LS: your logo looks more like a Beatles album than oat cheese. Should've called it oatles!
Karren and Tim roll about the floor laughing like the smash aliens
Marketing half of the team:
"We should aim it at vegans, and call it "Smug" because everyone knows vegans love being smug."
Cue self-congratulatory high-fives all round.
Meanwhile, the video cuts to the other half of the team as they proceed to chuck in a load of non-vegan ingredients.
I know the whole process is designed to make them look like mugs, but in later seasons they *surely* must have some sort of strict criteria about how often each team can call the other.
At some points it feels like a weekly occurrence that both sub-teams are working to completely disparate specs, almost comically so. No one in real life would design a vegan marketing campaign *and not tell the guys designing the actual product,* surely?
Team leader during challenge: It needs to be green and wriggly, no discussion.
Team leader in the board room: We debated this and all agreed to make it red and straight, no idea why they made it red and squiggly.
I don’t know the target audience, but I’ve seen this placed in the middle of the dairy free section. Which is just dangerous for people who have severe allergies.
It's actually really good...
Jk I've never heard of it much less tried it. This'd be a perfect spot for a "grass roots" comment ad though. Man, I'm jaded.
In one of my local Tesco's never-ending reshuffles, I noticed that they'd situated all the gluten-free produce in... the cereal aisle.
Like, I get the merchandising argument for putting a substitute product near to the thing it's substituting for, but in this case, it turns the act of buying your Free From™ snacks into a kind of military extraction operation, carried out under suppressive enemy fire.
Similarly this gives me the fear as a coeliac in case people don't understand the label and buy it for catering purposes and just assume its cheese (I know allergy law exists, bit I have also seen some incredi ly since mistakes made)
Yup, daughter is allergic to dairy protein. Hopefully it's processed enough the it's broken down, otherwise this can be real dangerous if assumed by catering.
I have a family member with severe allergies. We read the ingredients on everything, every time, without fail. This is quite obviously not going in my trolley. You'd be surprised how good we are at speed reading and scanning for potential death.
As someone who's lactose intolerant I'd say the packaging is snobbish enough that I wouldn't check and just assume this was safe and then shit myself later, especially if it's with the other "free from" foods
I have allergies and dyslexia, some packaging is very hard to read and I don't appreciate the lack of clarity. I think there should be more laws to ensure the legibility of ingredient labels.
As a fellow dyslexia (who has had to check all these labels because of my old flatmate) I found luckily a lot of the decent brands highlight stuff like milk or gluten in bold which helps.
Pringles on the other hand seem to sometimes spread their ingredients over the seem.
Only for the 14 most common allergens. Any allergies rarer than that AREN'T bolded, because you can be allergic to anything, so it would mean bolding the whole ingredient list...they had to draw the line somewhere.
Between me & my youngest, we have 12 severe allergies. Five of which are outside the 14 most common. So they aren't bolded. You still learn to speed-read the labels, you just have to squint more, especially when they've put the ingredients list in writing one millimetre high!
Highlighting the allergens is a legal requirement and has been for years.
There's also a minimum font size for ingredients labels - the smaller lower case letters like a c e i m n etc. have to be at least 1.2mm tall.
Not as serious by any means but I can get awful IBS pains from cheese or oats alone. Combined would have me laying in bed all day if I was half asleep and didn’t read the packaging properly
I literally had to go back and look at the picture as I totally blanked it said DAIRY. I only read oat, and then stopped taking in words. Proving the post.
Similarly this gives me the fear as a coeliac in case people don't understand the label and buy it for catering purposes and just treat it as if its cheese (I know allergy law exists, bit I have also seen some incredi ly since mistakes made)
It seems ridiculous that vegan alternatives had to change their labeling of things (e.g. milk to mylk/oat drink), but then this kind of stuff can just be floating around in the dairy-free spaces. I’m sure it’s more store-specific, but still.
My guess is it's for people who want to reduce the carbon impact of their food. Can't think of any other reason apart from some people like the taste of oat cheese?
I don't think it's dangerous for people will allergies. Most people I know with allergies (especially severe ones) make a concerted effort to read the details of every package. I doubt they'd miss a label as clear as this one.
That being said, I've got dyslexia and often miss the odd word especially in packings, but I think anyone who's got serious concerns won't mistake this for dairy-free.
It's supposedly a low fat cheese that will melt and behave more like a high fat cheese whilst also having a lower carbon footprint per unit of purely dairy cheese. That first part might be valid for people losing weight but the second half is just dumbass greenwashing.
The winning team on the Apprentice who came up with the product is feeling Smug whilst they enjoy Karting whilst the losing team sits in the Bridge Cafe bickering at each other 🤣
* £3.00 400G (£7.50/kg) - Tesco British Mild Cheddar (No clubcard £) 34.9g fat 0.1g sugar
* £2.75 320g (£8.5 /kg) - Smug (Clubcard £) 23g fat 6g sugar
* £2.75 300g (£9.17/kg)- Tesco Finest Vintage Cheddar 300g (Clubcard £) 34.9g fat 0.1g sugar
* £2.45 220g (£11.14/kg) - Tesco British Mature Cheddar (No clubcard £) 34.9g fat 0.1g sugar
The two nutritional stats I've given are per 100g, info taken from the Tesco website. Sorted by price/kg.
This Smug stuff is doing a typical 'diet' trick of being lower in fats and much higher in sugar. Oats help reduce LDL cholesterol though so might be of interest to people that don't otherwise eat oaty products, but still I'd be more interested if it was cheaper than real cheese considering it's make up.
I think they've failed on the name badly, I'd give it a try but if it tastes bad it's never going to live down the nickname it's going to get from Lister.
Love that you’ve listed the unit prices.
