That’s right, vegans. If you’re going ga-ga over the new vegan cheeses such as Teese and others, you’re just as guilty of animal cruelty as if you were eating blocks of dairy cow cheese. Not to mention the negative effects on human health …
Vegan cheeses are mostly oil, which makes them just as bad for your health as dairy cheese.
Here’s the ingredient list for Teese, mozzarella style, the other OHMYGODITMELTS vegan cheese: Organic soymilk (filtered water, organic soybeans), corn maltodextrin, soybean oil, palm oil, sea salt, carrageenan, vegan natural flavors, corn derived lactic acid, natural vegan color.
The ingredients for Sheese, mozzarella style: Filtered Water, Vegetable Oil, Soya Concentrate, Salt, Spirit Vinegar, Flavourings, Lactic Acid (dairy-free), Thickeners: Xanthan Gum & Carrageenan, Yeast Extract.
Finally, the ingredients for Cheezly, mozzarella style: Water, non hydrogenated vegetable oil, tofu, soya protein, rice starch, thickeners: carrageenan, locust bean gum; salt, dried yeast, tricalcium phosphate, spirit vinegar, acidity regulator: trisodium citrate, raw cane sugar, flavouring, yeast extract.
An ounce of dairy mozzarella cheese contains 6 grams of fat, 3.7 grams of saturated fat, 22 grams of cholesterol, and 6 grams of protein. That’s 28 percent of the calories from fats.
Also, when you buy some products that list “vegetable oil” as an ingredient, you have no idea the source of that oil. It’s likely palm oil.
So, if you decided to try a vegan diet because it’s healthier and you love the taste of the new-and-improved vegan cheeses … FAIL.
However, if you chose a vegan lifestyle because you want to minimize your negative effects on the planet and on non-human animals, and you’re indulging in vegan cheese and other products that contain palm oil … BIG FAIL.
I am regularly frustrated by vegans who are concerned only with preventing cruelty to farmed animals and don’t consider wildlife. Oil palm plantations in Indonesia are destroying wildlife habitat, specifically that of our red-haired cousins – orangutans. Rainforests support 500 times more species than North American forests. Elephants are regularly poisoned when they raid oil palm plantations for food because they are starving due to habitat loss. These elephants often take up to a month to die from the poison.
The UNEP estimates that an area of Indonesian rain forest the size of six football fields is cut down every minute of every day. The palm oil and timber industries are guilty of truly horrific ecological atrocities, one of which is the systematic genocide of orangutans. When the forest is cleared, adult orangutans are generally shot on sight. In the absence of bullets they are beaten, burned, tortured, mutilated and often eaten as bush meat.
SIX FOOTBALL FIELDS OF RAINFOREST DESTROYED EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY. FOR PALM OIL.
So, my fellow vegans, let’s reconsider our choices and do some research and be certain that what we’re eating is sustainable and humane. We’re setting a poor example for the people we hope to convince to become vegans when we eat such non-foods as vegan cheese (among others). What does it say about our movement if we can’t set an example of living healthy with whole foods and not all this processed crap? What does it say about our hope to make more vegans in the world when we can’t even steer ourselves away from craving things that remind of us of carcass?
Palm oil isn’t just in vegan cheese, it’s found in everything. READ LABELS. Know where your foods come from so you can determine if the label lists ingredients specifically. Read labels on personal products and cleaning products and stop buying those that contain palm oil.
There are many issues connected with palm oil: the extinction of orangutans, Bornean sun bears, and other wildlife; palm oil as biodiesel fuel; the negative climate effects of deforestation, etc.
Here are some links about palm oil that you may find helpful:
- Orangutans and Palm Oil: What’s the Connection?
- The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
- Halt climate change. Halt forest destruction. Halt plantations.
- Recession forcing Europe to opt for cheaper non-certified palm oil
- NASA photos reveal destruction of 99% of rainforest park in Rwanda
- A tiger in your tank … and an orang-utan too
s.
