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Sunday, November 11, 2007

Cream Cheese Alternative

Jane and I read labels now, religiously. Adopting a vegan diet has ensured that we read labels because who knows what they're sneaking into your food! The thing that makes me most insane is the milk product in most soy cheeses. If you're not manufacturing a dairy based cheese, why would you put in a dairy product, thereby alienating a good portion of your consumers!?!

After a while you "know" certain products are ok to eat. Somehow or another, we thought Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese was one of those, but as I was eating my "bagel with a schmear" (NY speak for bagel with cream cheese) for breakfast this weekend, I read over the list of ingredients.

  • Water
  • PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN OIL
  • Isolated soy protein
  • Maltodextrin
  • Tofu....
GRRRR! We have three containers in the fridge. We love this stuff. It's the container on the left in the photo above.

However, we were able to find "good" tofutti cream cheese at Whole Foods (container on the right in the photo above). The ingredient list reads as follows:
  • Water
  • Expeller pressed natural oil blend (soybean, palm fruit, and olive)
  • Maltodextrin
  • Soy protein
  • Tofu...

Now, we just have to get our local Trader Joe's to carry the good stuff. Since they tend to advocate healthy eating it shouldn't be too much of a challenge.

If you eat Tofutti Cream Cheese, the "good" product is in a yellow/white container versus the blue/white container the "bad" stuff comes in, an it says "non-hydrogenated" on the lid.

Live long, eat healthy!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I did a similar post on Tofutti and even though the alternative contains no trans fats it still has saturated fat which to me is just as bad. Do you think it's much to be concerned with?

The Fast Lane said...

Hi Angela,
First let me say, I'm not a nutritionist... Cream cheese in it's traditional form is a "fat."
Tofutti's regular Better Than Cream Cheese has 2 grams of saturated fat. I'm willing to have an additional .5 grams of saturated fat per serving (the non-hydrogenated version has 2.5 grams sat. fat) and avoid the trans fats entirely. It's my (laypersons) understanding that trans fats are much worse for us than saturated fat.
Finally, you have to eat something :-)