Cheese pizza for everyone

Pizza is known to be a widely popular food consistently found in the American diet. For lactose-intolerant and vegan people alike, this dish presents a particularly cheesy dilemma. Up until recently, there were only two ways around this issue. The first being to order a bare-boned pizza, which is exactly what it sounds like, only sauce, maybe some toppings. Then the second, much more disheartening and disappointing choice, peeling the cheese off the slice. Luckily now there’s an actual resolution to the whole situation at hand, dairy-free cheese, and it might just be available at some of your local pizza spots.

If you know where to look, you can find the cheese alternative popping up on new pizza menus. Smaller pizza chains like Mellow Mushroom, Pie Five Pizza, MOD Pizza, Blaze Pizza, and many more, have started implementing the dairy-friendly option. This product is a savior for many non-cheese-consuming pizza lovers, but what exactly is it?

Non-dairy cheese has actually been around since the 16th century, but improvements have been being made since then. The idea originated in China, developing a variety of ingredient combinations from recipes using fermented tofu, to recipes with margarine. But the market for these products grew on a global scale around 2018, and we’re seeing the effects of that now. 

When looking at the list of places that offer the “cheese”, there appears to be a few household-name-spots that are missing. Surprisingly enough, big pizza companies haven’t caught on to opening up this market for more customers. If one corporation started using the vegan option, it would attract a lot of publicity first off, and it might even start a domino effect in the pizza world. Holding your breath for this probably isn’t necessary.