[jurip]

Cheese uses lots and lots of milk. There are questions of ethics (the treatment of dairy cows is often less than stellar) and carbon footprint (cheese is worse than pork, for example.)

I'd really love to see some good alternatives, too. I don't really expect to give up all cheese anytime soon, but having a substitute for at least some of it would be helpful.

[jjani]

> cheese is worse than pork, for example

Such figures are usually "per gram of protein", in which case, sure. Thing is, it's very common for people to eat 200+ grams of pork in one meal, whereas e.g. grated cheese on a pasta dish is <10g. A big slice of cheese is 25-28g, and half the time it's significantly less than 100% actual cheese, with a good amount of filler. The only cheeses that one might eat 50g+ of in one sitting are extremely mild ones like mozzarella, and those are the easiest to replace.

[hombre_fatal]

You are definitely from a culture that doesn't guzzle cheese like Americans. So out of curiosity I went to your comment history and your previous comment was "Here in Korea".

Yeah, growing up in the US I ate more cheese than meat which is probably super common among US kids. I'd devour the whole bag of cheese sticks if I could. And you can look at restaurants like tex mex where the enchilada sits in a lake of cheese. Or go to Olive Garden and try to find someone who stopped at <10g of cheese when the waiter is asking you when you want him to stop shredding it over your pasta.

Anyways, I bet it can be hard to transition from this dairy-heavy lifestyle to a plant-based diet. I personally gave up the idea of a cheese substitute entirely except on vegan pizza where it's dominated by other ingredients. It's just not as good.

Since there is animal-free dairy milk (https://tryboredcow.com/) on the market I wonder when we'll see animal-free dairy cheese.

[jjani]

I did spend more than a decade living in a European country famous for its cheese - your nearby supermarket will have some cheese from there :) Was talking about it in that light; Korea is a completely different story.

What you're saying could be true for the US, but in Europe people tend to put 1-2 slices of cheese on their bread, or grate it over something. Even if had as part of a platter with crackers, like with brie, it's nowhere near that much. For cacio e pepe, where the whole sauce is cheese, you only use maybe ~25g per person. This [1] is what 200g of pecorino romano looks like. Good luck eating all of that in one sitting - or don't, as you'll 100% regret it!

> I'd devour the whole bag of cheese sticks if I could.

If we take all cheese sticks that have been sold across the world in the last 24h, I'd be surprised if more than half their total weight was actual cheese.

[1] https://gastronomica.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Pec.-R...

[lanfeust6]

You can split the difference by shelling out for high quality grass fed cheeses only on occasion. In terms of treatment it seems to me cows suffer far less than chickens and pigs.