Whether Dairy-Free “Cheese” Can Ever be Considered Real Cheese.

Objection 1:  If it acts like cheese, looks like cheese, tastes like cheese, and smells like cheese… Basically, If it is performing the job of cheese, and has the tastes and textures, then it is cheese.

Objection 2:  If it’s spoken of as cheese. For example: Take a dairy-free(df) family or group. They would call df-cheese “cheese”. It saves time, gets the idea across, and it is what they call cheese.

Sed Contra:  G.K.Chesterton (widely known as the foremost expert on cheese because of his upcoming work in 5 volumes, “The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature”) has said of cheese that, “It is simple, being directly derived from milk, which is one of the ancestral drinks.” (Cheese by G.K Chesterton). In addition, when collecting information from a variety of rational sources, the conclusion was always the same. When possessed with The Question (see above), Ben Bridge, Kathryn Boucher, and all those I asked responded in the same way: with an emphatic “No! It can never be considered cheese!” Or “NO! Of course it’s not real cheese!” Thus we can conclude that rational beings understand the realities of cheese vs. that which merely masquerades as cheese.

I answer that:  Dairy-free cheese can not be considered real cheese for it lacks the necessary cheeseness which comes from the reality of its being made with milk. Cheese has a richness and beauty, a creaminess that can only come from milk. While the non-dairy “cheeses” can, in a pinch, catch the eye, hold the tongue, and tantalize the nose, they are only a facade, and not what is truly cheese.

Response to objection 1:  You can’t use mere assumptions to prove what can be disproven by reason. For reason is the higher thing and is the mark of the human. And as we have seen above, rational beings agree that cheese has a deeper reality than its looks, smells and tastes. In this case, cheese must have more than the appearance of cheese, the underlying substance from which it is made must be the “ancestral drink” of milk.

Response to objection 2:  Cheese means that which it means, and it currently does not mean not-cheese, but CHEESE. If the word were ever to change its meaning to include “cheese-like-substance” we would then have to re-define real cheese from merely “cheese-like”. For they are two very separate things, and cheese deserves it recognition, for it is glorious.