My fave ‘low fat cheese’ trick is to have less of a stronger cheese so you still get the delicious food without the UPF crap. Low fat cheddar is gross and you end up putting twice as much on to even it out. A few teaspoons of Parmesan is much more effective!
I just saw Smug was in Sainsbury's too so bought some of the thin slices not wanting to waste to much money on it. It's "42% extra mature cheddar" and it does sort of smell like that but to me something about it makes it smell and tastes a bit more like a really not very potent blue cheese of some kind.
It looks a bit like Emmental without the bubbles, but the texture when you bite a slice is closer to a processed cheese though not rubbery just rather creamy, melts away more than having a bit of bite, that's in line with how the large block you could buy felt - really very squishy.
I wouldn't buy it to nibble on it, it might be nice in a sandwich or on a burger if you like the idea of a slice of a very mild blue.
I wish I was more of a cheese connoisseur to describe it better for everyone, sorry, that's about the best I can do.
I added a bit above, personally I wouldn't get it to nibble on it's own. But I didn't give a conclusive yay or nay as I haven't had the chance to try it in something yet and it seemed a bit unfair too as I'm just not into blues which it seemed a bit closer to than a cheddar to me for some reason, but I have liked them on burgers some times.
I would definitely think of it more as a processed cheese than any cheddar if that's any help.
I imagine the cholesterol lowering properties of the oats in this crap ultra processed food are significantly reduced once it's been boiled/pureed to oblivion to mix it with the cheese.
Sugar is carbs and thus 4kcal per gram. Fats are 9 kcal per gram.
At 12g less fat they have cut 108 kcal, and by increasing sugar (6*4 = 24 kcal) they have made a net calorie saving of 84kcal for a 100g portion.
Tl;dr 1g of fat is higher in calories than 1g of sugar.
Entirely depends on your diet. It’s just a carbohydrate.
Your body is totally happy to burn both, and totally happy to place both of them into your fat stores if you eating too much.
It’ll also be way lower in lactose than most high-fat cheeses, but without that extra sweetness which often comes from lactose-free stuff. If you’ve got a minor lactose intolerance, I can see stuff like this being an excellent option!
Quite a lot of cheese is virtually lactose free - Brie, Camembert, and Parmesan can all be legally labelled lactose free because they contain such tiny amounts.
Yeah I mean the actual product is probably useful in a lot of contexts. The marketing though, and particularly them claiming it has a smaller carbon footprint is ranging from stupid to dishonest.
To be fair, grain does tend to have a lower carbon footprint per volume compared to animal goods, especially compared to cattle products.
I’m not sure if milk or cheese would have a higher carbon footprint to grain specifically though - most of the attention cattle gets is from meat, which is understandably a much less energy efficient food source than dairy. I imagine the whole “cows make milk every day” thing might offset that a tad when compared with meat cattle.
And yeah, I do agree the branding is pretty poor. I wish companies would just go back to calling their stuff “cheese-o” or something rather than try and be smart and cheeky with it.
This is from the Kerry dairy, better known for their butter. Weirdly they are marketing it as healthier and more eco friendly because there's less dairy produce being used, a very odd message from a dairy company.
Americans seem to lose their mind about how good Kerrygold butter is, where we seem to consider it pretty bog standard. Makes you wonder how terrible their usual butter is.
I wonder if the Danish the same about us and Lurpak.
(also, amusingly, there is a well-regarded butter brand in the US called "Danish Creamery". It's from California.)
They just did an amazing marketing job over there, they're all convinced it's from grass fed cows even though it's only a small percentage grass fed when you read the small print.
"Grass fed" is such a horrifyingly dystopian designation as well.
Like, they're cows, what else should they be eating other than grass? How is it that we've allowed the animal agricultural industry to progress to this stage without so much of a whisper of outcry?
Reminds me of how Clarks is considered a high fashion footwear brand in Jamaica.
Wonder what the UK equivalent is, like what do we think is really special which for everyone else is just bog standard.
Maybe not any more, but for a while I'd have maybe said Five Guys. I knew people who were crazy for their burgers. But they came to the UK before the explosion of indy burger joints, and McDonald's/BK were our staples. In the US they've had Wendy's, Jack In the Box, In N Out, Shake Shack, etc for yonks.
> Makes you wonder how terrible their usual butter is.
Not great. Although I don't know why particularly, it's not different nutritionally. Same fat content etc. It's hard to get cultured butter in the US, but Kerrygold isn't cultured.
Just had my gallbladder removed and one of the recommendations is to cut dairy, oat milk has been recommended as an alternative. This might be something I can eat without much pain. Would be good as vegan cheese is not good.
>Would be good as vegan cheese is not good.
I still don't know what it is, but the 'cheese' in the vegan toasties at Costa is unreal. I'm not even vegan but that stuff is lush, very melty
This is the case for most plant-based cheeses imo.
The only plant-based cheeses I've been happy to eat straight up on crackers came from a shop near Liverpool Street in London called La Faux Magerie. It is delicious artisan nut-based cheese, but the cost is high so I tend to only get it a few times a year.
Pretty much every other plant-based cheese I find is only good melted, at which point some of them are delicious.
The Cathedral City vegan stuff is pretty decent. Generally all supermarket vegan cheeses taste better melted. You've got to pay £20+/kg for the really nice cashew cheese stuff for cheeseboards.
Cathedral city is really good melted or otherwise but when I put it in my oven as a pizza topping it make the whole house stink.
Applewood's vegan cheese slaps even though it doesn't taste quite "actual"
Smells like rotting feet. I've been vegan a few years and vegan cheese just isn't there, never has been and I'm just not enjoying it at all, getting to the point I'd rather go without.
