Spanish Co. Introduces Vegan Cheese Made With Olive Oil

Väcka, a food pro­ducer in Spain, has begun using olive oil as a healthy fat alter­na­tive in their vegan cheese prod­ucts.

Focused on plant-based foods, Väcka recently announced two new vegan cheeses made from olive oil and melon seed milk.

Those ingre­di­ents replaced coconut oil and fer­mented almond milk in Väcka’s Mözza and Pumpkin Chxddar cheese prod­ucts. That reduced sat­u­rated fats by 73.6 per­cent, accord­ing to the com­pany.

Other ben­e­fits of the inno­va­tion include improve­ments in the sus­tain­abil­ity of the new cheeses. Väcka con­tends that the new Mözza prod­ucts cut land and water use by 99 per­cent and CO2 emis­sions by 92 per­cent.

Väcka cre­ates the cheese through a ​“unique dis­rup­tion inno­va­tion” process that was pre­sented at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last December and is cur­rently under eval­u­a­tion, as reported by Revista Aral.

The patent titled ​“Vegan cheese ana­logues and method for pro­duc­ing the same” describes a method for non-dairy cheese pro­duc­tion through the fer­men­ta­tion of melon seeds.

As reported by Food Navigator, Ana Luz Sans, co-founder and CEO of Väcka, noted that in addi­tion to those two ingre­di­ents, the new recipes also pro­vide con­sumers with pats, beans and cal­cium sup­ple­ments.

While the health ben­e­fits of olive oil are well known, Väcka also believes that melon seed milk is another healthy alter­na­tive to com­monly used fats.

One com­po­nent of melon seed milk, linoleic acid, might help pre­vent car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease and strengthen the immune sys­tem. In addi­tion to its many other ben­e­fi­cial ele­ments, extra vir­gin olive oil also con­tains a lim­ited amount of linoleic acid.

According to Sans, ​“we con­ducted a life­cy­cle analy­sis, where we researched var­i­ous seeds, and the melon seeds stood out for their nutri­tional value and prop­er­ties in terms of aroma and taste.”

In addi­tion to being used as a novel ingre­di­ent in vegan cheese, researchers are study­ing the use of olives in tra­di­tional cheese pro­duc­tion.

A recent study showed that adding olive leaves to the diet of sheep might improve their health, increase the sus­tain­abil­ity of the food chain and cre­ate a bet­ter qual­ity cheese.

In that study, a panel of tasters did not notice any dif­fer­ence in the fla­vor of the olive sheep cheese com­pared to the tra­di­tional prod­uct. Still, con­sumers indi­cated a greater appre­ci­a­tion for the olive-feed ver­sion after being told about its organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics.

• Revista Aral
• Food Navigator