Sunday, January 21, 2007

Beware: Amy's Products

This is just a warning to those of you who are vegans who eat Amy's.

The Soy Cheese Frozen Pizza is NOT vegan! But it says on the package that it is!
The cheese on their pizza has casein in it. Casein is a common ingredient found in many soy-based "cheeses". It is what makes it melt like real cheese. Have you ever noticed how VeganRella never really melts, just warps and gets wattery? That's because it does not contain casein.

Casein is a protein from milk that makes cheese melt. It is also added to soy cheeses to make them melt. BUT, casein is not vegan because it is a milk product. A soy cheese containing casein is still allowed to be called dairy-free, and it is indeed lactose free. But it is technically not vegan. When buying soy cheese (personally I dont like it), make sure it doesn't contain casein (Tofutti Slices are 100% vegan.)

Amy's Soy Cheese Pizza claims it is Vegan on the ingredients list, but it has casein on the list. There is not yet a vegan form of casein. The box even says that it is a milk protein, but they still label it as Vegan!

I do not know of any other Amy's products with this misinformation, but if you know any, please comment this post with them.

Also, many of Amy's products are milk-free (and always egg-free) but contain honey in them. Personally I think this is dumb because agave is just like honey is vegan, so they would be getting more business! But these products are NOT labelled vegan anyway, so dont worry I just thought it was interesting.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to mention that the soy cheese pizza is not labeled as vegan on Amy's website, and it specifically mentions that it contains milk proteins in the ingredients section.

Anonymous said...

Their Rice Crust Spinach Pizza IS vegan now. I think they recently switched to using the Follow Your Heart vegan mozarella. The only problem is, no one around me carries the new version yet.

But yeah, that does suck that the soy cheese pizza has casein in it.

jessica said...

thanks for the information and research.

Allie B said...

I am talking specifically about the box that the pizza comes in. The box says it contains a milk protein, but the ingredients list on the PACKAGE says vegan on it. (all vegan amy's products have VEGAN written in bold next to the word ingredients.)

sureality said...

Since going vegan its been so hard to find good vegan pizza with soy cheese until I ran into Amy's Soy Cheese Pizza...should've known it was too good to be true. :( Does anybody have any other suggestions for vegan pizza with soy cheese??

Allie B said...

Sureality:

Toffuti makes an ah-mazing vegan "cheese" pizza that is out of this world! It reminds me of the nonvegan "Elios" pizza. It is definitely worth the price (around $4-$5 a box)

joe said...

I thought I found a good vegan alternative to cheese in Galaxy Nutritional Rice Shreds Mozzarella Flavor Shredded Cheese Alternative but right there in the ingredients reads "...Casein (milk protein)..."

Sigh...I'll try to find something else. I miss pizza :(

joe said...

Oh sweet, I think Allie B is correct. I had heard before that Toffuti pizza was not vegan, but I just checked online and that appears to be a wording misunderstanding. Off now to find who carries them :D Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Btw, although this might be an artifact of the original article being from several years ago now, but a product containing casein is not able to be labelled as dairy-free. Products that are merely free of lactose are allowed to be labelled as non-dairy. For instance, the products called non-dairy creamer are not labelled as dairy-free.

Anonymous said...

Stony field has a Vegan Certified stamp on and when I scanned with a Vegan app it states that contain casei!

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