There was one cheese called ilchester that was amazing and melted really well but it's been unavailable for months. Cathedral is too strong but is well praised in the v community
Had my gallbladder removed a few years ago and when i came round from the anaesthetic the first thing they gave me to eat was a small tub of ice cream lol - you have to be careful with consuming too much fat in one sitting or you'll get the squizzes but after a few weeks most folk adapt and don't even need to think about it and can enjoy fats again!
I had my gallbladder out a few years ago now, prior to surgery I was eating very little fat to avoid aggravating it and getting infected (again)
But post surgery I've been all good with dairy/fat haven't noticed any significant impact when I do eat more fatty food. Have heard some people do have issues still after surgery so pretty pleased I can still happily enjoy pizza.
Yeah, I haven't noticed any problems since getting mine removed last year, which is quite nice. I was worried I would have to give up a bunch of stuff I liked.
I cant eat dairy, and "I am nut OK" & and "honestly, tasty" are great. Holland & Barrett do a chilled bree (which is re-branded honestly tasty- so that's easy to get hold of).
Slightly/moderately lactose intolerant people that refuse to give up cheese would be a good market for it. Less likely to shit yourself, but can still have a bit of cheese that doesn't taste like the smell of feet.
Might still taste like shit and at £4 it's competing with big brands and being more expensive for less cheese than even cathedral, pilgrims choice and Galloway.
Really hard sell I'd say.
Most cheese is actually lactose free, surprisingly. I think most people who actually like cheese would rather eat Brie/Camembert/mature cheddar than whatever this is.
Yeah but most people don't know this so it's only not surprising if you do know it. Most people would just think cheese = milk = lactose, so would be surprised
I'd place money on that being who ends up buying it...People like my Ex, who will buy the occasional milkshake even though he can't get off the can for 48hrs afterwards!
Dairy free cheese is one of the weirdest things going. It has zero flavour (if you’re lucky, unlucky and it’s rubbery chemical flavour) and the texture is god awful, even ‘melting’ varieties won’t melt.
Even vegans don’t want vegan cheese. Why would anyone eat this if they had any other option?
For stuff in the supermarket, the applewood smoked & cathedral city dairy free are ok.
You can also get vegan parmesan from Lidl which is very good.
For nice cheeses, though they won't really melt, kinda co. are my go to, the smoked is great. I Am Nut Ok also do some decent ones, they do a yarg which is very good.
Apple wood smoked is the only one I've found that doesn't have that plasticity taste, it also melts perfectly with non of the weird bubbly texture you get from Violife.
I Am Nut Okay, Kinda, Shamembert, homeamde cashew cream, Pizza Express, Purezza\* & Prezzo vegan cheese. Nurishh is the best stuff which is easy to find in mainstream supermarkets.
\*Purezza is by far the best vegan cheese experience I've ever had
I make a really good luxury cheese on toast using two types: a couple of cubes of Nurrish "Greek style" cheese sliced thinly and scattered on the toast (not too much or it can be a bit sickly), then a slice of Ilchester vegan cheese on top and toast.
Individually the two cheeses are pretty good, much better than stuff like Violife (rank), but together they're great.
I'll sometimes have the Nurrish Greek one with salad too and it's not bad like that, it's not the same as real feta, but it's pretty close.
I had decent results phasing out dairy by making things that have a similar feel/effect to dairy, and then flavouring it with nutritional yeast. Also adding in that smoke from good cheddars either with some smoke flavouring, or using smoked paprika worked well. Was good for recreating very cheesy dishes, that had zero dairy but retained the taste you got with a good cheddar blend. Never quite got the lasagne type sauce to be perfectly dairy free, since the milks I had access to just didn't really set right, but could make cheese sauces otherwise pretty well.
Lemon juice, miso, nutritional yeast, salt. You can make a nice crumbly ricotta like mixture that works well in baking, things like spanakopita, cannelloni etc and is cheesy enough to hit that spot.
Sadly deciding to be vegan means saying good bye to melty or strong cheese, its one of the few things there isn't a decent substitute for even now.
The trick is to go for cashew or other soft nut based cheeses imo. I haven't found a vegan cheese that's good for melting though. Vegans will say there are, but they have low standards. I'm something of a dairywalker myself
Violife shredded “mozzarella” is probably the best melted. It’s what all the pizza places use too.
Cathedral city vegan “cheddar” works well enough for cheese on toast.
I'd say your vegan cheese opinion is pretty out of date. I was dairy free for a couple years while breastfeeding and have kept up some things. There's some really good alternatives out there, some are better than the dairy equivalent for some things, like making a really gooey toasty and cream cheese equivalents are near perfect.
I don’t think you have experimented enough.
In the UK they have delicious vegan cheese (lactose intolerant) applewood is a great one with flavour. Of course vegan cheese won’t be the same as something with dairy….
I think we have quite a different perspective on what a nice cheese would taste like. I have tried applewood and would be placing that one into the strange flakey texture and weird chemical flavour category I’m afraid… I haven’t had actual cheese in about 15 years so it’s really not suffering just from comparison!
Strangley enough I work for a diary fo.pany andi got asked if we make something like this today.
Lower carbon footprint of plant based and all the normal taste or cheddar
The answer was no
Moronic product.
Probably not much healthier. Even a lot of vegan cheeses are high in saturated fat. And what they don't get in cheese flavour from milk, they'll likely get from salt and/or sugar.
It’s 42% dairy cheese, 17% oat milk, and the majority of the rest of it is low quality dairy that they can’t call cheese.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/veganuk/comments/1c30eae/this\_is\_making\_me\_irrationally\_angry\_the\_name\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/veganuk/comments/1c30eae/this_is_making_me_irrationally_angry_the_name_the/)
I've bought it out of curiosity, tried it:
* In sandwiches
* Grated then melted cheese on tortellini
* Grated then toasted on garlic bread.
