Scientists at Heriot-Watt University, Scotland, are exploring next-generation vegan cheese designed to tackle one of the category’s most persistent challenges: high saturated fat content.
Backed by new funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the project is now moving from lab-scale development toward consumer taste testing.
Led by Professor Stephen Euston, in the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, the research has been underway for nearly a decade in collaboration with a food innovation company. The team’s goal is to reformulate plant-based cheese to better align with health and sustainability expectations, without compromising functionality.
Traditional vegan cheese alternatives typically rely on coconut or palm oil to replicate the firmness and melt of dairy cheese. However, these ingredients contribute to saturated fat levels that can reach up to 25%, raising nutritional concerns and sustainability issues linked to deforestation.
Euston’s team is instead working with UK-grown sunflower and rapeseed oils, which are significantly lower in saturated fat. The challenge lies in replicating the solid-fat behaviour needed for slicing and melting.
To address this, researchers are applying oleogelation, a structuring technique that transforms liquid oils into gel-like solids using oleogelators. These molecules create a three-dimensional network that traps the oil, enabling it to mimic the physical properties of solid fat.
In lab tests, the reformulated cheese demonstrated improved meltability compared to several commercially available coconut oil-based products, an important functional gain in a category often criticised for poor 'ooziness.'
The prototype also achieved a significant nutritional improvement, reducing saturated fat content to as low as 3%.
According to Euston, while the taste is expected to be comparable to current market offerings, the product’s health and environmental profile could offer a strong point of differentiation.
With new funding secured, the project is entering a critical phase: translating lab results into real-world applications. Over the next ten months, the team aims to produce kitchen-ready prototypes for evaluation by consumer tasting panels.
The research aligns with broader industry trends toward cleaner-label formulations, reduced reliance on tropical oils, and localisation of supply chains to cut food miles.
In addition to EPSRC backing, the work has previously received funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and industry partners. Findings have also been published in the peer-reviewed journal Food Chemistry.
