After a vegan blue cheese won the Good Food Award, panicked dairy cheese makers forced the foundation to disqualify it

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Wasnt that what they did with monty python's holy grial when it was banned in norway*?

I'm also a meat eater but Impossible burgers hold a special place in my heart. If I'm craving a whopper I'll always go for the Impossible whopper instead - it's just so much more satisfying.

Similarly, the meat quality at my local Chinese spots is questionable so I always get tofu instead.

I'm down to only eating meat half of days, and only for dinner, vs eating meat with every meal every day. My wallet and waistline have thanked me.

Damn, who would have thought liking good food would be so controversial xD

Every time I eat vegan cheese my mouth says this ain't quite right. But the taste is usually fine.

Here are more details (and more context is in the article):

"Someone had tipped off the foundation on something that disqualified Climax, Good Food Foundation Executive Director Sarah Weiner told the Washington Post. The complaint potentially arose from Climax’s use of the ingredient kokum butter, which has not been designated as GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the Food and Drug Administration. However, Zahn told the Washington Post that the company has replaced the ingredient with cocoa butter, which was the version he said he submitted for the awards (although Weiner contests this).

The Good Food Awards also didn’t require GRAS certification for all ingredients back when contestants submitted their products — rather, the foundation added this to the rules later on. Zahn claims the Good Food Foundation never reached out to Climax to inform the company of the new requirement, although Weiner told the Washington Post it attempted to. SFGATE could not reach the Good Food Foundation for comment in time for publication.

“It would have been very easy for them to reach out to us and tell us about the new requirements,” Zahn told SFGATE. “… The thing that’s upsetting to me is that they were kind of unprofessional by changing the rules a week before the event.”"

https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/berkeley-vegan-cheese-good-food-awards-19431532.php

There are innumerable horror stories from cottage vendors bumping up against the money and strict gatekeeping of the nationally established conglomerates. This was in the US, but I know Canada also has, new, laws on the books to specifically prevent plant based cheeses from referring to their product as "cheese," despite being the exact same process and a final product that you wouldn't know side by side to the dairy version.

I'm not a vegan, but this is the just same ole regulatory capture bullshit that we're seeing w ev cars, good imported rum, net neutrality and everything else

Here are more details (and more context is in the article):

"Someone had tipped off the foundation on something that disqualified Climax, Good Food Foundation Executive Director Sarah Weiner told the Washington Post. The complaint potentially arose from Climax’s use of the ingredient kokum butter, which has not been designated as GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the Food and Drug Administration. However, Zahn told the Washington Post that the company has replaced the ingredient with cocoa butter, which was the version he said he submitted for the awards (although Weiner contests this).

The Good Food Awards also didn’t require GRAS certification for all ingredients back when contestants submitted their products — rather, the foundation added this to the rules later on. Zahn claims the Good Food Foundation never reached out to Climax to inform the company of the new requirement, although Weiner told the Washington Post it attempted to. SFGATE could not reach the Good Food Foundation for comment in time for publication.

“It would have been very easy for them to reach out to us and tell us about the new requirements,” Zahn told SFGATE. “… The thing that’s upsetting to me is that they were kind of unprofessional by changing the rules a week before the event.”"

https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/berkeley-vegan-cheese-good-food-awards-19431532.php

Holy shit, there's a decent vegan cheese?

Yeah, try the Follow Your Heart brand. I think the name is pretty cheesy (pun intended) and it usually costs more than common brands like Daiya, but it tastes significantly better and melts more like actual cheese.

Shredded cheese substitutes aren't bad, especially if you plan on just melting it anyway. I'm not sure i would be willing to use vegan cheese on a cheese and cracker plate, but plenty of the stuff out there is suitable for melting on top of a sandwich, or in potatoes.

The article suggests it’s bacteria creating the milk from plants rather than cows and then normal cheese past that

However the article also says the dairy industry wasn’t the one complaining about it

"The plant constituents of that product, a vegan blue cheese, are hardly exotic. The top four ingredients are pumpkin seeds, coconut oil, lima beans, and hemp protein powder. And yet Dominique Crenn, a Michelin-starred chef, described it as “soft, buttery, and surprisingly rich—beyond imagination for a vegan cheese.”"

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/24/1091118/climax-foods-vegan-blue-cheese-ai-dairy-free-machine-learning/

I've had a few good vegan cheeses. Not all of it is 1 to 1 with the real deal, but a lot ends up being good in its own way. Just wish it wasn't so damn expensive. Hopefully that changes over time. Lactose doesn't agree with me so the more (affordable) non-dairy options there are, the happier I am.

This is blue cheese, so that tracks

Many have gotten super good in the last few years. I've had some people who are very hard to get to admit to liking anything vegan ask what brand and where to buy it after they tasted it. Everything from blue cheese and brie to feta, smoked cheddar, parmesan and mozzarella. There are also many really good, both simple and more complicated recipes online to make your own of basically any kind.

It's not available yet, but here's their home page.

https://climax.bio/

Aren’t they dairy cows?

I mean, apparently it's that good, so....

You can really taste the feet.

I was going to post the original wapo article, but then I saw wapo wouldn't even let me read the whole thing. I don't knowingly link to articles that are paywalled.

It'll be interesting to try when it comes out, but there are already plenty of good brands out there.

https://www.tastingtable.com/1134914/best-vegan-cheese-brands-ranked-worst-to-best/

They offer it at selected restaurants:
https://climax.bio/findus/

I'm not sure I get the mailing list part, but this is the type of task modern Machine Learning is actually great at (much better than they are at text or art generation). You have some huge open possibility space the humans can't possibly explore all of, and where false negatives aren't costly. You can use the model to narrow down the possibility space to something manageable for a human to review manually. Very similar to how its used in astrophysics, for example.