https://www.adweek.com/creativity/v...gers-in-new-ad/

When I worked at a grocery store, I noticed that the Daiya cheese substitute was in a small vegan section (although it wasn't called vegan at the time).

Since it was in the same case as the Quorn products, Tofurky and a few meatless deli meat substitutes , it was pretty clear that it was at least partly aimed at the vegan market.

The thing is, their fake cheese was also intended for those who are allergic to dairy, since sometimes the craving for a grilled cheese sandwich or cheeseburger would get the best of those allergic to dairy, so it was a safe substitute for the real thing.

Those who are allergic to real cheese have been using the Daiya cheese for years, and yet the vegans were apparently unaware and are just now figuring out that not everyone who eats it is (or ever will be) a strict vegan.

This is what's really ridiculous about it though:



If it's so controversial to show meat in conjunction with a vegan product, then it should not even be acceptable to show a bun, lettuce, tomato slice, pickles, onion, mustard, and ketchup on a burger. Funny how there's never been any outcry about that combination being shown in ads.

The lunatics are running the asylum.

Almost all of those hamburgers are purchased from fast food outlets. I doubt Mdconalds will offer plant-based cheese as an option on a Big Mac.

That was my thought about the statistic that Americans eat 3 burgers/week - they have no idea how many people are eating homemade burgers, they're only basing it on fast food burger numbers.

Or if they're basing it on how much ground beef is sold and assuming people only buy ground beef to make burgers at home - well, that's rather presumptuous of them, isn't it? People make spaghetti, stuffed peppers, chili, tacos, meatloaf, manwich, lasagna, all kinds of hamburger helper, just to name a few other things you can make from ground beef. There used to be cookbooks with titles like "100 ground beef recipes".

You're right that it's highly unlikely McD's (or any other burger joints) will offer a plant based cheese option on their burgers. They're not even offering gluten-free options - specialty diet options which only appeal to a tiny percentage of their customer base just doesn't work well with the fast food business model.

Do any fast food places still offer meatless burgers? I never hear about them having meatless burgers on the menu any more.

I'd take a lunatic over these incompetents As the joke goes, "I'm crazy, not stupid."

They keep pretending they are acting from some giant surge of interest in vegan food, like they have overwhelming arguments which is changing society. They have weasel word studies about how plant-based anything are miracle drugs. This was all based on test tubes, it turns out.

Not all of these foods are powerhouses, and some of them are downright problematical. While animal foods in general have been unfairly torn down, from a science standpoint, and now they don't want to hear from actual scientists, just the bought and paid for kind.

I'm radical enough thinking the way we eat is not good for everyone, but we didn't use to have a Giant People problem. The gymnastic they do to not blame the correct perpetrators is really bizarre, because it's their lives, too. Their grandparents get dementia and their kids are malnourished too! They do better, sure, but if they are taking these drugs, they are not paying any attention to what they actually do.

Since, after all, they make money! That's what they do. So it is good.

That's an excellent point about the vegan cheese. It's close enough, much like my own concoctions that fit into what works for me. But by dropping gluten, I thrived on dairy.

I wonder how much of that is going on? It's important because bone soups and dairy are the main sources of calcium in the human diet.

When we live on junk and take supplements, we can mess up the mechanisms. The goodie doesn't go where it is supposed to. That, at least to me, is becoming increasingly clear. We can't get everything we need from the drive through. And this constant patchwork lack of nutrients wears down all the body's compensation mechanisms.

These are to get us through shortfalls, and then we eat up the stuff we missed. That cycle has been pushed to the breaking point.

Dr. Ede's new book lays all this out.

There is always more than one naturally occurring food source for any given nutrient.

For instance, eggs are the nearly perfect food. They have pretty much every known vitamin and mineral we need - If I recall correctly, the only thing eggs lack is Vitamin C, but there are loads of natural sources of vitamin C. A person could do quite well on nothing but eggs and almost any food that provides enough Vit C (strawberries, broccoli, citrus).

But the same is true of all the nutrients eggs provide - they're available in all kinds of foods, so someone who is allergic to eggs can get by just fine without ever eating an egg. They just need to have a more varied diet to get all the nutrients they need.

And if they really miss eggs or need to make a recipe that calls for eggs, there are options that work as a substitute for eggs. Depending on what you're making, and the purpose of eggs in that recipe, you could choose from tofu, applesauce, flaxseed, bananas, among many others.

