Ditching Dairy, Ceasing Cheese
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Mary Martin wonders if her readers have some advice for helping a vegetarian friend go vegan. Her hang-up is cheese. She just loves cheese (Mary’s friend, not Mary).
How many times have you heard that before? “I’d go vegan except I just love cheese too much.” The answer is simple: get that far. If someone says they can’t give up cheese, tell them to forget about the cheese, work on everything else. They can probably stop eating pigs, cows, chickens, and fish. So get that far. Become a lacto-vegetarian.
Then later, bring up the cheese again. Most people change gradually, not quickly. So if they’re not ready to go 100% vegan overnight, help them ease into veganism slowly. Once they’ve gotten to the stage where they’re almost vegan, they just need to stop eating cheese, you can give them suggestions.
Here are my suggestions for overcoming cheese:
- Read The China Study. The health argument against dairy products is strong. It helped convince me to ditch dairy for good.
- Remind yourself that cheese is very similar to butter – it’s mostly fat and if consumed, should be consumed in very small amounts. That can help you wean yourself off.
- You can order vegan “cheese” products online and have them shipped if you don’t have a store that sells vegan “cheeses.” For blue cheese and gouda, I’d suggest the brand Shreese. For mozzarella I suggest the brand Teese. For feta I recommend the brand Sunergia.
- Give it up cold turkey. It’s a bad habit like smoking.
- Don’t be too hard on yourself at first. If you slip up, it’s fine, just get back on the wagon.
- I’ve heard the book, “Breaking the Food Seduction” by Dr. Neal D. Barnard is good for this purpose. He talks about addictive foods: sugar, chocolate, and… cheese! Many vegans tell me it helped them stop eating cheese.
And of course, there’s the humane discussion. Mary says, “Sending her to HumaneMyth won’t necessarily help, but I suppose it can’t hurt.” Likewise, HumaneFacts could be persuasive. Or videos like these ones:
What are your thoughts? How did you give up cheese? What would you say to someone who says, “I’d go vegan except I just love cheese too much.”
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*Read a review of some vegan cheeses here.
**Photo credit: quarrygirl.com
My fav. “cheese” so far if FYH but I’m not addicted to it. Someone in my family has finally gotten interested in vegetarianism- she was doing great cutting back on the animal products for a while, now she still says “STOP worrying about what I eat, we are different, I like Chicken and Fish!.” and clearly dairy/eggs. I am trying really hard to help her understand the economical, enviromental and cruelty benifits of cutting away animal proudcts, but she’s extremely resitent. I’d like to say “she just isn’t right for it.” But it’s so hard,thinking of where that general Tso chicken had came from when she gnaws on it, corn-syrup-y salt sauce dripping from her mouth. any advoce would be highly appriciated!
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I have a major love for cheese and eggs myself. For me it was just the realization that even “nonconsumptive uses” like eggs and milk are made possible through slavery.
When I ask people to watch videos of sadistic humans mistreating hens (or whatever), I tell them that it’s not important whether this sort of treatment is the norm. The important part is understanding why it bothers you to see even one hen treated in that way. Once one has that empathy, it’s not hard to see how even relatively humane operations are problematic.
Unfortunately, one thing we can’t yet do is offer vegan cheese as a full replacement – there just isn’t the variety and depth of tastes available on the vegan side. Having said that, vegans can still easily enjoy all of the cheese-based stuff that non-vegans enjoy. I’ve had yummy mac & cheese, fondue, casseroles, etc. and, to paraphrase Kafka, now I can eat them in peace.
My friend jokes that she knew that eventually I would become vegetarian, but she did not think I would become vegan b/c of my love of cheese. I came across a Vegan Outreach pamphlet and went from omnivore to vegan overnight. I would recommend just giving it up cold turkey, no vegan substitute tastes the same, the animals must matter more than the taste. Eventually, after not having cheese for a while, vegan cheese is a good treat, but it’s more like a fatty topping for pizza, not really ‘cheese’. I do hope a good substitute becomes available, not for my tastes, but so more people can stick to veganism.
Cheese was a problem for me, too. I ate less and less of it (my theory being that if we eat fewer animal products we still serve the cause of farm animals) but if a large chunk was in my fridge I’d down it in an evening (eating issues). The China Study really kicked it for me. It’s embarrassing, really, that it took an appeal to my health to make it permanent.
Like you, Laci, I struggle with resistant friends. I tend not to push but when asked I answer. I find most of them alarmingly ignorant not only of what they are doing to their bodies but to my sensitivities.
When I became vegan, I thought this would be such a hard problem, getting cheese out of my diet. But, a week or two later, I stopped having cravings for it and now its been 2 1/2 years since I’ve had it. Looking at it now makes me get a sick feeling in my stomach. Somehow I wish we could promote how easliy the addiction to cheese can diminish. Its the easiest habit to break!
When I was a fish-eater and then vegetarian, I started eating rennetless cheese. But I’d still eat whatever kind of cheese was available at restuarants. Then I read “Reproductive Autonomy” by Helen Matthews in Satya (http://www.satyamag.com/jan05/matthews.html), which is about the bodily exploitation of females, human and otherwise. I KNEW about how dairy cows were treated before reading this article but this punched me in the gut with that information and I knew that I could not call myself a feminist and still support the raping and torture of female cows.
I don’t know if I gave dairy up that very day–I was pretty close to it anyway–but that article sticks out in my head as a turning point.
One day I was eating an egg and all the information I had done on veganism just coalesced for me in one moment. I became nauseated by the egg. The taste, where it came from. And i just stopped eating it. I never ate eggs or dairy again and that was the day I went vegan. It was very immediate but it took time to get there.
I don’t eat much nondairy cheese. It doesn’t taste good. Sometimes I’ll have Tofutti cheese melted on bread when I crave grilled cheese. I bought Teese and wasn’t all that impressed, although it was nice to have the ooey cheese pizza I made with it. Otherwise, I don’t spend much time missing cheese. I used to eat cheese everyday, several times a day. I was someone who thought, “Cheese is life.” Now I realize it’s really not a big deal at all. I totally don’t miss it.
I became a vegetarian first…I just ate more cheese. I would replace the flesh with more cheese which is very unhealthy. I would justify eating dairy and eggs by believing that it did no harm to the cows and hens, after all they didn’t have to die for my desires.
One day I finally let it sink in that I was directly contributing to the suffering and then the eventual death of these farm animals. I would go on-line to see and read about what happens to dairy cows and laying hens, how cruel the suffering is. I immediately gave up dairy and eggs because I no longer had the stomache for it, knowing how it is produced.
I want people to know that I live a vegan lifestyle and why I made that choice. Vegetarians eating dairy and eggs just need to aware that the dairy farms are slavery, they promote cruelty and ultimately death…most often a horrible death.