Vegan Cheese for Pizza
By Reed Mangels, PhD, RD
One of my favorite meals is homemade vegan pizza. I’ve found a good crust recipe that combines whole-wheat and all-purpose flour to make a flavorful but light crust. I use a baking stone for a crispier crust. Toppings are often seasonal vegetables – asparagus and sugar snap peas in spring, roasted summer squash and eggplant in summer, broccoli and cauliflower in fall, and shredded root vegetables in winter. For years, I’ve made pizza with no cheese and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast. Occasionally I make a vegan cheese sauce or a cashew-based cheese that I can dollop on top. Once in a while, I buy vegan cheese shreds to top a pizza.
While I don’t use vegan cheese shreds often enough for their nutritional content to make much of a difference in my own health, I’d like to support companies whose products are on the healthier end of the spectrum. For me, that would mean looking for products that are lower in saturated fat and sodium. I’m not that concerned about protein on my pizza since I usually add a cup or two of beans to the vegetables that top the pizza. It’s good that I’m not relying on vegan cheese shreds for protein. I did not find any that had more than a gram of protein in a quarter cup (about an ounce).
I looked at commercially available vegan Mozzarella cheese shreds. Information is from manufacturers’ websites and product packages.
Most commercial products are relatively high in saturated fat because many are based on coconut oil or palm oil. Saturated fat ranges from 0.5 grams to 6 grams of saturated fat in a 1-ounce serving of cheese shreds. The products with the lowest saturated fat are:
- Go Veggie Plant-Based Mozzarella Shreds – 0 grams of saturated fat
- Treeline Dairy-Free Mozzarella Shreds – 1 gram of saturated fat
- Daiya Cutting Board Mozzarella Style Shreds – 3 grams of saturated fat
The sodium content of commercial cheese shreds ranges from 190 milligrams to 310 milligrams in a 1-ounce serving. The products with the lowest sodium are:
- Treeline Dairy-Free Mozzarella Shreds – 190 milligrams of sodium
- Violife Just Like Mozzarella Shreds – 190 milligrams of sodium
- So Delicious Mozzarella-style Shreds – 200 milligrams of sodium
Taste is also a factor and, for pizza, meltability increases my appreciation of a product. I’ll still use commercial vegan cheese shreds only occasionally, but I look forward to experimenting with the products I’ve identified as lower in saturated fat and/or sodium.
To read more about vegan cheese see:
The Vegetarian Resource Group’s Guide to Vegan Cheese (2017)