Filed under: conservation, endangered species, wildlife conservation | Tagged: oil palm farms killing orangutans, vegan cheese is inhumane
Utterly brilliant post! Yes it’s like vegans who drink industrial coffee instead of organic shade grown.. do they spare a moment for the industrial chemicals that poison the area and the deforestation for sun grown coffee that means ours song birds’ winter grounds are ruined? Do they buy cheap vegetables from Mexico or south America and not stop to think how those vegetables kill wildlife due to the terrible chemicals..
as for palm oil, nix the vegan butter and the vegan cream and the cheese and stop drooling over things that remind you of carcass as it IS worse than eating regular dairy. When we destroy Malaysian rainforest to create products without animal products to remind us of of carcass we cause animals in Africa to die of thirst like baby elephants as climate change is killing off the wildlife there!
Thanks for the great post!
I’m sure several people just read that it’s Vegan and trust that it’s going to be ethical – bad play on the part of the manufacturers! What’s wrong with just blending up some almonds eh?
Exactly! I’ll admit to falling for that assumption in my early days as a vegan, but soon learned the truth about palm oil.
Here’s my favorite recipe for “Parmezano Sprinkles” from the Uncheese Cookbook (I use this on pizza and pasta and lots of stuff):
1/2 cup blanched almonds (skins removed) or white sesame seeds
2 tbs. nutritional yeast flakes
1 to 2 tsp. light or chickpea miso
1/4 tsp. sea salt
Grind almonds or sesame seeds to a fine powder in a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Add remaining ingredients and pulse or process until well incorporated. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Shake container before using to break up any lumps. Will keep for a month or longer in refrigerator. May be frozen.
Tips: If you use sesame seeds, grind them in an electric coffee grinder or spice mill before adding to food processor.
Outstanding post! This was the swift kick in the ass I needed, no more imitation cheeses for me. I have not purchased them in quite some time but just the other day when working on my shopping list I added them — shame on me. So olive oil instead of butter. What do you use when baking?
Mmm sprinkles. Admittedly, this makes me drool.
You still have big guns in that arsenal of yours. Thanks for this informative post.
I rarely eat vegan cheeses or meats, and I avoid oil as much as possible for health reasons, but it’s simply not accurate to say that “Vegan Cheese is Just as Inhumane as Dairy Cheese.” Nope.
There are degrees of responsibility, levels of indirection, intervening causes, and varied harms.
Dairy is FAR worse than vegan cheese due to the simple fact that vegan cheese is indirectly and unintentionally harmful to animals whereas dairy cheese is directly and intentionally harmful to animals.
This is a perfect example of what I wrote about and my frustration with vegans who never consider the effects of their choices on ecosystems and wildlife. You think that deforestation for oil palm plantations isn’t directly harmful to orangutans and other wildlife in SEA? then it’s well past time you did some research and educated yourself. Vegan cheese, along with many other products containing palm oil, is contributing to the extinction of an entire species. Yes, dairy cows suffer, but they’re not going to be EXTINCT any time soon. Read What’s Wrong with Palm Oil? for a start.
This is typical of the kind of simplistic thinking that goes on with people who think no animal products means animal friendly. Vegans have a moral right and obligation to examine each of the things they eat right for the harm they cause. Choosing products with palm oil I would argue creates even more orphans and causes more suffering than dairy. Not only does it create the direct horrific death in the rainforests through being slaughter or incinerated and slow death through habitat loss, it creates other atrocities such as orphans orangs being dragged off into illegal markets and elephants having wire snares eat into their flesh causing untold agony and a unspeakable death. They also put explosives in bait food for elephants now which does not kill them right away but leaves them to languish in agony.
Then there is the climate change consequence from razing the rainforest in that area which is cataastrophic for the rest of the species on the earth. Thousands of species in Africa dying of thirst, baby elephants perishing in droughts.
There is a real stupidity and I would even venture to say criminality behind this statement:
“Dairy is FAR worse than vegan cheese due to the simple fact that vegan cheese is indirectly and unintentionally harmful to animals whereas dairy cheese is directly and intentionally harmful to animals.”
