Really, the disqualification is probably better publicity than winning the award itself. If someone told me some vegan cheese won a “Good Food” award, I would assume it was related to eco- and social-consciousness. Learning that it was so delicious that the dairy industry schemed to take away the award tells me they’re afraid of the competition.
When Seiko beat the Swiss at their own mechanical watch accuracy competitions, they decided to cancel the long running prestigious competition entirely instead of make a better watch.
Capitalism breeds innovation!
Same with Japanese Scotch whiskeys absolutely running the table on ones from Scotland in competitions.
That’s partly because “Scotch” is a protected label. You can only call a Whisky Scotch if it was distilled with a certain technique, from certain grains, by certain companies, and matured in certain casks for a certain amount of time. All of it is regulated.
Japanese whisky doesn’t have these limitations. They can just do whatever makes it taste good.
If it doesn’t come from loch ness it’s just sparkling whisky
Scotch whisky must be made in Scotland. Similar story with bourbon, bourbon must be made in the United States. In many places you can follow the same recipes and processes as those products, but you may not label them with those terms.
Yes, but being made in Scotland isn’t enough to call your whisky Scotch. There’s a whole rulebook.
I’m an American, and we just don’t really buy into the whole “you must be from this region to be called this item”. All sparkling wine is champagne, all peaty whiskey is scotch, and all rice liqur is sake.
Yes, and being distilled and aged in Scotland are both rules in that rule book. Again, same for bourbon, not all American whiskies are eligible to be labeled as bourbon.
The Japanese distilleries are following all the rules. They are just doing it in Japan and better.
Oh she’s sweet but she’s Seiko, a little bit Seiko
To be fair, a crystal clock is just going to be more accurate than a movement based watch. Even the biggest watch fanboys admit that a $30
SeikoCasio outperforms the majority of mechanicals on raw accuracy.Seiko makes mechanical watches that cost under $100 and are just as precise and long-lasting as a Swiss watch.
You’re probably thinking of Casio.Ahhhhh you’re right I mixed them up :/
So… The existing market leader chose to flip the table instead of admitting that their position was weaker and lower value.
Yep, that sure sounds like the pursuit of capital instead of… innovation, quality, or any of the other attributes capitalism attempts to associate itself with.
The Neuchâtel Observatory is a publicly funded institution that certifies movements with high accuracy as chronometers. Not a private body, or a marketing tool used by a watchmaker. The same ‘competition’ is done by other observatories, all giving their own rating of a timepiece’s accuracy against a reference chronometer kept at the observatory.
A quick search could have brought you that information_ Quartz movements beat the pants off mechanical movements, and they’re far cheaper to make, allowing the non-rich to have a decent watch with good battery life and serious accuracy. Cheap and normal mechanical watches regularly drift and lose a few seconds time over days and weeks - quartz drifts between 1-110 seconds over a year.
They aren’t talking about quartz watches though. Seiko makes mechanical watches that were being compared to swiss mechanical watches costing way more.
Right, first thing I thought when I read this is “where can I get some of that ‘cheese’”
Yeah, well, you can’t. It’s only available to restaurants, and isn’t ready for retail. That’s one of the stupid reasons they can’t have their stupid award. Stupid sexy cheesish.
The username, the grumpy desire for vegan cheese. Perfect.
Indeed, and while they might have been initially furious at the snub, this is going to wind up being VERY good for business. Now they have an incredible story to tell, complete with mystery and intrigue that consumers love. Their marketing department must be salivating right now.
I could have never known this award even existed if not for this news. I don’t care at all for cheese and now I’m curious to try it.
Same
A Midwesterner that doesn’t care for cheese? Doubt.
You’re right, but it’s understandable why the dairy industry shat themselves. They fucked up by allowing things to be named “oat milk” or “whatever milk”, so they damn sure aren’t going to let their “cheese” territory get encroached on.
The problem with restricting the use of the term “milk” is that people have been using the term “milk” to describe non-dairy liquids for longer than there have been trademarks. The word hasn’t ever been used exclusively to describe dairy.
Here’s a dictionary entry for “milk” from 1755:
https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/1755/milk_ns
Note that it includes almond and pistachio milks.
Milk of the poppy.
Milk of Magnesia
Let me see if I get this right: they get disqualified for containing an ingredient that hasn’t been certified as edible (kokum butter) and is usually used in cosmetics, and there is no evidence of Big Cheese being the reason for the disqualification, other than the owner of the company saying it.
