Schmear Shortage? PETA’s Got You Covered!

For Immediate Release:
December 20, 2021

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

While the cream cheese shortage has bagel lovers and holiday chefs scrambling, PETA is offering a solution: vegan cream cheese. The group has just released its list of the top store-bought vegan cream cheese brands—no supply chain disruptions in sight!

These may help out home chefs in a pinch:

• Kite Hill: Kite Hill’s cream cheese has a smooth texture and a rich, tangy flavor. Try Everything or Garden Veggie flavor on your bagels or Plain for your baking needs!
• Daiya: With Daiya’s wide variety of flavors—including Plain, Strawberry, Chive & Onion, and Roasted Garlic & Herbs—there’s one to suit any palate.
• Miyoko’s: Miyoko’s cultured cashew milk cream cheese comes in both sweet and savory varieties, including Cinnamon Raisin and Fish-Free Lox.
• Store brands: Kroger stores carry Simple Truth Plant-Based Cream Cheese Alternative, Trader Joe’s has Vegan Cream Cheese Alternative, and shoppers can find Earth Grown Cream Cheese Style Spread at Aldi.
• Violife: Violife’s spreadable cream cheese is available in Original, Garlic & Herbs, and even (vegan) Cheddar flavors.

“Vegan cream cheese is kinder to mother cows and their calves, cholesterol-free, and still on grocery store shelves—so it stands head and shoulders above old-school dairy cream cheese,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Whether you’re baking a cheesecake, loading up a bagel, or whipping up some savory hors d’oeuvres, PETA’s picks for vegan cream cheese will have you saying, ‘Philadelphia, schmiladelphia.’“

In addition to being still widely available, vegan cream cheese is free of saturated animal fat and cholesterol and spares animals immense suffering: Cows in the dairy industry are artificially inseminated—workers insert an arm into the animals’ rectum and a metal rod to deliver semen into their vagina—and then sent to slaughter when their bodies give out.

More information—including recipes for homemade vegan cream cheese using cashews, tofu, and more—is available on PETA’s website.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.