Cheese substitute news caused a stir

Always, there’s lots of excitement at World Dairy Expo, and this year was no exception. However, there were some downers. Certainly, the past months of losses affected the attitudes of the dairy farmers attending the show. One aggravation was the group of ill-informed PETA activists who demonstrated at the entrance to the Expo grounds.

There also was grousing about a product designed to replace cheese in pizza. Word of that untimely news spread through the Expo grounds like flu through a middle school. It gave us all something else to worry about at a trying time for our industry.

Turns out, it was the “Texturing Solutions” division of Cargill in Belgium that had made the announcement in mid-September. That group has come up with a chemical concoction (there’s no other way to put it) that “replicates the functionally of dairy protein . . . at an outstanding cost advantage." The press release claimed the product (Lygomme) would cost a pizza maker 60 percent less than imitation cheese (15 percent dairy protein) and 200 percent less than real cheese. Just what we need, right?

One Hoard’s booth at Expo is across the aisle from Cargill Animal Nutrition. We felt sorry for our friends there, who had to have heard a lot of complaints about this new product developed by a different division of the giant company half a world away. They pointed out to us (and anyone else who would listen) that the new product is for the European market only at this point and that, in part, it is aimed at consumers with allergies to dairy proteins or are lactose intolerant.

We noted that in Europe the product appears to be positioned for the frozen pizza market. That perhaps gives a clue about its taste and mouth feel (or lack of it) on a fresh pizza. Plus, in a world paying more attention to the quality and source of its food, chemical cocktails such as that new replacement for cheese are going to hold less and less appeal.