But it is still Big Cheese’ fault?
It’s even worse than that. The makers aren’t even sure what was in their product to begin with.
Zahn says the kokum butter shouldn’t be an issue anyway: The company has since replaced it with cocoa butter, which does have GRAS certification. Initially, he told the Post the cocoa butter version was what he submitted for the awards, but after this story was published he said he determined that it was in fact the kokum butter version. (According to Weiner, Climax submitted an ingredient list that included kokum.)
So it might have been labeled with having kokum butter, it might not. Who knows? Seems to depends what answer is needed at the time.
Also,
Climax, it turns out, wasn’t just a finalist — it was set to win the award, a fact that all parties are asked to keep confidential until the official ceremony in Portland, Ore., but was revealed in an email the foundation sent to Climax in January.
If I’m reading this correctly, out of all the contestants, only they knew they won. Makes it a further stretch that it was a dairy company that “out” them as they wouldn’t have known that the vegan cheese won.
My guess for the change about GRAS was it most likely was assumed everyone would only submit GRAS items, and since someone broke that non-spoken rule then they had to make it a clarified rule. It is something you’d just assume everyone made sure their food was most or less FDA approved (which is a logical assumption).
The Washington Post article is much clearer about this whole issue (which is linked to in this badly written Boingbonk article.)
Gift link for access: https://wapo.st/3xQCcYX
According to WebMD and the millions of people that eat kokum butter, it’s safe.
People used to use makeup with arsenic in it. I dont trust democracy on this one.
WebMD isn’t the FDA, neither are the millions who eat it.
Only the FDA can say if something is GRAS or not. No one else matters in this context. And this contest wants to follow the FDA guidelines.
Kokum butter is edible and occasionally used to make chocolates and other confections.
None of them care about that. They only care about arguing against vegan foods.
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
I just wanna try this cheese.
Unbelievably shitty ragebait journalism.
The traditional cheesemaking company is freaking out (really?) about Climax Blue, especially because the vegan cheese was so delicious that it had slated (it had slated did it?) to win the overall competition
Though yes, there is a bit of controversy here, but at least the Washington Post tries to explain it in a less incredibly-biased way - https://wapo.st/3xQCcYX
That is a rather clickbaity title, with some rage baity jpurnalism right there.
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.
“Our cheese is so good they had to disqualify us” would be my new slogan so fast.
Wasnt that what they did with monty python’s holy grial when it was banned in norway*?
If only I could buy it.
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/deleted by creator
I’m closer to a carnivore than a vegan, but if something is good, it’s good. I’m not going to hate on something delicious because I feel threatened by someone else’s life choices.
Don’t worry, farmers; if I start eating vegan cheese I promise I’ll make up for it in beef consumption.
A lot of vegan “alternatives” are actually really good when you know what you’re doing with them. I will take tofu or mushrooms over meat any day tbh. Problem is some people don’t know that and will just prepare tofu like it’s meat, and then wonder why their tofu tastes like shit.
I tried tofu multiple times in different meals as a alternative for meat, but sadly all were disappointing. Do you have recipes that you can recommend? I am eager to find one.
Stir fry
A lot of times I think the problem is trying to substitute the protein in a dish with tofu or something vegan. It’s always going to be compared to the meat version. Should just try to find recipes that were tofu based to begin with, like mapo tofu.
I love meat, but some do the best dishes my partner and I have ever made are vegan, and fried tofu is a staple.
We have friends who are vegan or have very strange allergies and have to cook for a mixed crowd
Banger meals, seriously
I tried different recipes, but most of them were underwhelming, like the meal would be kinda the same without.
Stir fry how? Which type of tofu, pressed? And probably dipped in cornstarch?
Tofu doesn’t really bring taste, just texture so that’s kinda to be expected. That’s why I typically get firm or extra firm. I like those textures over softer ones.
I’m not sure what you mean by pressed as all tofu is pressed. That’s how tofu is made. I’ve never tried dipping it in cornstarch so IDK how that would turn out. I don’t typically do anything other than cut it up and cook it.
As for how to stir fry; I suggest looking that up. You mostly just use whatever veg and protein you want and add some stir fry sauce at the end. I haven’t really found one I prefer. I don’t do stir fry all that often. I really should since it’s super simple.
