Product Review: Follow Your Heart's Vegan Gourmet Cheese Alternative

I learned about Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet from a book called Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, a diet book that promotes a vegan diet as a weight loss method. They say, "Are you a cheese addict? No problem. Follow Your Heart's Vegan Gourmet makes a kick-ass substitute in mozzarella, Monterey Jack and nacho. It even melts! It rules."

So I figured I'd give it a try. I'm not a vegan, but I have been trying to cut down on meat and dairy in my diet. Besides, I like trying new things. I've tried a number of different soy cheese substitutes and one almond cheese substitute. These are not typically vegan, because they contain casein, which is a protein found in cow's milk, and is the reason that many people are allergic to dairy products. I've gone through two packages of Follow Your Heart's Vegan Gourmet, to give it a full and fair chance. Both packages were the "cheddar" style.

I can only say that if this is what gourmet is to a vegan, I won't be changing to that lifestyle anytime soon. Raw (unheated and uncooked) Vegan Gourmet is gritty and slick, and tastes like a cross between Velveeta and that powdered cheese you get in instant macaroni & cheese. About the Skinny Bitch claim that it melts: it takes either a higher temperature or a longer time (I haven't determined which it is) than regular or even most soy or almond cheeses do to "melt". I can't use the word in relation to this product without quotes because that's not exactly what happens. Vegan Gourmet doesn't actually melt per se, it simply liquefies. Also, if you'll glance at the nutritional information panel included with this article, you'll see that 60 of the 70 calories of this cheese substitute per serving are from fat, so I'm not certain that it would of any use in a weight loss plan. This makes it, in my opinion, an odd choice of recommendation from a weight loss book.