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There are so many vegan cheese sauce recipes out there, but most of them use raw cashews [3] to get that smooth and creamy texture. While eating a handful of cashews offers healthy fats and protein, when you use half a cup of cashews to make a vegan cheese sauce, you end up adding hundreds of calories and grams of fat to your pasta, grilled cheese, nachos, burritos, or whatever you're using it for.
If you're looking for a lower-calorie, lower-fat option, this homemade vegan cheddar-cheese sauce recipe [4] from Plantifully Based [5] is made using red lentils, which offers filling fibre and satiating protein. The coral colour also adds a nice colour to the sauce, making it look more like "real" cheese. Check out the recipe either on her YouTube video [6] and her blog post [7]. Aside from lentils, it's made with nutritional yeast, unsweetened dairy-free milk, and a little paprika for flavour and colour.
This recipe makes about four servings. Here's the nutritional info from verywell.com [8] for one two-ounce serving:
For comparison, the nutritional info for a quarter-cup serving of shredded cheddar cheese [9] is 110 calories, nine grams of fat, six grams of saturated fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, one gram of carbs, zero grams of fibre and sugar, and seven grams of protein.
This vegan cheddar cheese recipe has half the calories, eight grams less fat, zero cholesterol, and offers 2.3 grams of fibre and almost the same amount of protein. If you're trying to eat more plant-based, for ethical reasons or because dairy causes you digestive issues [10] or other health issues, try this healthy alternative.