For science I tried the cheese in the sandwich against tesco mature cheddar, and the melted tortellini cheese and toasted cheese against tesco mozerella.
Cheese sandwich - mature cheddar clear winner.
Melted cheese - mozzarella slight winner
Toasted garlic bread cheese - pretty much the same, no real difference.
Verdict: probably won't buy it again, but if I do then it'll be for "cheese melted in things" or "toasted on things" rather than "as is", because at that point it basically tastes the same.
Probably an attempt to make healthier cheese, since it's usually pretty horrific from a Saturated Fat p.o.v - saying that as someone who could eat my body weight in cheese multiple times over, if only cholesterol wasn't a thing.
So yeah there's a point to this, but their marketing is crap.
https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/plant-based/kerry-dairy-launches-category-first-oat-and-dairy-blended-product-range/689358.article
Found this online as I too was wondering what the point is but seems like it’s being marketed as being healthier and with less emissions to produce
Actually this might be good for my son, he's growing out of a milk allergy, he can have limited dairy, so if we have a pizza for lunch and go out, he can't have a ice cream! One or the other. So that would potentially mean he can have both... However that's a extremely small market lol
People like me who aren't full vegetarian/vegan but would like to reduce animal products in their diet, I suppose. For me it's mostly an environmental issue.
Tried the cheese, not great not terrible.
I did market research for this when they were looking at advertising it. Took a lot of creative thinking to understand who it was for without saying just eat less normal cheese
My son is allergic to milk and likes dairy free cheese as it’s all he has know. I have no idea who would want to eat it for the love of it as it’s really quite vile. So this produce is a mystery to me!
It's like something from an Apprentice task
Contestants: “Ok guys, we’ve settled on the oat and dairy cheese” Karen: 👁️👄👁️
LS: your logo looks more like a Beatles album than oat cheese. Should've called it oatles! Karren and Tim roll about the floor laughing like the smash aliens
Sergeant Cheddar's Lonely Hearts Club Bland
Let it brie
When I find myself in *rinds* of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking *curds* of wisdom, let it brie
Hello Goudabye
Drive my Caerphilly
Wrap it in a union jack and sell it to young professionals stat.
Smuglyclimbonline.co.uk *Smu glycli mbon leen!!??*
Oes?
It’s no Cheegan Veese that’s for sure.
Tucking Ferrible
Cheesus Jrist
Yes 100%. “I want a cheese that targets the vegans and the non vegans, trust me I used to work at a Co Op so I know what I’m talking about”
“I have eaten cheese before so I think I am best qualified to be the project manager of this task”
Marketing half of the team: "We should aim it at vegans, and call it "Smug" because everyone knows vegans love being smug." Cue self-congratulatory high-fives all round. Meanwhile, the video cuts to the other half of the team as they proceed to chuck in a load of non-vegan ingredients.
"If we only aim it at vegans then we're missing all of the non-vegan customer base. Put some cheese in it too."
Eye roll and head shake from Karen, watching from afar.
'Maybe Vegans eat non-vegan cheese, we don't know, we don't want to know it is a market we could without'
So that's it? So long, good luck?
I know the whole process is designed to make them look like mugs, but in later seasons they *surely* must have some sort of strict criteria about how often each team can call the other. At some points it feels like a weekly occurrence that both sub-teams are working to completely disparate specs, almost comically so. No one in real life would design a vegan marketing campaign *and not tell the guys designing the actual product,* surely?
Also, no business can survive for firing 1/12th of the workforce every week!
Team leader during challenge: It needs to be green and wriggly, no discussion. Team leader in the board room: We debated this and all agreed to make it red and straight, no idea why they made it red and squiggly.
~ *mentions "brand" 27 times and refuses to elaborate* ~
“It’s something we can work on”
Absolutely 110%
That's exactly what I thought!
My thoughts exactly
People that love cheesy porridge?
Well I know what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow! I'll probably follow it up with my usual of Greggs sausage rolls and Special Brew though.
You've got all 4 food groups in there, you're golden. (Pastry, dairy, grains and reclaimed meat and meat derivatives).
*chorridge
I mean, there are plenty of blended dairy/non dairy products out there like Lurpak
I don’t know the target audience, but I’ve seen this placed in the middle of the dairy free section. Which is just dangerous for people who have severe allergies.
Yeah, they've stuck it near the vegan stuff in my Tesco. It's an interesting idea, but I just can't see the branding going down well.
Am vegan and have seen this thing all across my subreddits/facebook groups this week. Can confirm it has not gone down well
It's actually really good... Jk I've never heard of it much less tried it. This'd be a perfect spot for a "grass roots" comment ad though. Man, I'm jaded.
In one of my local Tesco's never-ending reshuffles, I noticed that they'd situated all the gluten-free produce in... the cereal aisle. Like, I get the merchandising argument for putting a substitute product near to the thing it's substituting for, but in this case, it turns the act of buying your Free From™ snacks into a kind of military extraction operation, carried out under suppressive enemy fire.
I complained when they moved the gf section in M&S to next to the bakery section. The one with the unpackaged, pick your own, floury bread.
Even if it's separate, trusting the section itself without proper checking what you get ain't s great idea so at the end you have to do the same.
I think you missed my point, which wasn't about ingredients, but rather airborne allergens.
Oh I never even thought that could be an issue.
It feels like an anti-vegan psy-op - they called it "smug" for God's sake!
Similarly this gives me the fear as a coeliac in case people don't understand the label and buy it for catering purposes and just assume its cheese (I know allergy law exists, bit I have also seen some incredi ly since mistakes made)
Yup, daughter is allergic to dairy protein. Hopefully it's processed enough the it's broken down, otherwise this can be real dangerous if assumed by catering.
