Tofurky Pizza with Daiya "Cheese"

Hokey smoke, Rock, it's Daiya week here at Planet Lactose.

Yesterday, I posted Daiya Expands Its Vegan "Cheese" Alternative Availability. But that's just the beginning of the big Daiya news.

Tofurky is starting a line of pizzas made with Daiya vegan cheese alternative.

Tofurky® Pizza

Tofurky brought vegetarians back to the Thanksgiving table by providing a high protein, cholesterol free option to people who had been left out of the celebration. Today we continue that mission by offering delicious, nutritious vegan pizzas in three bold flavors: Cheese, Pepperoni and Italian Sausage with Fire Roasted Veggies. You might say our goal is: "No pizza eater left behind!"

Ingredients: Ingredients: Crust: Whole wheat flour,
enriched wheat flour (niacin, iron, thiamine, riboflavin, folic acid), potato flour, water, expeller pressed non-GMO canola oil, yeast, organic sugar, salt, malt (malted barley, wheat flour, dextrose). Sauce: Water, tomato paste, garlic, expeller pressed non-GMO canola oil, salt, oregano, basil.

Tofurky Italian Sausage: Organic tofu (water, organic soybeans, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride), vital wheat gluten, expeller pressed non-genetically modified canola oil, water, shoyu soy sauce (water, non-genetically engineered soybeans, wheat, salt, culture), sun dried tomatoes, textured wheat protein, basil, black pepper, spices, granulated garlic, salt, chili pepper. Fire Roasted Veggies: Zucchini, tomatoes, red onion, red bell peppers, poblano peppers, green bell peppers, olive oil.

Vegan Cheese: Filtered water, tapioca and/or arrowroot flour, non-GMO expeller pressed canola oil and/or non-GMO expeller pressed safflower oil, coconut oil, pea protein, salt, vegan natural flavors, inactive yeast, vegetable glycerin, calcium citrate, xanthan gum, citric acid (for flavor), annatto.

Contains: Soy and wheat.

I found a review from a Hollywood socialite with Ph.D..

My verdict: Not bad! The whole wheat crust tasted especially impressive for a frozen pizza — a perfect crispiness after 12 minutes in the oven — and the sweetener-free tomato sauce had a nice natural flavor.

The toppings were just okay — though faux meat lovers will likely have a more enthusiastic response. The somewhat synthetic tastes of fake cheeses and meats seems to rankle me more than others. I appreciate how Daiya cheese melts unlike most faux cheeses, but the stuff always tastes vaguely soapy to me. And while I do enjoy Tofurky on occasion, the sausage on the pizza dried out too much in the oven heat, ending up little, light dehydrated squares atop the otherwise well-cooked pizza.

Tofutti to Announce Three Innovative Products

Tofutti sent out a bit of a downbeat press release, revealing that they lost gross and net revenue since last year at this time.

The good news is that they are expanding their product line into firsts, not just for them, but for the industry.

As announced at our annual meeting in June, we have developed three new dairy-free food products. We will soon release the first commercially available nondairy and gluten-free ricotta cheese product, which is expected to reach grocers' shelves in the fourth quarter of this year. We also intend to release what we believe will be the first dairy-free, sugar-free, frozen dessert than incorporates Stevia as the sweetening agent and a newly re-formulated frozen pizza with a dairy-free, trans fat-free cheese topping. We expect that the latter two products will be commercially available around the new year."

Go to Tofutti.com for more information on all their current products.

Korean Cheese Pizza Dance Goes Viral

I've been writing for years that dairy products were finding a new home in Asia, traditionally a series of cultures that avoided using milk in their cuisines. The same genetics are involved that make America a dairy culture. Many people with mild lactose intolerance can have some dairy without symptoms.

Even back when I wrote Milk Is Not for Every Body I mentioned that Pizza Hut was putting up cheese factories in Thailand to meet a growing demand. Now Asia is poised to take over the world with their catchy pizza commercials. Let's see. Cute young girls, lots of bare leg, robotic dancing with instructions, and backwards pizza eating. Don Draper would eat his fedora to have done this.



