Copying from an earlier comment of mine, "American cheese" or "processed cheese" is often (but not always) a blend of materials none of which begins life as cheese:

> Typical formulation for Analogue Pizza Cheese, from Fundamentals of Cheese Science:

  Ingredient               Level added (g/100g Blend)
  Casein and caseinates    23.00 
  Vegetable oil            25.00   
  startch                  2.00    
  Emulsifying salts        2.00    
  Flavour                  2.00    
  Flavour enhancer         2.00    
  Acid regulator           0.40
  Color                    0.04
  Preservative             0.10
  Water                    38.50
  Condensate^              7.00

^ Upon cooking the blend to about 85°C using direct steam injection, condensate equivalent to about 7.0 g is absorbed by the blend.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27169697

The list above is for "analogue pizza cheese" but that's just the most common use of this kind of "cheese": as pizza topping.

So, in a way, "vegan cheese" is not the worst kind of thing in the market that's labelled as "cheese" while not even close to the real thing.

Btw, many people who are not vegan or vegetarian eat this stuff and think it's cheese. I mean because it's on pizza. And it kiind of melts, right? What else do you expect to find sort of melting on top of pizza? Cheese!

So, yeah, 100%, you can totally and absolutely fool consumers by emulating the look, taste and feel of a real foodstuff. But usually that's because those consumers are so used to eating fake stuff anyway that they have forgotten what the real thing tastes like... if they ever even tasted it.