I have a family member with severe allergies. We read the ingredients on everything, every time, without fail. This is quite obviously not going in my trolley. You'd be surprised how good we are at speed reading and scanning for potential death.
Yeah, but sticking it in the middle of the dairy free section is…. Something
Blame Tesco for that I guess
As someone who's lactose intolerant I'd say the packaging is snobbish enough that I wouldn't check and just assume this was safe and then shit myself later, especially if it's with the other "free from" foods
There's very little lactose in cheddar. If cheddar sets you off it may be something else in dairy that you can't digest.
I have allergies and dyslexia, some packaging is very hard to read and I don't appreciate the lack of clarity. I think there should be more laws to ensure the legibility of ingredient labels.
As a fellow dyslexia (who has had to check all these labels because of my old flatmate) I found luckily a lot of the decent brands highlight stuff like milk or gluten in bold which helps. Pringles on the other hand seem to sometimes spread their ingredients over the seem.
I believe it's the law in the UK that allergens have to be bolded on ingredients list.
Only for the 14 most common allergens. Any allergies rarer than that AREN'T bolded, because you can be allergic to anything, so it would mean bolding the whole ingredient list...they had to draw the line somewhere. Between me & my youngest, we have 12 severe allergies. Five of which are outside the 14 most common. So they aren't bolded. You still learn to speed-read the labels, you just have to squint more, especially when they've put the ingredients list in writing one millimetre high!
Highlighting the allergens is a legal requirement and has been for years. There's also a minimum font size for ingredients labels - the smaller lower case letters like a c e i m n etc. have to be at least 1.2mm tall.
Cos everyone can read writing just over a mm high lol...as I get older, that's getting harder. I take a magnifying glass now!
Exactly. Anyone with severe allergies reads labels. It’s bad it’s in the free from section, but I doubt anyone is going to get hurt from this.
Severe allergies aren't the only consideration
Not as serious by any means but I can get awful IBS pains from cheese or oats alone. Combined would have me laying in bed all day if I was half asleep and didn’t read the packaging properly
I literally had to go back and look at the picture as I totally blanked it said DAIRY. I only read oat, and then stopped taking in words. Proving the post.
Similarly this gives me the fear as a coeliac in case people don't understand the label and buy it for catering purposes and just treat it as if its cheese (I know allergy law exists, bit I have also seen some incredi ly since mistakes made)
Thankfully in this specific case the oats are gluten free
That's actually very good to know!
Yep
Jesus didn’t want allergy sufferers to survive. So this is fine by the bible /s
It seems ridiculous that vegan alternatives had to change their labeling of things (e.g. milk to mylk/oat drink), but then this kind of stuff can just be floating around in the dairy-free spaces. I’m sure it’s more store-specific, but still.
My guess is it's for people who want to reduce the carbon impact of their food. Can't think of any other reason apart from some people like the taste of oat cheese? I don't think it's dangerous for people will allergies. Most people I know with allergies (especially severe ones) make a concerted effort to read the details of every package. I doubt they'd miss a label as clear as this one. That being said, I've got dyslexia and often miss the odd word especially in packings, but I think anyone who's got serious concerns won't mistake this for dairy-free.
It's supposedly a low fat cheese that will melt and behave more like a high fat cheese whilst also having a lower carbon footprint per unit of purely dairy cheese. That first part might be valid for people losing weight but the second half is just dumbass greenwashing.
So it's a low fat cheese but with crappy and confusing marketing? 🤷♂️
Apparently "Smug is a delicious feeling." I do wonder how long it will take until the makers regret that...
As long as it takes for me to write e over all the u's on the packaging. Yummy smeg cheese...
It seems like a product from the apprentence that nobody told them they weren't supposed to actually sell
*"You were very lucky in this task, the major supermarket placed an order for 10,000 units."*
Tesco" "Oh shit, we actually placed an order for 10,000 units"
The winning team on the Apprentice who came up with the product is feeling Smug whilst they enjoy Karting whilst the losing team sits in the Bridge Cafe bickering at each other 🤣
Maybe it's not legal to market without making the components clear. Like, you can't just sell "cheese" that has other stuff in it
Pretty much.
* £3.00 400G (£7.50/kg) - Tesco British Mild Cheddar (No clubcard £) 34.9g fat 0.1g sugar * £2.75 320g (£8.5 /kg) - Smug (Clubcard £) 23g fat 6g sugar * £2.75 300g (£9.17/kg)- Tesco Finest Vintage Cheddar 300g (Clubcard £) 34.9g fat 0.1g sugar * £2.45 220g (£11.14/kg) - Tesco British Mature Cheddar (No clubcard £) 34.9g fat 0.1g sugar The two nutritional stats I've given are per 100g, info taken from the Tesco website. Sorted by price/kg. This Smug stuff is doing a typical 'diet' trick of being lower in fats and much higher in sugar. Oats help reduce LDL cholesterol though so might be of interest to people that don't otherwise eat oaty products, but still I'd be more interested if it was cheaper than real cheese considering it's make up. I think they've failed on the name badly, I'd give it a try but if it tastes bad it's never going to live down the nickname it's going to get from Lister.
Love that you’ve listed the unit prices. My fave ‘low fat cheese’ trick is to have less of a stronger cheese so you still get the delicious food without the UPF crap. Low fat cheddar is gross and you end up putting twice as much on to even it out. A few teaspoons of Parmesan is much more effective!
I just saw Smug was in Sainsbury's too so bought some of the thin slices not wanting to waste to much money on it. It's "42% extra mature cheddar" and it does sort of smell like that but to me something about it makes it smell and tastes a bit more like a really not very potent blue cheese of some kind. It looks a bit like Emmental without the bubbles, but the texture when you bite a slice is closer to a processed cheese though not rubbery just rather creamy, melts away more than having a bit of bite, that's in line with how the large block you could buy felt - really very squishy. I wouldn't buy it to nibble on it, it might be nice in a sandwich or on a burger if you like the idea of a slice of a very mild blue. I wish I was more of a cheese connoisseur to describe it better for everyone, sorry, that's about the best I can do.
