Somehow I missed this very funny story from 2016. A few months ago a woman had a rant about Sainsbury’s new vegan cheese on Facebook. In it she suggests “Gary” as a possible name for vegan cheese. Here’s the full rant:
Sainsbury’s responded with this:
Someone at Sainsbury’s has a sense of humour. It has certainly generated a lot of publicity for them.
It prompted me to buy some and I did a taste-test today. I bought the Wensleydale-style with cranberries.
It’s really tasty. The texture is creamy but not mushy. It’s slightly crumbly and with a tangy bite. Yum!
The sale of vegan food items have skyrocketed with a 1500% increase in the past year. It is becoming much easier to buy vegan things at mainstream supermarkets which is great news for me.
I’m not sure what people find upsetting about this. The Facebook rant which prompted the Gary jokes reminds me of those who have an irrational dislike of cyclists. I just want to reduce my impact on the environment and be kind to animals. Why does that send some people into such a rage?
rachel.blog 
That looks tasty. And such a funny story. I will go and find next time I am in Sainsbury’s.
I tend not to eat vegan cheeses – I’ve never been that into cheese. But this is a nice one and I’m planning to try some of the others in the range.
I remember you saying that vegan cheese is not that nice, but this one looked so good – the texture looked soft. Also I like anything with coconut in it.
That looks like cheese. Might have to give it a try. I tried some Quorn bacon recently though. That did not look or taste like bacon at all. I guess if it’s going to be an “X” substitute, it should probably look and taste a bit like “X”, otherwise you might as well just call it something else. Gary, for instance 😀
Sainsbury’s do a nice vegan bacon but get the frozen version. Don’t buy the refrigerated stuff.
I personally find it strange when people try to substitute vegan-incompatible products with something that looks and tastes like them. For me there’s this uncanny valley feeling when I eat something that should be product A, but it’s slightly different from product A in organoleptic qualities. If I ever go vegan, I’ll just eat whatever vegan people eat and never look back 🙂
And about the story: thanks for sharing, that’s hilarious. That kind of reminds me about that other story about a worm (was it a worm?) inside a cucumber sold in Tesco 🙂
Yes, I sometimes wonder whether selling something as “cheese” when it doesn’t contain any dairy does the product a disservice because the consumer is then expecting it to taste exactly like cheese. When expectations don’t match the flavour people are disappointed. But the other side to this is the food industry is becoming increasingly high tech now and some of the substitutes are amazing convincing. Examples are http://beyondmeat.com and http://www.impossiblefoods.com.