Showing posts with label rennet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rennet. Show all posts

Friday, May 18, 2007

Do you eat veal?


You might be and you just don't know it! If you are not eating vegetarian cheese, you are. See, many cheeses are made with the enzyme rennet. Where does rennet come from? It comes from the stomach of a baby cow. Yep, pretty gross. Now, I am not saying I am a vegetarian because I am not. I do however try to be educated in what foods I do eat and I do try to avoid anything that I deem cruel. One of the places I draw the line at is the slaughtering of baby animals. So, I do not eat veal and now I will be more particular about the cheeses I buy.

The story goes that cheese was invented when people used to keep milk in bags made of sheep stomachs. When people began to travel with the milk in these bags, the combination of the agitation and rennet enzyme caused the milk to ferment and coagulate, forming cheese.

Most cheese can also be made with (good) bacteria, and microbial rennet (made from mold). While these methods only came about because the demand for veal calves cannot keep up with the demand for the enzymes used to make cheese, it is good that many major companies are not using veal rennet. Luck us, Kraft cheese, that is made in the US, is vegetarian!

Here is also a list I found of cheeses listed by brand that are vegetarian.

I think I am having a bit of a moral dilema when it comes to eating meat at all. I mean, I do not necessarily think that eating meat is wrong per se. Yet, I am troubled by how animals are treated and try to limit my consumption to companies that I know treat their animals well, whether it is meat, poultry, dairy or eggs. Am I the only one having this moral dilemma?

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