Friday, June 11, 2010

I Need Me Some Soy Cheese, Please

The humble soybean has yielded extraordinarily imaginative food choices for modern man. All across the globe, with origins in the East but now moving westwards, soy is morphing into acceptable, and perhaps even sought after, food choices. Such is the case with soy cheese.

Soy cheese is a welcome alternative to those who love cheese but have trouble eating it for a variety of health related or ethical reasons. Consumer demand is driving the production of vegan cheeses which coincidentally, runs parallel to modern medical knowledge.

Tofu, a soybean product, has been morphed into a thousand variety of vegetarian dishes in the East where not only ascetic Buddhist monks must conform to a non-meat diet, but also where soybeans have had a significant standing as an inexpensive form of protein. It would only make sense then that soybeans would mimic a food pervasive in the Western diet.

This, of course, is an evolution of experimentation but the similitude is ever getting closer. Specialty health food companies are stepping up to the cheese-plate with the ever growing demand for soy cheese products. This is very good news for a new, more aware generation of health conscious consumers.

* correction: I previously blogged that Daiya Foods makes soy cheese. A reader corrected me; they do not. Thank you.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the post! But Daiya is actually soy free! It's made with Tapioca and arrowroot base.

Mai Overton said...

Thanks for sharing that!