Tips for finally ditching dairy...?

You'll never find a vegan cheese that gives you the same kick as the real thing, no matter how good it tastes. Why? Cheese contains a protein called casein, "a protein that breaks apart during digestion to produce morphine-like opiate compounds, called casomorphins". Many veggie cheeses aren't vegan because they contain this compound, which is added to allow the 'cheese' to melt. I am not aware of any synthetic sources for this protein.

I was lucky in my quest to eliminate cheese from my diet: I realized I was allergic/intolerant to dairy once I began to cut it out of my diet. I realized that my symptoms (that I had been living with for a long time) kicked in after I had a source of dairy, and cheese was the worst. So every time I was tempted to eat cheese, I would think about the consequences and just not eat it.

What I have found works for me is to just get over the idea of cheese. I decided to stop trying to find a substitute for it and just enjoy other foods. I decided that pizza did not have to have cheese to be good. I just changed my whole mindset - and it has worked. I haven't had cheese in over a year and I can count the number of times I've had a craving for it on one hand.

Now that I am away from it, cheese looks like this nasty, mucosy gloop - not something I'm particularly interested in eating. Dairy really is gross, if you stop to think of it. There is a huge yuck factor around drinking human breast milk, but we will chug down glasses of cow's breast milk. It's not for humans, it's for baby cows.

If the cheese is your last step to eliminating dairy completely - congrats! Cheese is definitely the hardest thing for people to give up. Remember it's because it is addicitve - and not because you are weak willed. And like any addiction, it gets easier over time.

Good luck!

I've been vegan for two years now and have just given up on finding a cheese substitute. I do get cravings for it, but I try to figure out what my body is trying to tell me: is it more calcium or fat that I need? Last time it was the fat in which eating avocado did the trick (and that was after eating broccoli for a week in case it was calcium). I just made a commitment to not eat dairy and I stuck with it. I will not let my taste buds rule my world, and in my world animals are not killed against their will in mass amounts, nor do I want them to suffer (which I am now finding out that even organic milk/cheese cows are living in cramped quarters and don't even get to go outside to graze. Who can you trust? I solve it by not even going there).

I've tried nutritional yeast (and if you get the kind that has the vegan Vitamin B-12 in it, you can use that instead of the supplement) and it is OK for a chicken flavor/cheese flavor in a recipe, but not on its own. I am still waiting for a good one to come along my way.

Nutrional yeast is used to give things a cheesy flavor. I am told that the best cookbook for cheese subs, hands down, is Jo Stepaniak's Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook: http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Uncheese-Cookbook-D...

This recipe also is really popular for uncheese: http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=7126.0 it's more of a cheese sauce than an actual cheese, but if you make it thick, you can spread it on bread for grilled uncheese and such.

Really, nothing will be exactly like dairy cheese. However, remember that dairy cheese means suffering for cows and their calves. And really, do you want to be eating pus? Cheese is, in a way, addictive. Once you can kick the habit, the cravings will subside.

www.vegweb.com is full of uncheese recipes, I definitely recommend checking it out.

Hope this helps!

Congratulations on your resolve!

I still eat cheese...occasionally and have not looked for a substitute.

But otherwise on the dairy front, what about all those soy products -- milk and yoghurt, in particular? (Tofu leaves me cold; I have to jazz it up with a lot of spices like cumin and garlic or Tamari soya sauce.)

If you're taking in enough soy yoghurt and milk you may not need to have any cheese to keep your protein, calcium, etc. up.

Good luck!

Try this website. I found it after looking online to find your answer and it looks good. i am gonna look into this myself. Thank you for posting this question.

http://www.imearthkind.com/