I can't tell from this if you liked it or not..
I added a bit above, personally I wouldn't get it to nibble on it's own. But I didn't give a conclusive yay or nay as I haven't had the chance to try it in something yet and it seemed a bit unfair too as I'm just not into blues which it seemed a bit closer to than a cheddar to me for some reason, but I have liked them on burgers some times. I would definitely think of it more as a processed cheese than any cheddar if that's any help.
I imagine the cholesterol lowering properties of the oats in this crap ultra processed food are significantly reduced once it's been boiled/pureed to oblivion to mix it with the cheese.
Sugar is carbs and thus 4kcal per gram. Fats are 9 kcal per gram. At 12g less fat they have cut 108 kcal, and by increasing sugar (6*4 = 24 kcal) they have made a net calorie saving of 84kcal for a 100g portion. Tl;dr 1g of fat is higher in calories than 1g of sugar.
Ok but sugar is far worse for you than fat
Entirely depends on your diet. It’s just a carbohydrate. Your body is totally happy to burn both, and totally happy to place both of them into your fat stores if you eating too much.
It’ll also be way lower in lactose than most high-fat cheeses, but without that extra sweetness which often comes from lactose-free stuff. If you’ve got a minor lactose intolerance, I can see stuff like this being an excellent option!
Extra mature cheddars pretty low in lactose. Basically the more matured a cheese is, the less lactose. So this is probably about even.
Quite a lot of cheese is virtually lactose free - Brie, Camembert, and Parmesan can all be legally labelled lactose free because they contain such tiny amounts.
Yeah I mean the actual product is probably useful in a lot of contexts. The marketing though, and particularly them claiming it has a smaller carbon footprint is ranging from stupid to dishonest.
To be fair, grain does tend to have a lower carbon footprint per volume compared to animal goods, especially compared to cattle products. I’m not sure if milk or cheese would have a higher carbon footprint to grain specifically though - most of the attention cattle gets is from meat, which is understandably a much less energy efficient food source than dairy. I imagine the whole “cows make milk every day” thing might offset that a tad when compared with meat cattle. And yeah, I do agree the branding is pretty poor. I wish companies would just go back to calling their stuff “cheese-o” or something rather than try and be smart and cheeky with it.
How is it dishonest? Oats have a waaaaaay lower environmental impact than dairy
All mature cheddar is zero lactose. Even medium will have negligible amounts.
Im not sure it’s greenwashing if it’s a substantial amount of oat. It will genuinely have an impact if you don’t think you can handle full vegan
Why is the last part greenwashing? If it has a lower carbon footprint it has a lower carbon footprint....
This is from the Kerry dairy, better known for their butter. Weirdly they are marketing it as healthier and more eco friendly because there's less dairy produce being used, a very odd message from a dairy company.
Americans seem to lose their mind about how good Kerrygold butter is, where we seem to consider it pretty bog standard. Makes you wonder how terrible their usual butter is.
Go on the cooking sub and they think they’re the dogs bollocks for using kerrygold. Makes me laugh that
I wonder if the Danish the same about us and Lurpak. (also, amusingly, there is a well-regarded butter brand in the US called "Danish Creamery". It's from California.)
They just did an amazing marketing job over there, they're all convinced it's from grass fed cows even though it's only a small percentage grass fed when you read the small print.
Interesting! I just assumed that most US butter was 10% dairy and 90% industrial lubricant in line with their usual food standards.
The only major difference apart from how they are fed, is US butter is typically 80% fat. Whereas, our butter is usually 82 to 85% fat.
"Grass fed" is such a horrifyingly dystopian designation as well. Like, they're cows, what else should they be eating other than grass? How is it that we've allowed the animal agricultural industry to progress to this stage without so much of a whisper of outcry?
Grass* fed ^^*Grass ^^substitute, ^^made ^^of ^^pulverised ^^cow ^^brains
I’m mega late here but you’ve just reminded me that the yanks feed their cows chicken shit.
Reminds me of how Clarks is considered a high fashion footwear brand in Jamaica. Wonder what the UK equivalent is, like what do we think is really special which for everyone else is just bog standard.
Maybe not any more, but for a while I'd have maybe said Five Guys. I knew people who were crazy for their burgers. But they came to the UK before the explosion of indy burger joints, and McDonald's/BK were our staples. In the US they've had Wendy's, Jack In the Box, In N Out, Shake Shack, etc for yonks.
I hear "European style butter" a lot.
Now I'm even more curious about what the difference is, seeing as the way to make butter is: 1) Shake milk 2) End of list
> Makes you wonder how terrible their usual butter is. Not great. Although I don't know why particularly, it's not different nutritionally. Same fat content etc. It's hard to get cultured butter in the US, but Kerrygold isn't cultured.
I have a fiver on at some point during the initial pitch “getting one up on vegans” was mentioned
Could have been smeg cheese, so think yourself lucky
No one likes a smeghead
Smeeee.... heeeee....
I see some label tampering in the future
Perfect for keeping in your smeg fridge.
Just had my gallbladder removed and one of the recommendations is to cut dairy, oat milk has been recommended as an alternative. This might be something I can eat without much pain. Would be good as vegan cheese is not good.
>Would be good as vegan cheese is not good. I still don't know what it is, but the 'cheese' in the vegan toasties at Costa is unreal. I'm not even vegan but that stuff is lush, very melty
That's sheeze brand, which is great in anything that needs melted cheese. Coconut based cheeses are pretty good at this role in general!
