Vegan "Cheese"

"Real vegan cheese." Using those three words together make as much sense as using "Obama" and "transparency" in the same sentence. According to an Indiegogo project fund raising page,

Real Vegan Cheese is a not a cheese substitute! It all begins with regular old baker's yeast. Through synthetic biology, we engineer our yeast to become milk-protein factories, churning out real milk proteins (known as caseins). These milk proteins are then combined with water, vegan sugar and oil to make a kind of milk which is ultimately converted into Real Vegan Cheese using the age-old cheese-making process.

This seems like word games to me. By definition, cheese is "the curd of milk separated from the whey and prepared in many ways as a food." The key word here is milk. The milk comes from mammals, and therefore can't be vegan. A "synthetic" process is used to produce this "real" milk. If it was indeed real milk, it certainly would not qualify as vegan. If it's not real milk, then it can't be cheese. Simple logic.

In my experience, vegans also eschew synthetic and artificially altered foods. Apparently the group behind vegan "cheese" has found a weakness in that vegan resolve. Whatever you want to call this lab-produced product, "real cheese" hardly seems accurate. What's next? Real vegan prime rib?

Fish in My Yogurt

A co-worker stopped by my desk recently with a disgusted look on her face. She showed me her now empty yogurt container and asked "Why is there fish in my yogurt?"

From the Müller FAQ: "We use kosher gelatin from tilapia to maintain the light and airy texture of the fruit mousse."

Fish, or parts thereof, does make it's way into unexpected places, Isinglass (fish bladder) is used by some brewers as a filtering agent, much to the chagrin of some consumers.

I suspect the PETA folks who object to hot dogs on Memorial Day might be dry heaving right about now.