I love mac and cheese. My whole family loves mac and cheese. But on a plant-based diet we had been missing our fix. Enter Daiya’s Deluxe Cheezy Mac.
I’m not sure what we were expecting when we started with this but we were pleasantly surprised by what we had in store for us. This box of Daiya’s Deluxe Cheezy Mac is advertised as dairy, soy and gluten free. Non-GMO verified and of course plant-based.
First I should mention that we got our box from Whole Foods and during quarantine the Amazon delivery worked great. Here’s a link to Daiya Deluxe Cheezy Mac directly on Amazon.
Nutritional Facts
I can’t say enough about reading the nutritional facts and how important that is. Regardless of how healthy you think you are keeping your family, even if you’re eating mac and cheese :). I started to do some digging.
So what stuck out to me was the amount of sodium per serving. Daiya Deluxe Cheezy Mac shows 580mg per serving! This of course seems quite high but let’s compare it to other non-dairy mac and cheese.
- Kraft Macaroni & Cheese shows 530mg per serving.
- Happy Belly Original Macaroni & Cheese shows 500mg per serving.
- Annies Home Grown Organic Mac & Cheese shows between 520mg to 570mg per serving. Difference mostly being on the type of cheese being used.
- Velveeta Shells & Cheese shows 910mg per serving!
So while Daiya Deluxe Cheezy Mac doesn’t compare to the Velveeta version it still is inline with the other non-dairy mac & cheeses. I should mention, if the sodium topic is of interest to you then make sure to check out this article posted from healthline about other foods high in sodium. I learned that this is inline with what a hotdog or bratwurst of sodium per serving.
Unboxing
No surprises here. Standard bag of macaroni and bag of the secret sauce.
Time to Cook
Daiya Deluxe Cheezy Mac comes with really tasty gluten free macaroni. It uses brown rice pasta to avoid the gluten and we really loved it.
Once we added the cheese things started really coming together. A little secret: I NEVER use the whole packet of cheese. It always seemed too much and this case was no different. I think we ended up using about a quarter of the whole bag. Now you could argue that you don’t get the full effect of the dish but on the positive side you also don’t get the full sodium effect.
Final Verdict
The box says that it’s good for 3 servings. Which in my house usually means good for 1.5 people. This was no different. Overall we really enjoyed Daiya’s take on mac & cheese. The mac was great the non-dairy cheese was also not too over-powering. It definitely scratched an itch that we had. So if you’re looking for a wonderful alternative to a dairy based mac & cheese make sure to check out Daiya Deluxe Cheezy Mac.