I did not know that some cheeses contain "animals parts" before, but I do now.
Last night when I was checking out at Trader Joe's purchasing my favorite cheese as a comfort after a stressful day, I was informed by the woman checking me out that my favorite Italian Truffle cheese is not vegetarian. She asked me if I still wanted it, and honestly I didn't totally believe her, so I put it in my bag.
I wanted to keep pretending I didn't know it was in there! Funny how that works sometimes.
Anyway, I went home and immediately looked up "rennet" which is the culprit ingredient.
I came to find out that most European specialty cheeses (my favorites!) are made traditionally with animal rennet.
What exactly is animal rennet?
Well, according to what I have read, it is the chopped up stomachs of still-nursing baby animals (cow, lamb, goat depending on the cheese) combined with a solution to concentrate the enzymes. The reason this works is because baby animals have special enzymes in their stomach to digest the milk of their mothers. This solution is used to coagulate milk, separating the curds and whey in the cheese making process.
Not all cheeses are made with animal rennet; most mass-produced cheese are instead coagulated with GMO-Microbial rennet. Great right?
So in actuality, the small, specialty farmers that are most likely using better farming practices are the ones using the animal rennet because it is the traditional and more expensive method.
Something else I noticed when I inspected the other cheese in my refridgerator (Laughing Cow Light wedges) was that rennet was not listed as an ingredient; however, whey is listed. Isn't whey seperated from the milk using some type of rennet though? How am I supposed to know what kind of rennet was used?
This pretty much led me to a "vegetarian crisis" - if I was eating baby animals stomachs, what was stopping me from getting in my car and driving to Chick-fil-a right then?
I talked to my mom about it for a long time because she is a vegetarian and cheese lover like me. We talked and talked and eventually it came down to the fact that we have no control over the ingredients in things we buy. We can try our best to be concious, but in the end, you just don't know.
She said maybe we could grow all our own food, but it would still be tainted because there is estrogen (and who knows what else) in our water supply and rain!
I am still really mulling this over, and I'm not totally sure how I feel about it. Honestly, I feel mostly scared about all the hidden ingredients in all foods!
Did you know there are animal parts in some cheeses?
8 comments:
Wow, I had no idea. I am not vegetarian but I don't eat dairy at all. I used to love cheese though. I mean love it.
wow, that really upsets me.
I'm a big cheese lover, especially European Cheese... I always get friends and family memebers to smuggle me back cheese from europe.
I didn't know that there could be animal parts in cheese.
I'm not vegetarian, but the idea that baby animal stomachs are in my cheese does not make me happy. :(
Christie, Claudia, and Carolyn - It's definitely upsetting and I didn't know - I don't think I ever read about it anywhere, so I thought I would let people know =/ I love cheese so much - its a sad day :(
Yes I did now that. But I think vegetarianism should not be all about eating no animals. Everytime you turn down meat it makes a difference. At some point we also just have to live, we are animals too after all. And I think there are better things you can do for the animals than avoid cheese. Give money to organizations, protect the environment they live in, rescuing animals in need etc. etc.
I really don't want yo make you feel any worse, but I think you have the right to know, maybe you already now... some wine and beer is not vegetarian either. It can contain fish bladder, bone parts, blood powder... SORRY! I just want to be honest.
Christina - I'm glad you are being honest, I didn't know that either. However, I did know that some sugars are made through bone char (from my vegan coworker).
I think its just important to be as educated as possible and with some foods I will never know if it has animal parts in it.
Now I cannot eat my favorite cheese without feeling guilty about baby cows, which is one of the reasons I became a vegetarian. So I probably won't eat that anymore and I will be more conscious of cheese (and other) labels in the future. Thank you for your honesty :)
Elle, I am so sorry that you feel that way now! It is hard enough to eat well without dealing with guilt. :(
But there is hope. We have the ability to produce most chemicals in a lab and I don't know why nobody simply creates the same enzymes in a a lab and makes cheese with them. But there is great progress with growing meat in a petri dish. This means that theoretically we would never have to rely on animals again for food. They also have the ability to make the meat healthier this way.
I know you can get vegan wine. Just do some research on the Internet about it. Probably the same with cheese.
Hope you will find a good way that works for you!
HUG
UGH ga-ross. I saw your tweet about this earlier and was like blech.
I didn't know animal parts could be in cheeses, but then again I never thought salmonella could end up in my veggie boullion cubes! That is the thing about food, you can try as hard as your can to be informed and make the right decisions, but like you say, you can only take that so far until things are out of your control. You learn something later about something you ate, you don't feel bad about it, just move on and try to avoid it in the future if you want.
have a great weekend girlie :)
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