Follow Your Heart, the makers of Vegan Gourmet cheese, have really outdone themselves this time with their new vegan cheese. It's a bit confusing because they will continue to offer the Vegan Gourmet blocks and shreds, but have now introduced this new line of cheeses as well.
What I like about them is that they taste just like the dairy cheese I enjoyed as a child. My favorite one by far was the Garden Herb block. I sliced this up and served it with some crackers. It has a great herby taste to it and is perfect to eat right out of the package.
The same can really be said for all of them. They make the Provolone flavor in a tiny package so you can eat the cheese as a snack. This one was great too.
With the American slices, I really wanted to make a grilled cheese -- so, I did. But, afterwards, I thought that was a mistake because while these slices are awesome on sandwiches cold, I didn't think they tasted as good when heated and didn't melt well either. So, use them in your vegan cold cut sub, but not in your grilled cheese.
Alright, so nutrition-wise, let's take a look at the Garden Herb flavor. It has 4.5 grams of fat in one slice, which seems a bit high and 180 grams of sodium (8%). It is made of coconut oil, modified food starch, potato starch, sea salt, thyme, oregano, natural flavor, olive extract, and beta carotene. It isn't a great ingredient list, but could be worse. I'm not a huge fan of modified food starch or of natural flavor as you never know what that means. They state they are non-GMO, yet are not yet certified, so we'll see if they obtain the certification.
Overall, I think the cheeses taste great and I love that they even offer snack sizes. I gave them to some non-vegan friends and they couldn't believe they weren't dairy cheese. Amazing, right?! But, I'm a pretty natural eater so I won't be adding this product to my regular diet. I've grown to live without cheese and only eat these products on occasion. But, they are awesome if you are craving a good cheese fix. If you are interested in trying Follow Your Heart cheeses for yourself, you'll find them in most Whole Foods and natural retailers.
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