent the last few years trying to promote it to others to help them make the change.
How Can Cheese Be Vegan and Not Vegan
It's pretty simple, some cheeses use animal based milks and vegan cheeses use plant based milks and nuts, some use rice milk, others almond and many other variations which make for a world of amazing vegan cheeses.
You may be used to seeing oil based, such as coconut and other oils used in vegan cheese on the supermarket shelves, but in fact, these only make up about one quarter of all the vegan cheeses available, but are bought the most as that is what supermarkets stock.
The majority of vegan cheese uses nuts to create beautifully tasting, cheesy soft cheese, semi-hard and everything in-between.
Thanks to new food sciences and the explosion of veganism in the last couple of years, there are literally hundreds of nut based vegan cheeses available which go through the exact same process as animal based cheese options.
They go through a similar fermentation process using cultures such as penicillium roqueforti and other types depending on the vegan cheese that wants to be created, this is exactly like animal based dairy cheese, just with a different base ingredient.
The moulds grow on the nut bases which makes this possible and you end up with similar tastes, flavours and textures to animal based cheese, but is fine for plant based, dairy free and vegans who are looking for a cheese option.
You'll even find some vegan cheese artisans, such as Food by Sumear go one step further and aged their cheeses for a few weeks to a few months.
Cheese is Vegan
But not all of it, not by a long shot, there are probably tens of thousands of dairy and animal based cheeses made worldwide, but vegan cheese is catching up, as we prove here with nearly 1000 in our own database of vegan and plant based cheeses.
You don't have to deny yourself cheese at all, you have a plethora of choices, here are just some of the examples of vegan cheeses available.
- There are a total of 31 different aged vegan cheeses to discover
- If you want mozzarella, there are over 70 options of vegan mozzarella to choose from
- Nearly half of all vegan cheeses use a cashew nut base, with over 400 cashew based cheeses
- There are over 150 different vegan and plant based cheese brands
- More than 100 cheeses are wheat free
- Almost 200 are entirely whole foods plant based ingredient cheeses
And if you're looking for a vegan cheese, you can use the discovery tool to filter and sort to find a cheese based on your specific requirements.
This now means you can still enjoy your favourite sandwiches with cheese, try out a whole new world of vegan cheese on pizza and make some of your favourite dishes with a plant based cheese option.