Making homemade cashew cheese has pretty great results for vegan pizza. It's not the same as dairy, obviously, but it's a good main topping for when we share a pizza.
I'm not even sure why one of these companies would try to make the nature of the product well-hidden. Their goal isn't to trick people who eat dairy, it's to sell a product to people who are looking to avoid dairy. Why would a company actively hide from their target market?
The one I had that plant based logo was a quarter of the size and it did not have leaves like that on the front. Also that white plant based text was a few shades lighter than the background (that was previously sky blue) making it hard to read. Admittedly I should've seen the "style" part and looked further, also I should've questioned why it was the one of the only shredded cheese left in the fridge. It isn't like I was defrauded but that certainly wasn't what I intended to buy, good on them for fixing it.
Leave it to Wal-Mart to screw that up. I bet they were so focused on sticking to the "Great Value" graphic design manual that they ended up deciding that clearly conveying all the critical information on the label would have ruined their branding consistency.
For what it's worth, I can tell just by the ingredients label that that stuff is gross. Potato starch, coconut oil, and some unspecified "natural flavor" that's somehow more than 2% of the ingredient bill? No thanks.
The term natural flavor or natural flavoring means the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.
(https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfr...)
And I was very annoyed. Mostly at myself.
Much cheaper to make. Maybe their target market is "people who buy it by accident and throw it away".
Others, like Daiya, I won't object to if someone else wants to put it on whatever we're cooking. I'm pretty lactose intolerant, so I can't speak to how it compares to dairy cheese; my personal take from the few times where I'll pop a Lactaid in order to participate in a pizza party is that, while Daiya fake mozzarella is meh, the stuff it's intended to mimic is even worse. I occasionally wonder if there is something to that casomorphin theory that the article mentions, and people who regularly consume dairy largely like it for approximately the same reason smokers like the taste of tobacco smoke.
And then there are some brands, generally of more of a 1990s vintage, that are legitimately gross. Unfortunately, those seem to be the ones that are most commonly stocked in grocery stores, for Heaven knows what reason.
I figure once everyone gets fooled once like I have it will stop selling.