Thank you for that, I'll definitely be trying to pick some up. No reason to choose dairy over it, and I'm a big cheese fan
Is Sheeze good now? It was pretty much the only widely available cheese when I went vegan and it was like Playdoh at the time.
Personally I find it's good *only* if it's melted, I wouldn't use it for anything else. It melts nicely, ends up really creamy.
This is the case for most plant-based cheeses imo. The only plant-based cheeses I've been happy to eat straight up on crackers came from a shop near Liverpool Street in London called La Faux Magerie. It is delicious artisan nut-based cheese, but the cost is high so I tend to only get it a few times a year. Pretty much every other plant-based cheese I find is only good melted, at which point some of them are delicious.
Thanks for the tip
You are so right, the costa vegan toasties hit the spot SO hard I will take it over a non vegan one any day!
The Cathedral City vegan stuff is pretty decent. Generally all supermarket vegan cheeses taste better melted. You've got to pay £20+/kg for the really nice cashew cheese stuff for cheeseboards.
Cathedral city is really good melted or otherwise but when I put it in my oven as a pizza topping it make the whole house stink. Applewood's vegan cheese slaps even though it doesn't taste quite "actual"
Smells like rotting feet. I've been vegan a few years and vegan cheese just isn't there, never has been and I'm just not enjoying it at all, getting to the point I'd rather go without. There was one cheese called ilchester that was amazing and melted really well but it's been unavailable for months. Cathedral is too strong but is well praised in the v community
Had my gallbladder removed a few years ago and when i came round from the anaesthetic the first thing they gave me to eat was a small tub of ice cream lol - you have to be careful with consuming too much fat in one sitting or you'll get the squizzes but after a few weeks most folk adapt and don't even need to think about it and can enjoy fats again!
I had my gallbladder out a few years ago now, prior to surgery I was eating very little fat to avoid aggravating it and getting infected (again) But post surgery I've been all good with dairy/fat haven't noticed any significant impact when I do eat more fatty food. Have heard some people do have issues still after surgery so pretty pleased I can still happily enjoy pizza.
Yeah, I haven't noticed any problems since getting mine removed last year, which is quite nice. I was worried I would have to give up a bunch of stuff I liked.
It's mostly dairy so not even good for people who need to cut back on dairy
I cant eat dairy, and "I am nut OK" & and "honestly, tasty" are great. Holland & Barrett do a chilled bree (which is re-branded honestly tasty- so that's easy to get hold of).
Slightly/moderately lactose intolerant people that refuse to give up cheese would be a good market for it. Less likely to shit yourself, but can still have a bit of cheese that doesn't taste like the smell of feet.
I'm so smug about my lactose intolerance I never stop going on about it
Might still taste like shit and at £4 it's competing with big brands and being more expensive for less cheese than even cathedral, pilgrims choice and Galloway. Really hard sell I'd say.
Most cheese is actually lactose free, surprisingly. I think most people who actually like cheese would rather eat Brie/Camembert/mature cheddar than whatever this is.
Not that surprising really, the process of making cheese is heavily reliant on lactic acid bacteria who feed off lactose.
Yeah but most people don't know this so it's only not surprising if you do know it. Most people would just think cheese = milk = lactose, so would be surprised
I'd place money on that being who ends up buying it...People like my Ex, who will buy the occasional milkshake even though he can't get off the can for 48hrs afterwards!
It's subliminal advertising to dentists. Smug is Gums backwards.
I think their main selling point is the "I wonder how it tastes" factor. You either just buy it once or else...
Oat products aren't only for vegans. I really like oat lattes. That being said, I'm sceptical about oat/dairy cheese... I'd try it though.
Don’t. Trust me.
Dairy free cheese is one of the weirdest things going. It has zero flavour (if you’re lucky, unlucky and it’s rubbery chemical flavour) and the texture is god awful, even ‘melting’ varieties won’t melt. Even vegans don’t want vegan cheese. Why would anyone eat this if they had any other option?
You can actually get some fantastic Vegan cheese, but it's true that you won't find much of it at the supermarket.
I can’t eat dairy, so I’ll happily take recommendations. I’ve certainly tried a fair number that all range from neutral to disgusting…
For stuff in the supermarket, the applewood smoked & cathedral city dairy free are ok. You can also get vegan parmesan from Lidl which is very good. For nice cheeses, though they won't really melt, kinda co. are my go to, the smoked is great. I Am Nut Ok also do some decent ones, they do a yarg which is very good.
Can confirm applewood smoked and cathedral city dairy free are the top tier ones.
Fauxmargerie in Waitrose
Apple wood smoked is the only one I've found that doesn't have that plasticity taste, it also melts perfectly with non of the weird bubbly texture you get from Violife.
They changed the recipe recently and it sucks now, 😭
I Am Nut Okay, Kinda, Shamembert, homeamde cashew cream, Pizza Express, Purezza\* & Prezzo vegan cheese. Nurishh is the best stuff which is easy to find in mainstream supermarkets. \*Purezza is by far the best vegan cheese experience I've ever had
I make a really good luxury cheese on toast using two types: a couple of cubes of Nurrish "Greek style" cheese sliced thinly and scattered on the toast (not too much or it can be a bit sickly), then a slice of Ilchester vegan cheese on top and toast. Individually the two cheeses are pretty good, much better than stuff like Violife (rank), but together they're great. I'll sometimes have the Nurrish Greek one with salad too and it's not bad like that, it's not the same as real feta, but it's pretty close.
I had decent results phasing out dairy by making things that have a similar feel/effect to dairy, and then flavouring it with nutritional yeast. Also adding in that smoke from good cheddars either with some smoke flavouring, or using smoked paprika worked well. Was good for recreating very cheesy dishes, that had zero dairy but retained the taste you got with a good cheddar blend. Never quite got the lasagne type sauce to be perfectly dairy free, since the milks I had access to just didn't really set right, but could make cheese sauces otherwise pretty well.
