A vegan cheese beat dairy in a big competition. Then the plot curdled | Hacker News Reader

A vegan cheese beat dairy in a big competition. Then the plot curdled

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77 pointscamel-cdr47 comments

Possibly some of these contenders are tiny batch artisanal cheeses, justifying some of their talk of tradition and nature, but the reality of mass-scale cheese production is fairly industrial/scientific. Here's a "how it's made" episode taking you from milk delivery to mozzeralla:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHmXAb3G0ek

And obviously that's entirely skipping over the bit that's actually considered bad by vegans.

The foundation offered excuses but this feels like it's all on them, especially with documented evidence of post-hoc rule tweaking.

To me this is one more confirmation that awards are basically all industry self-congratulation and politics... Hugo and Nebula, Grammys, etc. etc.

Yes, the disqualification says more about the awarding body than the entry.

I really don't get the problem here, if you use orange juice in a wine competition and talk about how novel the wine is...what is the point here. Isn't the whole idea of cheese competition what kind of unique tastes can you get from a milk product.

If that were the case the rules should have reflected it from the beginning of the competition. However, as noted in the article, imitation cheeses using vegan ingredients were and are specifically permitted by the rules:

> Subcategories Additionally, cheese entries must fit within one of the following subcategories (vegetarian and/or vegan substitutes are permitted):

https://goodfoodfdn.org/awards/categories/cheese/

It’s more like “Plant based cheeses are allowed as long as they are useful to show them inferior, if they win they’re disqualified”

They are not just self-congratulatory and political. They are also robust moneymakers for the awards shows themselves. Local Emmys are pretty much all pay to play IMHO.

https://archive.is/kUOy3

It's worth noting that this particular competition considers additional factors that (I assume) aren't relevant in traditional cheese contests.

Based on the headline, I assumed the news was that a vegan cheese won in purely traditional criteria

Looking forward to try that. Let’s hope they can bring it to market.

It's going to fail in the market, and the reason is that they are trying the same failed marketing strategy that didn't work for Beyond Burger/Impossible Burger: They are trying to market their product as "environmentally conscious/better/etc".

Vegetarians buy those burgers, other people don't. People simply don't care about other reasons, they care if the product tastes good and is cheaper, they'll also consider health (i.e. lower fat/chemicals/processing/etc). That's it.

And this cheese has an even harder sell: There are even fewer vegans than there are vegetarians.

Their only hope is for this cheese to be cheaper than cow cheese, and based on their website and lack of retail sales I doubt that it is.

There's already many vegan cheese varieties on the market, some have been around a while and seem to do quite well. Miyokos is my favorite, made of cashews. Lots of people don't eat dairy for many reasons (ethical, allergies, intolerance)

I can’t eat tree nuts but Miyoko’s oat milk butter is amazing!

Interesting, I guess it depends on where you are, because that's not how it seems to 'work' over here (Netherlands/Germany). Plenty of people buy vegan and vegetarian substitutes just to eat less meat. Both for health and environmental reasons.

Over the past few years there has been a big increase in plant-based products I can buy from the supermarkets. A decade back they had two types of soy-milk, now there is 30-40 types/brands/flavours of plant-based 'milks'. Even the big dairy companies are now actively marketing plant-based dairy.

I eat lots of plant based products, but I avoid all imitation products (products that try to copy the characteristics of animal products) because they have always tasted or felt worse to me.

For example, bean or quinoa or whatever plant based burger patties are great (and cheaper), beyond or impossible imitation meat patties are awful (and expensive). Same with eggs and cheese.

For us it depends on the day. Sometimes we want homemade bean burgers, store-made quinoa or we go out for a fancy impossible burger. There's room for everything, maybe just not as a unicorn business for a single product.

> Plenty of people buy vegan and vegetarian substitutes just to eat less meat

Ok, but this is "vegan cheese" we're talking about, not meat. Cheese is already 100% meat

Most people don't object to dairy products from cows, that's something that really only vegans care enough about to change their diets

A lot of people are lactose intolerant.

Lots of cheese has little or no lactose

Much easier to just eat vegan cheese and not have to think about this stuff.

Most people don’t like to think about it, but eating cheese is just one step removed from eating meat in terms of animal cruelty. Many calves have to die in order to keep the milk cows lactating.

Just to give you some perspective, there are people here who modify their diesel trucks with the sole purpose of producing MORE pollutants, not power or speed, just contamination.

More than half the world is lactose intolerant.

Lactose intolerance is on a wide sliding scale.

Some people get violent diarrhea from ice cream, and some people can drink half a glass of milk before noticing any difference.

And some people might even choose a little bit of loose stool as the cost of eating dairy based. And some might not.

For example, most of Mongolia is technically lactose intolerant but they drink tons of horse milk. Has to do with having good gut microbiomes that help with milk digestion. Plus cheese, especially aged cheese, have low levels of lactose.

If I touch milk i get sick. If i chug a pint - nothing.

I thought that cheese production itself was a workaround for lactose intolerant? I mean, fermentation process removes most, if not all of the lactose, making cheese edible for people with intolerance?

Only true for harder aged cheeses.

> trying the same failed marketing strategy that didn't work for Beyond Burger/Impossible Burger

Are they? From FTA (emphasis added):

> The difference between that entrant and its competitors wasn’t a silky mouthfeel or buttery flavor, but rather the fact that the Climax Blue — which is served in restaurants including Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park in New York

Very clearly a boutique product

If that was the case how did they not realize this until a few weeks before the whole process was completed?

And the maker of the vegan cheese disputes this based on the criteria of the competition, but the awards didn’t give them a chance to respond.

Are beyond and impossible really failed? In Australia they seem quite popular. Just basing this off the fact that the supermarket section for plant based meat/dairy alternatives seems to be exploding in recent years. Also a few popular burger chains here offer impossible meat as one of the main vege options.

They used a cheese substitute or in the US a “cheese product”. Although I think cheese product still has to have at least some actual cheese in it but I’m not sure. It’s not really cheese. Maybe if it had a football team that could beat Alabama it would be.

Climax Blue — which is served in restaurants including Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park in New York — wasn’t made from the milk of cows or goats, but rather a blend of ingredients including pumpkin seeds, lima beans, hemp seeds, coconut fat and cocoa butter.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/24/1091118/climax-f...

https://archive.ph/8IQjp

I've always been disappointed by these vegan and vegetarian animal food replacement companies. All the science fiction I've been reading promised that this stuff would be cheaper than the real thing. Instead, everything is at least twice as expensive for no good reason. I could honestly see them outselling animal based products if they were an inexpensive alternative.

The lack of ethics by the dairy industry is hardly surprising though.

no paywall: https://agfundernews.com/plant-based-cheesemaker-climax-food...

TLDR - the cheese wasn't merely a finalist but the selected, yet unannounced winner, then wording of the rules were clarified as to disqualify it. [Never underestimate the dairy industry.]

This story should be spread as widely as possible so the hijinks shines a Streisand Effect spotlight on the actual rather than official winner.

I want to try it now!

Found the daily WEF-sponsored "eat the bugs and live in a pod" placement.

Vegans don'teat bugs

Well, they eat lots of them, just not deliberately.

True, but that's not what op was talking about.

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