In Unreserved Praise of Nutritional Yeast

Nutritional yeast is a strange condiment, beloved by vegans and people with alpha-gal syndrome. It consists of dead flakes of saccharomyces cerevisiae (the same glorious fungus which gives us bread and gets us drunk). Nutritional yeast is marketed as a cheese substitute. I think this is a mistake. Nutritional yeast is very much its own thing, and you'll enjoy it more if you don't think of it as a substitute for cheese. It tastes faintly of a mild cheddar, and it tastes sort of like Parmesan in the way that many savory things taste sort of like Parmesan. But, to me, it tastes about as much like Parmesan as straight MSG does (though it's less intense than either). And it has a strong nutty taste both lack. If I squint a little bit, it tastes mildly beer-y, specifically like a nut brown ale. But it doesn't read a "yeasty" to me at all. I've heard it occasionally compared with Vegemite, but I don't get this at all. There's none of the salt or maltiness, and it's just much less intense.…