Analog Cheese: What Is It and How to Recognize It?

Recognize analogue cheese – these are the characteristics

Is it real cheese or an inferior mixture of water, fat, flavour enhancers and protein? That’s usually difficult to say without specialist knowledge. But even laypeople can tell whether it is analogue cheese or a real dairy product:

• When you buy cheese, you should pay attention to the list of ingredients: milk is the main ingredient here. The further ahead you find that ingredient, the more likely it is real cheese. Rennet and beta-carotene also indicate real cheese. You can usually recognize analogue cheese by ingredients such as hardened vegetable fat, milk protein, starch or flavour enhancers.
• Processed foods often have cheese listed in the ingredient list, but this is often used as a trick by manufacturers. A minimum of real cheese is contrasted with a larger proportion of analogue cheese. You should therefore pay particular attention to the order of the ingredients: if cheese is named after vegetable fat, it could be analogue cheese.
• Caution is advised with foods that are described as “gratinated”: Most of the time, you are looking at analogue cheese here, not real cheese.
• So-called “vegan cheese” usually always refers to analogue cheese, since vegans do not consume any dairy products or rennet.
• If you want to buy feta that’s made out of real cheese, you really should only buy feta. Herder’s cheese, Greek-style cheese and the like are types of analogue cheese.