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Stop Calling Vegan Food “Fake”
Vegan cheese is cheese. Vegan meat is meat. Let’s get on with it.
Michaela Grob posted a framed sign on the wall of Riverdel, her gourmet vegan cheese shop in Brooklyn, that both assuages the believers and challenges the doubters. It lists an ancient definition for the word “cheese” that traces back to its Indo-European root, which just meant “to ferment, become sour.”
The sign welcomes visitors into New York City’s first dedicated vegan cheese shop, which specializes in artisanal items like cashew truffle and macadamia-based fresh mozzarella, plus a sandwich counter with versions of deli favorites like bacon, egg and cheese and a McMuffin.
What you don’t find on the sign, or any description of her products, is the word “fake, as in, “fake cheese,” the oft-used shorthand way to refer to a plant-based alternative. “Fake” has been in the vegan nomenclature for years, dating back to the woeful era of frozen Boca burgers, pasty soy cheeses, fakin’ bacon and other foods that were were meant to be one-to-one imitations. Grob finds it a little offensive.
When we say “fake” elsewhere, we mean a tacky pretender: fake nails, fake blood, fake plastic trees, fake friends.
“It’s real cheese, with different products,” Grob said. “For me, fake is something you can’t eat, something you just look at; a fake wheel of plastic cheese or something like that.”
“Fake” is often also used as a derogatory term, a way to belittle plant-based products as “less than.” The word conjures images of over-processed lumps of imitation food, an uncanny valley full of soy. When we say “fake” elsewhere, we mean a tacky pretender: fake nails, fake blood, fake plastic trees, fake friends.
That’s why it’s long time to stop using it: the word annoys food makers who put hard work and craft into their products and it’s an outdated way to describe a food system that’s gone way past imitation into innovation. The food items labeled “fake” are often made of more “real,” whole foods…