Just so you know, Pizza Hut Stuffed Crust Pizza has 350 calories and 13 grams of fat per slice without any toppings. So if you want to look anything like the girls in the commercials, stop at one slice.

Ian's Natural Foods - Dairy and Gluten-Free Kid's Meals

Ian's Natural Foods has an allergen-free line of kid's foods that are all "made without wheat, gluten, casein, milk, eggs or nuts".

Three of the meals are of special interest to dairy-free families as true alternatives to normally dairy-laden products.

Mac & No Cheese - WF/GF Recipe

Kids with food allergies can now enjoy another American classic - macaroni and cheese! Ian’s combined brown rice pasta with a rich ’no cheese’ sauce to create a delicious macaroni and cheese dish made without wheat, gluten, milk, casein, eggs, nuts or soy.

Mac & Meat Sauce - WF/GF Recipe

Tender brown rice pasta, ground chicken and flavorful marinara sauce are combined to create the perfect Italian-style dinner for kids with food allergies! Ian’s WF/GF Recipe Mac & Meat Sauce is made without wheat, gluten, milk, casein, eggs, nuts or soy.

French Bread Pizza - WF/GF Recipe

Ian’s French Bread Pizza is a great-tasting meal for anyone with allergies! Don’t limit yourself to homemade pizza; enjoy the taste of thick, hearty wheat and gluten-free French bread with a zesty Italian sauce, plus nutritious dairy and casein-free mozzarella cheese. French Bread Pizza is made without wheat, gluten, milk, casein, nuts or eggs. Contains soy.

Ian's Natural Foods, Inc.
360 Merrimack Street
Building 9, Suite 320
Lawrence, MA 01843

Phone: 800.54.FOODS (36637)
Fax: 978.989.0602

LI Celebrity Alert: Drew Brees

Breaking news! Just in time for the Super Bowl!

Drew Brees is lactose intolerant!

(He is the quarterback for the New Orleans Saints football team.)

It's a standing joke in American "journalism" that in the days before the Super Bowl, every column inch of every newspaper page (or today every gigabyte of every hard disk) in Super Bowl cities must be filled with something, anything, Super Bowl-related, no matter how trivial. So kudos to Nola.com for living up to this venerable tradition.

Ron Thibodeaux of The Times-Picayune actually managed to track down the favorite pizza place. When he was in college. A decade ago. It was, so the claim goes, Bruno's in West Lafayette, Indiana. And even better, we know what his favorite pizza was.

"Drew is lactose intolerant, so he’d go with the Bruno’s Meat - just sausage, pepperoni, bacon and ham," said Orlando Itin, known to everyone in town as "Big O."

Itin hasn't talked with Brees about adding the quarterback's name to the menu, but if that happens, he already has a name picked out: "It’s the Drew Brees No Cheese!"

Go Saints!

UPDATE: I did further checking after receiving a comment that Brees was really allergic to milk rather than lactose intolerant. Apparently that's correct. Here's the article from Sports Illustrated.

Brees's long list of food allergies includes dairy, wheat, gluten, eggs and nuts.

Still a dairy-free celebrity for our purposes. Even better, he now becomes an example of what I need to point out regularly. People don't know the difference between lactose intolerance and milk allergy and get them confused on a regular basis.

And it's also a good example of something equally important to point out: never assume that a filler article about Super Bowl trivia has any pretense to accuracy.

Non-Dairy Cheese "Analogue" for Pizza

Cargill is probably the hugest company in the U.S. whose name isn't a household word. It's privately owned, the largest such company in the U.S., so it doesn't get the daily attention from the business world that companies with publicly trade stock receive. Cargill had revenues of $120 billion last year, or as much as Microsoft and Boeing combined.

That gives them lots of pennies to pay for R&D. A teeny portion of Cargill, which means huge by any other standard, is Cargill Texturizing Solutions, with a mere 31 plants on five continents.

What did they do in a Belgium laboratory? Come up with a non-dairy cheese "analogue" for pizza. Luckily for me, one of their press releases is in something resembling English, and by that I mean not filled with too many technical terms (rheological? syneresis?) for my brain to process.

