Cheese lover needs help transitioning from vegetarian to vegan?

Question

I've been vegetarian for quite some time now, and I want to go vegan - but I have this obsession with cheese.

I love cheese, not the gross processed stuff like velvetta and kraft singles - fine cheeses - artisan cheeses. Stinky, dried, fresh, aged, hard, soft - whatever. I dream about cheese, spend hours talking to the cheese monger and molesting the cheeses the market, eat it in and on everything...

I'm off the meat and all other animal products/by-products except for cheese and have been for several months. I just can't seem to break the cheese fetish.

Any advice that won't require physchiatric evaluation? I know I have an unhealthy relationship with the cheese, but I eat it in moderation and am not getting fat or clogging my arteries (too much) with it... so far.

And I've already tried just not buying it. I had the house cheese-less for about three weeks until this afternoon when I spent about $50 on just cheese at the farmer's market...

Answer 1

giving up cheese totally sucks.  i loved cheese the same way you do, the hard, the stinky, the ooey gooey, the moldy, the blues, greens, reds, yellows and whites, i loved it all.....and then my doctor told me i had a weird kidney disorder and had to eliminate diary, including cheese from my diet.  It was really hard, I ate really healthy and exercised and cheese was one of the few bad things i allowed myself.  You just have to go cold turkey, its the best way.  I still have trouble, my partner just brought home a few slice's of cheese to make himself a sandwich and im dying to go eat the last pieces in a grilled cheese (plebian but delicious)....good luck!

Answer 2

They make vegetarian cheese so you could eat that instead?

x

Answer 3

Well, it sounds like you're even more of a cheese-lover than I was - I would never have used the word "molesting" to describe my interaction with cheese - ;)

But, for me anyway, when I was really ready to do it, going vegan was pretty easy.  Not buying it is the first step.  And, for me, the second step was cooking and trying a LOT of new vegan recipes.  I pretty much distracted myself from cheese by enjoying a bunch of other stuff.  I've been off it for 10 months now and I really just don't want it anymore.

I don't really recommend trying vegan cheeses, at least not yet.  They just don't compare.  I tried Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet right after giving up cheese and it was totally unsatisfactory.  I think if I tried it again now, with some distance from the real thing, it might go over better.

Answer 4

Try different brands of soy cheese. I like the Trader Joes brand, it tastes a lot like cheese(but I think you probably don't have a TJ in your area.

Answer 5

Try visiting www.notmilk.com

Think about what is in that cheese.  It's disgusting cow pus.  Gross!

Oh and TOTALLY skip the soy cheese - it's full of isolated soy protein....almost as bad for you as cow pus!

Answer 6

To be blunt, why bother going full vegan if it's this much trouble? No animals are killed to make cheese, so just enjoy your cheese and be content. It's your diet, and you have to live with it, so eat what you like.

Answer 7

Congrats on wanting to go vegan! I use to be the Queen of cheese lovers! I loved ALL kinds of cheese, but there was always something about cheese that made me nauseated and sick (I later learned why), I had always been a vegetarian and decided to go vegan but could not give up cheese. Then I read about the process of cheese and say a video of how the cows are treated and learned how veal is a by product of cheese and the heath problems that comes with cheese, and quit just like that! And I was worried if I would be able to eat a vegan cheese if it would taste like cheese, but I did not care because my beliefs were so strong. But then I tried Vegan Gourmet cheese and made some home made nyc (nutritional yeast cheeses) and they were pretty good and satisfied my cheese craving. There a lot of vegan cheeses out there plus vegan cheese recipes!

Answer 8

Ask yourself if the title VEGAN means more to you than the taste of real CHEDDAR CHEESE.

Answer 9

Try soy cheese.

Answer 10

Wow.  I thought I was a cheese addict but I wasn't even close to that bad...

I heard once when you quit smoking you should keep some cigarettes.  Maybe it's the same.  There is cheese in my fridge now (for my hubby) but I won't eat it.  When I open the fridge sometimes I think about eating it but (as corny as it sounds) I just remind myself what it is and keep looking.

I didn't eat veggie burgers or any "fake" meat till I was a vegetarian for a few years.  Once I get over my cheese addiction completely and don't even remember what it tastes like, maybe I'll try soy cheese.  At this point, I think it just wouldn't taste right.

Answer 11

It was not a difficult transition for me.  Once I learned the truth about the dairy industry I just stopped consuming dairy.  I couldn't support the veal industry and I couldn't put cows the misery they know as their lives.

Answer 12

don't try to rid yourself of cheese all at once. do it slowly. one day, eat your regular amount, then the next, eat a little less, a little less the next day, etc...then after a few weeks you'll be cheese free!

Answer 13

Just leave cheese in your diet, besides....you know you love my hamburgers, so you don't want to go completely vegan, that's just silly. ;-)

Or start making your own, and then you'll lose your appetite for it.