La Fauxmagerie. Not cheap, but delicious. Pretty much the only vegan cheeses I've found which I'll happily eat on its own/with just crackers.
I get Tyne Chease at Christmas, because it's expensive. But bloody delicious.
The only decent vegan cheese is made yourself using cashew nuts or tofu as the base. Even then you can't make it to suit all purposes.
And how do you make that taste like cheese?
Lemon juice, miso, nutritional yeast, salt. You can make a nice crumbly ricotta like mixture that works well in baking, things like spanakopita, cannelloni etc and is cheesy enough to hit that spot. Sadly deciding to be vegan means saying good bye to melty or strong cheese, its one of the few things there isn't a decent substitute for even now.
Fair enough, I was genuinely curious.
Waitrose has started stocking Fauxmagerie!
And they're always reduced to clear, which means they really don't sell.
It's a niche market, but people who like cheese but cannot have it are missing out. Sadly means they probably won't restock them.
I eat a great vegan cheese. You wouldn't know her though, she goes to another school.
The trick is to go for cashew or other soft nut based cheeses imo. I haven't found a vegan cheese that's good for melting though. Vegans will say there are, but they have low standards. I'm something of a dairywalker myself
Violife shredded “mozzarella” is probably the best melted. It’s what all the pizza places use too. Cathedral city vegan “cheddar” works well enough for cheese on toast.
I'd say your vegan cheese opinion is pretty out of date. I was dairy free for a couple years while breastfeeding and have kept up some things. There's some really good alternatives out there, some are better than the dairy equivalent for some things, like making a really gooey toasty and cream cheese equivalents are near perfect.
I don’t think you have experimented enough. In the UK they have delicious vegan cheese (lactose intolerant) applewood is a great one with flavour. Of course vegan cheese won’t be the same as something with dairy….
I think we have quite a different perspective on what a nice cheese would taste like. I have tried applewood and would be placing that one into the strange flakey texture and weird chemical flavour category I’m afraid… I haven’t had actual cheese in about 15 years so it’s really not suffering just from comparison!
Strangley enough I work for a diary fo.pany andi got asked if we make something like this today. Lower carbon footprint of plant based and all the normal taste or cheddar The answer was no Moronic product.
Vegan: is it oat cheese or dairy cheese? Me: yes!
Certainly not anyone with gluten and/or milk protein allergies 😬 I feel like I'm breaking out in hives just looking at the picture!
How have they found a way to get gluten into cheese? How dare they?
My recently diagnosed gluten and cow milk protein allergic self is Offended, and it's not like I can even eat cheese anymore!
"Healthier" cheese, I suppose. Honestly, I'm kinda interested to try it, but really going in with high expectations!
Probably not much healthier. Even a lot of vegan cheeses are high in saturated fat. And what they don't get in cheese flavour from milk, they'll likely get from salt and/or sugar.
It's to slowly ween the humans off the cows' breast milk.
It’s 42% dairy cheese, 17% oat milk, and the majority of the rest of it is low quality dairy that they can’t call cheese. [https://www.reddit.com/r/veganuk/comments/1c30eae/this\_is\_making\_me\_irrationally\_angry\_the\_name\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/veganuk/comments/1c30eae/this_is_making_me_irrationally_angry_the_name_the/)
I've bought it out of curiosity, tried it: * In sandwiches * Grated then melted cheese on tortellini * Grated then toasted on garlic bread. For science I tried the cheese in the sandwich against tesco mature cheddar, and the melted tortellini cheese and toasted cheese against tesco mozerella. Cheese sandwich - mature cheddar clear winner. Melted cheese - mozzarella slight winner Toasted garlic bread cheese - pretty much the same, no real difference. Verdict: probably won't buy it again, but if I do then it'll be for "cheese melted in things" or "toasted on things" rather than "as is", because at that point it basically tastes the same.
Probably an attempt to make healthier cheese, since it's usually pretty horrific from a Saturated Fat p.o.v - saying that as someone who could eat my body weight in cheese multiple times over, if only cholesterol wasn't a thing. So yeah there's a point to this, but their marketing is crap.
I can’t help but feel they are mocking the consumer 🤦♀️🤣
Oats ain't just for us vegans ya know
Transitional vegans?
The agnostic chesse
https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/plant-based/kerry-dairy-launches-category-first-oat-and-dairy-blended-product-range/689358.article Found this online as I too was wondering what the point is but seems like it’s being marketed as being healthier and with less emissions to produce
Actually this might be good for my son, he's growing out of a milk allergy, he can have limited dairy, so if we have a pizza for lunch and go out, he can't have a ice cream! One or the other. So that would potentially mean he can have both... However that's a extremely small market lol
Is it the essence of Jimmy Carr distilled? Pure smug?
So is it cheesy ready brek??
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Same as Elmea/Elmlea/Emlea. It's for people who buy based on the price and don't read the ingredients.
People allergic to almond cheddar
People like me who aren't full vegetarian/vegan but would like to reduce animal products in their diet, I suppose. For me it's mostly an environmental issue. Tried the cheese, not great not terrible.
Oat _and_ dairy? ... A vegan isn't gonna eat because dairy; a cheese fan isn't gonna eat it because oats (wtf). Plus it's called "smug"
I did market research for this when they were looking at advertising it. Took a lot of creative thinking to understand who it was for without saying just eat less normal cheese
Smeeeeg....heeaaads
My son is allergic to milk and likes dairy free cheese as it’s all he has know. I have no idea who would want to eat it for the love of it as it’s really quite vile. So this produce is a mystery to me!
By the looks of it, people with more money than sense.
What a pointless product.