The thing is that there simply aren't enough people who are highly allergic to eggs to warrant a specific egg substitute product such as the JUST eggs (which is a plant based egg substitute). If the use of JUST eggs is dependent on only those who are allergic to eggs, there won't be anywhere near enough of a market for it to warrant production.

But if they can appeal to the vegans who have given up eating real eggs, that helps them increase sales, and if they can convince more people to convert to veganism, then they might be able to sell enough JUST eggs to stay in business.

I'm surprised Daiya went this route. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't most people who avoid dairy (but not other animal products) lactose intolerant? Daiya faces heavy competition from... actual dairy now. Except for specialty cheeses, almost every cheese I see in the grocery store is labeled "lactose-free." I believe it's ultra-filtered or something. Anyway, it's way cheaper than Daiya. So I don't know if alienating their vegan customers is a good business moooove.🐄 (Sorry, couldn't resist)

I'm sure that some people who use Daiya are lactose intolerant, but most aged cheeses are very close to lactose free naturally. The milk is curdled and the whey (where most of the lactose is) will be drained off. Only the severely lactose intolerant would need a 100% lactose free cheese.



(more info at the link on lactose intolerance, cheese, and yogurt)
https://www.cheeseprofessor.com/blo...lerance-cheeses

But it's also possible to be allergic to the milk itself:



https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases...es/syc-20375101

Just saw an ad on FB - Laughing Cow now has a plant based "cheese".

I suppose it was bound to happen, right?

I have every sympathy for people who want to eat something they miss. But vegan cheese is a flat out chemical concoction, like cotton candy.

It might even fool tastebuds. But they stopped their research there. It's not fooling our bodies.

To a large extent, it comes down to individual tolerance levels.

They can't physically tolerate real dairy, but they miss dairy so much that they give in and try non-dairy substitutes, despite the fact that it's a chemical concoction.

They might not have any reaction at all to the chemical concoction used in the substitute. They might very well be getting all those chemicals in some other foods (UPF) they're eating on a regular basis.

Or they might not recognize any problems with the chemical concoction at all since they only use it a few times a year (or less) - unless they're extremely sensitive to it and then they recognize that the fake dairy isn't going to work for them either, so they drop it altogether.

In an ideal world, no one would be sensitive to any of that stuff - whether natural or unnatural concoctions. No one would be allergic or intolerant to anything, no one would have insane cravings for foods that make them feel awful (such as carbs, or in this case dairy).

In an almost ideal world, those who are sensitive, intolerant, or allergic would be able to just give up what bothers them, but it doesn't usually work out like that unless those things make you feel so awful that you can't stand to feel like that any more, so you reluctantly give them up, but are extremely glad you made that change when you feel sooooo much better.

In the real world - the cravings will likely still exist, so if there's a substitute available, it's tempting to try it, and if you don't feel bad on it, use it every now and then to satisfy that craving

Those who crave the very thing that bothers them all the time may start using the fake substitute more and more, although that increases the possibility that it will start to cause problems over time - they just need to be alert to any changes that occur after starting to use the fake substitute.

It's not easy to break away from a dietary craving that has a bad effect on you. It can be just as difficult to break away from a dietary crutch - it sometimes takes feeling really awful to finally decide that you need to give up the dietary crutch for good, so that you feel better.

Oh I know, and I was quoting me when I'm talking myself out of something. And I was at a birthday party yesterday, and while I had a lovely meal of pork loin and coleslaw, I made my own dressing and brought the coleslaw because every other side dish was off my list for one reason or another.

It didn't matter because we're friends and they can see the improvement in my condition over the years. But I can't talk to them about it because they know already that some of the foods they eat aren't good for them. They know what they are supposed to do, but aren't ready to do it yet.

Because you are right:



I'm not saying I was any different in the beginning. I bargained my way here by "giving up things" but I still eat delicious food and I have all the bonuses.

Mine are easy to see and experience, but that's an abstract to anyone who hasn't made big changes to what they eat in the past. Maybe it was those years of dieting that paid off after all When Atkins became the first "diet" I could actually live on, that turned my head around, and I've been refining every since.

Finally, something that WORKS.

I also need to remember I started two decades ago. And I'm so glad I did! But that journey is not easy to convey to a third party. I'll have to write a book