http://www.nsnews.com/health/last+vegan+cheese+that+good/4064543/story.htmlAt last: a vegan cheese that's good A Canadian company has developed an award-winning vegan alternative to cheese, and it's flying off the shelves.
Daiya has become quite the celebrity talking point, appearing on Oprah's show, the Ellen DeGeneres show, and now appearing at a store near you.
"It's pretty exciting," says brand manager Kristen Bourke. "It's not very often that a food product like this sort of sells itself. Usually you're fighting to get shelf space."
Vegans and dairy intolerant people have a difficult time finding cheese substitutes. The products on the market have a reputation for being chalky, not melting and generally behaving and tasting rather unlike the dairy equivalent. This was the concern of Andre Kroecher, a vegan from the North Shore, who founded the company.
Kroecher tried making a vegan pizza at home in 2005 and was thoroughly disappointed by the results. None of the cheese style products he tried melted properly and some still contained the animal protein casein, and therefore couldn't be used in vegan cooking.
"He'd end up throwing it all away based on the quality and texture of the products on the market," says Bourke.
Kroecher decided to make his own product, a product that could melt and stretch much like dairy cheese, strictly for personal consumption. The first prototype was havarti-like in style, and Kroecher would bring it to social occasions without telling anyone that it wasn't cheese. "It would always vanish," he says.
"There was a real shock" when he told people what the product was actually made of, says Kroecher. "Then people would say, 'you have to do something with this."
Koecher started to use tapioca or arrowroot flour as opposed to soy, which forms the basis of many vegan alternatives currently available.
"I remembered that when I was little, tapioca pudding was really very stretchy," he says, which was the characteristic that was so hard to replicate in non-dairy alternatives.
Kroecher and co-founder Greg Blake started taking the experiments a bit further.
"Because we had no food science background, we had no pre-conceived notions about how one might do this," adds Blake.
"We set up (research and development) kitchens in our homes, much to the chagrin of our wives, and went at it."
By 2008, Kroecher and Blake had developed Daiya, an alternative to cheese that behaves exactly like the dairy variety. It melts and shreds and opens up a world of new dining options for people with food allergies and vegans alike.
Everything from fondue to grilled cheese is now back on the menu, and people can't get enough. Daiya has just won the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) Proggy Award for Company of the Year. The animal rights group commends the company for bringing a healthier, animal-friendly vegan lifestyle into the mainstream.
"For us it's been exciting because a lot of the major chains have been coming to us and asking for the product, all based on consumer interest," says Bourke. "Consumers (are) driving the sales when they come to the store and ask their buyers for it."
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