Extra firm+fried in oil has never NOT been a hit for me! Generally sesame or strangely peanut butter has killed it among my non-veg friends, trying to make a dish for both non-veg and vegan friends.
Im both a meat eater and tofu lover. Mapo tofu is probably one of my favorite dishes.
This is the recipe I sort of follow https://thewoksoflife.com/ma-po-tofu-real-deal/
They’re not mutually exclusive. For those too lazy to follow the link - traditional mapo tofu (like many Chinese tofu recipes) isn’t vegetarian . Tofu as a total replacement for meat is a Western idea - in most Eastern cultures that use it, tofu is just another ingredient and often used along with meat and animal based broths. The same is true of soy milk.
That’s a really dumb argument. Sorry but literally every food is really good when you know what you are doing with it.
It is not even a question of quality… some of the tastiest food is terrible quality used with great effect.
That doesn’t even take into account personal preference, which is majorly just familiarity.
The awards world is filled with awards that would never be given if there wasnt a story to go with it. This vegan cheese is an example of this as well.
Problem is some people don’t know that and will just prepare tofu like it’s meat, and then wonder why their tofu tastes like shit.
You arent even wrong about this, but you could say the exact same thing about damned near anything that has more than a single opinion on.
Like literally exchange in what i quoted tofu to a burger patty and instead of “like its meat” change it to some aspect of the experience. Whether its what temperature to cook it or how thin or thick it is.
Same exact argument based on different peoples familiarity. Many people dont have just dont care that much and also some people are really bad at cooking.
To sum up my point, you are making a statement that is so broad it is useless
Would you consider reducing according to carbon footprint?
I live mostly on beer, so I’m doing my part.
Might want to switch to other animals, beef is questionable ATM.
All of my beef is in my freezer from a local farmer about two months ago. Hopefully it’s clear.
I think attitudes like this are borderline psychopathic and I bet you’ve never rendered an animal in your entire life.
Notwithstanding the fact that the comment was obviously made in jest, why would it matter whether a consumer had anything to do with the preparation of the food? I don’t think anyone is genuinely ignorant of where meat comes from.
“I’m so fun at parties people can’t even handle me”
and I bet you’ve never rendered
Red flag. No native English speaker talks like this.
Anyone got the actual link to buy this cheese?
Since it was actually disqualified for being made from an ingredient that’s not approved for human consumption by the FDA you might not want to buy it.
It was disqualified before the announcement was made. Dairy farmers didn’t even know it was going to win.
That’s not true. There’s no reason to believe kokum requires GRAS affirmation since it’s been historically and widely consumed on the Indian subcontinent. That means it’s grandfathered in as GRAS by default even if it’s not included in their lists.
The FDA not yet giving it GRAS affirmation is not the same as it not being approved for human consumption. Specifically, the FDA did not raise any concerns to a GRAS notice that it has already received for kokum butter as a cocoa butter substitute.
A substance used in food prior to January 1, 1958, may be generally recognized as safe through experience based on its common use in food when that use occurred exclusively or primarily outside of the United States if the information about the experience establishes that the substance is safe under the conditions of its intended use within the meaning of section 201(u) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act
It’s not available yet, but here’s their home page.
Look, I dislike blue cheese purely for the flavor, but I’ll be damned i didn’t want to try this
You can really taste the feet.
deleted by creator
The farm industry loves their subsidies and will fight hard to keep them coming.
In the US anyway. I’m sure it’s similar in other countries but for ostensible cultural reasons.
Edit: I checked to make sure, this is in the US.
Dairy ain’t going anywhere, it’s legitimately a national security thing for food scarcity (government cheese). It’s still also heavily subsidized of course (as is Corn). Now if that could be swung to a different animal (sheep or goats), that’d have a significant impact environmentally.
Ew, blue cheese.
I dunno, I think I’m on the side of “it might taste great but if it’s vegan it doesn’t meet the definition of cheese.”
So I don’t necessarily agree in general, it depends on how you define milk… If you curdle a liquid and it becomes cheese like, it’s probably cheese? Unless milk can only come from mammals/animals.
I would, in fact, definite milk as only coming from a mammal. Coconut milk or soy milk or nut milk or whatever else may superficially resemble milk but they’re pretty fundamentally not the same sort of substance as milk.