Wake up and smell the coffee (bird friendly organic coffee btw, not the industrial swill that kills everything in its wake)
“Yes, dairy cows suffer, but they’re not going to be EXTINCT any time soon.”
Woah, that’s environmentalism, not animal rights. I don’t give a damn about species; I care about individuals.
Listen, there is a reason that there is a difference between manslaughter and homicide: intent matters, intervening causes matter… there are other factors.
If palm oil literally came from grieving orangutans whose babies had been stolen and stuffed in tiny crates, then you might have a better argument. But for the time being, the levels of indirection make some food choices (non-vegan) less ethically justifiable than others (palm oil).
Sorry I don’t subscribe to your particular vision of environmentalist consequentialism. My ethical philosophy is a bit more nuanced.
Way not to see the forest of conifer species for the individual trees. I suppose, one day, when a species of great apes is extinct it’ll be too late to worry about the individuals. Be comforted with your nuanced ethical philosophy while the planet burns around you.
Intent matters. Yes it matters, but when you find out your intentions have terrible consequences that defeat what you wanted to achieve in the first place, then you have to regroup and change your habits.
The vegan community needs to start having massive dialogues educating people that no animal products doesn’t mean no harm to animals and in the case of palm oil products in fake meats and cheeses and butter, it is nothing more than criminal.
Then once we get into the non-harm in the products that mimic animal products the other issue vegans need to address is why they need fake animal products, and we need to address soaps and cleaners and other products and bird-friendly coffee and not buying winter vegetables from Mexico and South Smerica with awful pesticides … and all those things …
Ethical living means CONSTANT and VIGILANT examination of choices and many vegans want to live in their dumb little utopia of “no animal products” … aren’t I great? Well no, you’re not but you certainly are arrogant. You’re idiots just like the rest of the arrogant people on this plant.
So next time you’re all slathering Earth Balance on your toast, look at the vat of death on your counter and engage your brain.
Meanwhile good companies like LUSH cosmetics point out that even finding “sustainable” palm oil sources isn’t good enough:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16565639/Whats-Wrong-With-Palm-Oil-Lush-Factsheet
My criticism is NOT that there aren’t significant problems with palm oil.
My criticism is that “Vegan Cheese is Just as Inhumane as Dairy Cheese” is a FALSE statement.
1. “Vegan Cheese” may or may not have palm oil. As pointed out elsewhere, Dr. Cow vegan cheese or homemade vegan cheese made from nuts is palm oil free.
2. Nothing about veganism includes vegan cheese. But when you criticize certain vegans for eating certain vegan cheeses, omnis who read this only hear what they want to hear, which is “vegans are hypocrites.”
3. I, like LUSH, seek to use very little palm oil and to source it from sustainable, fair trade sources. I don’t feel that a complete boycott of all palm oil is appropriate because it doesn’t incentivize fair trade, organic, sustainable palm oil production. That’s why it only makes sense to boycott the bad palm oil.
4. I buy fair trade products when available, just like organic when available. But organic and fair trade are NOT like veganism because veganism is about abolishing the exploitation of animals, period. It’s NOT about voting with your dollar or fork to urge farmers to do it differently, which is what the organic and fair trade labels are about.
Nuance is not the enemy.
But humans ARE exploited animals aren’t they? And inorganic methods remove habitats for animals, or damn straight kill them with the machinery/chemicals.
I am an omni currently, but I try to steer clear of animal-derived products. Why? Because whilst killing an animal is horrible (note I’m not saying there’s nothing wrong with it), keeping it alive in a state of suffering is infintely worse, as it’s kept alive to suffer, and doesn’t get to be free from that until it’s utterly “useless”. And it seems that veganism is a constant learning curve – as soon as vegans discover that something they consume is bad for creatures, they stop. That’s not hypocritical, that’s education. I’m sure if one day we discover that the soya bean is being overcultivated and killing things, there’ll be a similar re-evaluation.
“I am an omni ”
Exactly.
“currently”
“veganism is a constant learning curve”
were you born a completely perfect vegan?