VeganMoFo #2: Daiya Deconstructed
October 2, 2009
It is all the rage but what is Daiya? What’s in it? Here I go, deconstructing sunshine.
- Purified water
- Ground cassava: a starchy root from the tropics you may know as yucca. It’s related to tapioca.
- Arrowroot: another tropical starch related to tapioca
- high oleic sunflower oil: sunflower oil that is at least 82% oleic acid, a mono-unsaturated omega-9 fatty acid
- Safflower oil: safflower is close to sunflower oil. It can be used as an oil paint binder too, like linseed oil.
- Coconut oil: Damn, Daiya is so tropical
- Pea protein: veggie protein
- Salt: you know, the mineral
- Inactive yeast: a dough conditioner for stretchiness
- Vegetable glycerin: an emulsifier (see sunflower lecithin) and thickener
- Natural flavors: a combination of plant-derived gases that release as flavor/scent as we chew. So weird.
- Xanthan gum: increases viscosity, creates a bounce-back bite, so to speak
- Sunflower lecithin: another emulsifier, keeps all these oils and gooey things binded together
- Natural vegan enzymes: help with digestion and other bio-tasks
- Natural vegan bacterial cultures: to bless digestion and taste
- Citric acid: flavor additive from citrus fruits
- Natural color: vegetable-derived dye (I hope. Natural color on a label could be sourced from veggies, animal or mineral. I’m curious why they wouldn’t confirm a vegetable source like they did with the enzymes and bacterial cultures.)