There are texts going back to the 8th century talking about almond milk. That ship sailed before Columbus.
Just because it’s called the same, doesn’t mean it generally is. In Germany we have something called “Scheuermilch”, which literally translates into “abrasion milk”. The only property it shares with milk or even plant-milk is its colour. It’s a cleaning product. You could of course define milk more broadly as “white liquid”…
Fun fact on the side: almond milk & co. are not allowed to be called milk on the packaging in germany. They’re usually called something along the lines of “almond drink”. Reason being because it might confuse the buyer. Scheuermilch is still allowed to be called Scheuermilch though and coconut milk is still coconut milk. So according to our government, apparently, milk can be any white liquid unless it’s a plant based substitute for cow milk. Then it’s something entirely different.
So it’s arbitrary except for the whitish color. So who do you think is pushing for the name changes, because we’ve been doing this for 1200 years now. I expect someone doesn’t want to have to put dairy or cow on their labels. Goat milk, after all, is still unquestionably milk and is still called goat milk.
There was a time when the “definition” of marriage was a union between only one amab and afab person. Definitions change.
Bro, come on man. I don’t give a fuck what you call cheese but likening dairy to sexual preference discrimination is a bit much.
The lgbtq+ communities and vegans are both seeking justice in their own areas of concern, so it’s most definitely not extreme to compare the two.
How incredibly privileged of you.
It’s extreme. The fact that you can’t see that it is undermines your entire argument. You’re not doing yourself any favors by saying that vegan cheese is as oppressed as gay people have been. No one’s being dragged behind a truck because they presented vegan cheese as a dairy product. No one’s shouting slurs at you.
You alienate people who might otherwise have agreed with you.
As an example, look at the other end of the spectrum using exactly the same, ridiculous logic. Selling vegan cheese is legal. Selling people was also once legal.
You really believe in veganism and that’s great. I’m happy for you. But punch in your weight class my dude. Some people think vegan blue cheese is better, but it lost a competition for not technically being cheese. Some people think chili has beans, but since 1967 beans have been strictly forbidden from ICS cookoffs but the people’s choice competitions strictly require them. There are reasonable parallels to be drawn there.
There is no reasonable parallel between vegan cheese in a cheese cookoff, and actual hatred of LGBTQ+ people
You’re straw manning their argument. They aren’t comparing the oppression of LGBTQIA+ folk to the oppression of cheese. The comparison is to the oppression of animals - who most definitely are being dragged behind the truck.
You can, and probably would, make the argument that animals don’t deserve the same level of moral consideration as LGBTQIA+ humans, but the vegan argument is that non-human animals experience pain and suffering and deserve the same right to life and non-exploitation for the same reason that any human (LGBTQIA+ or not) does.
This, thank you.
didn’t you know that vegans are an oppressed minority? the dairy industry is their oppressor?
There are forms of discrimination that happen to vegans, but more importantly, it’s the non-human animals who are being oppressed.
And I suppose it is up to the organizers of a contest over cheese to define the parameters of what constitutes cheese. But milk seems like a reasonable starting point. It is, after all, a dairy product.
Plant-based cheeses are allowed in their competition. They technically got disqualified because one of the ingredients is some type of fat that currently doesn’t have GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status. Except they only made it an issue after the plant-based cheese had won.
The whole resistance to reinterpreting culinary language is just nothing but anti-competitiveness.
Maybe they didn’t make it an issue until after because it was under their radar? Once it became the center of attention they might have thought safety of the winner was important? The vast majority of the comments in this thread don’t even seem to know why it was disqualified.
This whole thread strikes me as odd.
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
That actually strikes me as a extremely reasonable justification for disqualifying it. The fact that they only noticed after it won is also not particularly suspicious.
Edit: how many alt accounts are down voting me for saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to enter in a food with potentially unsafe ingredients?
I’ll just copy and paste the same thing I replied with, above:
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
If we can define plant products as milk then we could also define cows as plants. It would make vegan chili contests more interesting.
Good luck with that.
Likewise, good luck with vegan “cheese”.
Clearly it doesn’t need luck - it’s already winning awards despite underhanded tricks.
According to the article, they didn’t win.
EDIT:
Actually I guess they did, see below.
They were slated to win, close enough.
Can’t be bought yet. Later this year they say.
OP’s name checks out.
With this username I am quickly finding out I should be charging one quarter every time someone says this.
