Good replacement for cheese?

You could use a babybel snack cheese or cheesy popcorn seasoning instead?

I will always make room for cheese. It’s worth the calories. Besides, you don’t need much to top a salad or sandwich. For example, there’s less than 30 calories in a tablespoon Parmesan cheese. Laughing Cow cheese wedges are a low calorie option as well.

How about light cream cheese? Its pretty low cal. You can also add seasonings (like ranch powder) to it.

I'd look at some of the things vegans do to replace cheese in their diets - they're magicians with taste and texture!

There are ever more vegan cheese options available in typical grocery stores, and they can be much lower calorie than the non-vegan equivalents.

Nutritional yeast is a seasoning agent that adds a cheesy flavor to things. I have it over popcorn quite often, and there's a super easy recipe here for a vegan "cheese" that uses chickpea flour (high protein) and nutritional yeast. It's under 1000 calories for the whole block, so if you managed to get 10 servings out of it, it'd be about 90 calories per. I haven't made this yet, but I've done some of this blogger's other vegan recipes with good success!

My local Kroger recently started carrying nutritional yeast so it's beginning to make its way into mainstream stores, but if you can't find it in the store, Amazon carries it!

Laughing Cow light wedges are 35 calories each and are soft enough to spread on your wraps.

Replacement for cheese in wraps?


🤔 Or not have cheese at all. 🙃

Back in after giving substitution advice, because my practice is like most: I eat the cheese, in reasonable portions. To eat in featured roles, the good stuff: Good goat cheese (Cypress Grove cheeses are way expensive, but make me deliriously happy), brie, good feta (brands vary a lot), real parmesan (I buy blocks, grate, freeze).

I think 2% mozzarella type tastes fine, and in the string cheese formulation prefer its seemingly slightly chewier texture. Paneer (unsalted!) or farmers cheese are lower calorie and good, too. Mozzarella "pearls" are also pretty good. Part-skim ricotta is good in some contexts, too.

I will use other reduced-fat cheese in non-featured roles, but haven't found a fat-free that is worth the calories to me (taste and protein-wise . . . plus if I'm low on any macro, it tends to be fat). Occasionally, I'll use a pre-shredded 2% "Mexican blend" (so-called) as a melting cheese on top of stuff (I keep some in the freezer).

Cabot makes an extra-light cheddar (hard to find) that has around 60 calories per ounce, and 9g protein. It's texture isn't great for cold-eating on its own (very chewy, for cheese), and it melts less than fattier cheese as a shredded topper, but it tastes good to me in sandwiches or in cubes in soup/stew, for example. I wouldn't call it super Cheddar-y tasting, but it does taste like cheese (unlike some reduced fat options).

Personally, I don't care for the reduced-fat flavored things like Laughing Cow wedges, though the Babybel waxed ones are OK.

If you don’t have them, a good thing to invest in is a cheese planer, and a micro grater for thinly sliced and very finely shredded hard cheeses and a vegetable peeler for shaved cheese. Weigh it out on your food scale. You may be surprised to discover how little you need and the calories are less than you may think.

Sour cream is good and less calories. Along with plain yogurt. Sometimes I put a tiny sprinkle if cheese for the meltinessand then sour cream as well. Salsa is another option. Light italian dressing.

I replace some full fat cheese or salad dressing with fat free cottage cheese, which has a similar mouth feel to cheese, but for far less calories. (And a protein bonus!)

For example, for a salad, instead of 2 T salad dressing, I have 1 T dressing plus 60 - 80 grams of cottage cheese (generally whatever the weight of the lettuce was.)

For a chicken lettuce wrap, I would like 1 T ranch or Caesar dressing, and would experiment with the amount of cottage cheese as the above amounts would be sloppy.