vegan mac&cheese is gooey cardboard

i just made one of those boxes of vegan convenience food that is so freakin unexploitative it calls into question its very existence. the box contains nothing you might remotely associate with dairy or dairy alternatives; not only is there no lactose, whey, or egg, but also no soy or nut products, and no candida albicans, whatever that means. the box is made from 100 percent recycled paperboard and was printed using soy-based inks. aside from the soy disparity, i'm pretty sure the box and its contents are one.

the pervasiveness of vegetarian- and vegan-friendly convenience foods puzzles me. the whole point of the original convenience foods was to make replicas of homemade dishes so high in starch, animal fat, and salt that it doesn't matter how preserved and freeze-dried and pouchified they are—you still have the important conveyors of flavor. to then go and replace the animal products with something unfatty and unflavorful becomes an exercise in masochistic deprivation. all for the sake of what? having an imitation of something that is itself an imitation of a home-cooked meal? i'm sure if plato could've foreseen road's end organics' dairy-free mac & 'chreese' (cheddar style), he would've been furious. we're talking shadows of shadows here.

i once picked a fight with a soy-yogurt product representative giving out samples at my health food store. i informed her that nondairy foods should give up the fight, accept their unsuppressably unique flavors, and go and develop foods that work with, rather than against, these foreign textures and tastes. manufacturers of nondairy goods, i call on you to untether yourselves from the hegemonic reign of dairy and to adopt an adventurous new approach of culinary medium specificity! if it does not look like cheese or yogurt, i promise to still try it.

except keep making soymilk and those tofutti cuties, because they are good. rice dream can go fuck themselves.