Cargill has launched a unique breakthrough innovation that enables the cost-effective production of a 100 percent non-dairy cheese analogue for pizza and other prepared food applications.

Lygomme™ACH Optimum functional system (patent pending) replicates the functionality of dairy protein and replaces it fully at an outstanding cost advantage for the manufacturer.

Fabien Bouron, senior dairy applications specialist at Cargill Texturizing Solutions, explains: “Cheese represents approximately 15 percent of a pizza recipe and given its high and fluctuating price, it can have a significant impact on the cost of frozen pizza production. In order to protect their margins, manufacturers have traditionally had to choose between raising pizza prices, limiting portion sizes, or using a blend of different cheeses depending on their current market value.”

Lygomme™ACH Optimum functional system removes this instability by offering manufacturers a cost-effective cheese alternative for pizza which can be used to completely replace highly volatile dairy proteins. Furthermore, its appearance, taste and texture perfectly match those of processed cheese based on dairy proteins and are similar to those of traditional hard cheeses, such as gouda, cheddar or gruyere, thereby ensuring equal enjoyment and satisfaction for consumers.

A dairy-free solution for cost-optimization
Due to its specific composition, consisting of a combination of three starches, a galactomannan and a gelling carrageenan, Lygomme™ACH Optimum functional system is not liable to price volatility, eliminating fluctuations in recipe cost. Even when taking into account falling dairy prices, it remains highly attractive with up to 60 percent cost reduction compared with a standard analogue cheese (which on average contains 15 percent dairy proteins) and over 200 percent when compared with traditional cheeses such as mozzarella or emmental.

A dairy-free solution for performance
Furthermore, Lygomme™ACH Optimum functional system overcomes the technical challenges associated with the total replacement of dairy proteins, providing the same key physical and rheological properties as those of analogue pizza cheeses: taste, firmness, appearance, shreadability and melting behavior.

Each component has been carefully selected by Cargill’s expert team to play a specific role: allow and stabilize the emulsion, bring sufficient viscosity during processing, absorb the water phase, avoid oiling out and syneresis, create a strong network in order to allow the finished cheese product to be shreadable/sliceable, and have a remelting profile.

A dairy-free solution for health
In addition to the important cost and performance benefits, Lygomme™ACH Optimum functional system also offers health advantages as it contains reduced calories (less fat and no saturated fats) and reduced phosphate intake (no melting salts used). It offers a cheese alternative for people with lactose intolerance and a unique opportunity for vegans to enjoy a product that has the characteristics and taste of cheese but without any animal-derived ingredients. Last but not least, Lygomme™ACH Optimum functional system provides the opportunity to make analogue cheese without allergen labelling, and eligible for Halal and Kosher certification.

When will this be miracle goo be appearing on real-life pizzas? You have to ask the hard questions, don't you? I have no idea. At least somebody out there is thinking of you.

Tofutti Pan Crust Pizza Pizzazz

The Denver Decider webpage looks like a web version of an alternative weekly paper. Maybe the article on frozen pizza was the tipoff. Home slice: The pizza world's frozen best by Janelle Zara.

Rather than succumbing to the shtick, here’s Decider’s rundown of the best pizza options available in your local grocer’s freezer aisle—all for under $7.

Somewhat stunningly, even for a paper with a decided slant toward vegans, the top mention went to our old friend Tofutti.

Tofutti Pan Crust Pizza Pizzazz
At first glance, this vegan option looks reminiscent of something you’d pop in the microwave every afternoon after coming home from middle school. It boasts a wholly unappetizing appearance—like someone melted some rubbery cheese on an orange cracker. Yet, for a dairy-free slice that bases its single topping on soy bean curd, it tastes surprisingly like the real thing—especially at $3.29 for a box of three slices (which you’ll likely eat all at once). Just think: With all that money you’re saving, you can buy yourself a new pair of leather-free shoes.
For: Vegans who haven’t moved out of mom’s house yet.