A vegan cheese that actually tastes good? Thank this ancient fungus

It’s a conundrum as tricky as the riddle of the Sphinx: how to make a vegan cheese that people actually want to eat.

It’s a problem as intractable as the riddle of the Sphinx: How do you make a vegan cheese that people actually want to eat? Formo, a Berlin-based biotechnology company, thinks it has found the answer in a minuscule fungus, Koji, that has given that distinctive umami flavor to soy sauce, miso and other staples of Japanese cuisine for thousands of years. Formo ferments the Koji to produce a protein that provides the base of its dairy-free cheeses. Raffael Wohlgensinger, Formo’s co-founder and chief executive, started the company five years ago to create cheese sustainably, using less land, water and producing less planet-heating emissions than traditional dairy farming for milk-based cheeses. It was also born from his frustration with the current range of vegan cheese products in stores. “Being Swiss, and being a big cheese lover, (I was) disillusioned with everything,” he told CNN. He is not alone. In recent years, consumers have flocked to dairy-free substitutes for cow’s milk, guzzling its oat and almond-based cousins, for example, and to plant- and fungus-based meats, such as burgers. But shoppers have not taken to vegan cheeses with the same enthusiasm, according to Carmen Masiá, an application scientist at Novonesis, a Danish biotech firm producing the bacteria and enzymes needed to make fermented foods like yogurt and cheeses.