Photo of Tofurky by: Gary Ku AKA flyoverstate
Some people don’t eat meat. They all have their own reasons, and I’m not here to talk about those today. What I want to talk about is the fake meat some of them eat instead.
Before even looking to closely at the substitutions, I think it’s a bad idea on principle. They came up with margarine instead of butter … how’s that working out? If I want butter I’m going to eat butter. If I get it into my head that I’m eating too much butter* I’ll eat something else instead of butter. But it won’t be a fake butter-like product, it’ll be something like pasta or vegetables. (Which are really nice with a nice big pat of butter. Doh!)
But when you do look at the substitutes, it’s pretty horrifying. Over at Dr. Salerno’s Silver Cloud Diet site is this little nugget:
I am not making this up. A team of scientists at the University of Missouri, who claim to have worked on this project for more than ten years, I swear – I am not making this up – that they have invented a soy product that not only has the flavor of chicken, but the mouth feel of chicken too. You know, breaks up like chicken in your mouth, not too hard, not too soft, but just like real flesh. Now isn’t that a comfort to you? Pull this rubbery goo apart, and a few strands hang loose. So the vegetarians are all atwitter.
In fact they haven’t been this excited since the fabled Tofurky of the Sixties, which was a shapeless blob of tofu shaped like some giant tumor on the Thanksgiving table, but seasoned with sage and stuff to make it taste like real turkey.
But wait, here’s the good part:
[S]oy grown in the U.S. is mostly from genetically modified seed. And it’s so new we hardly know what it will do to human beings when put into our own food chain. But we do have a pretty good controlled study going on.The state penitentiary system in Illinois, under the wise leadership of the infamous Mr. Blogoivich, in partnership with a giant agricbusiness, began substituting fake soy meat for the real thing to prisoners. The results were almost instantaneous. Gastric distress, esophogeal problems up to and including cancer, a lowered sexual capacity for male prisoners due to the estrogen in soy (one thing a warden loves most is to tamp down the libido of caged men), and other adorable side effects.
The result is that the state of Illinois has been sued by the Weston A Price Foundation for cruel and inhuman treatment to prisoners. Now you may not think this has much to do with you or your children, but think again. They have big plans to move these products into school lunch programs.
Yum, gotta get me some o’ dat.
But here’s the thing that I just don’t understand. If you don’t want meat, why try so hard to make yourself believe you’re eating meat?
If it’s for religious reasons, you’re supposed to be giving something up, aren’t you? Or is this just something you learned as a child and don’t even question it any more? When I was eight I would give up things for Lent that I didn’t like anyway. “For 40 days I won’t eat liver or cauliflower.” Yay for me.
If it’s about health, every man-made food substitute has turned out to be a horrible replacement: margarine, baby formula, saccharine, the list goes on and on. And with soy as the #1 ingredient in many meat substitutes, you’re volunteering for that study with the inmates.
But ultimately, there’s a big practical reason I just can’t get around: It’s too tempting. Debbie at Words to Eat By talks about growing up Jewish and smelling bacon every day.
Weekend mornings were torture for me during my adolescence — I had a paper route in our apartment complex, and the weekend papers were expected to be delivered before 8. As if the waking up early part wasn’t hard enough for a young teen, in my dazed state I’d wander the building’s hallways toting stacks of smudgy newsprint, floating from doorway to doorway on the aroma of my neighbors’ breakfasts. Were the people in 3A having eggs with their bacon, or pancakes? Perhaps 2K was firing up the waffle iron. Whatever it was, the whole building would be suffused with that unmistakable, intoxicating scent. My stomach would growl plaintively, and I’d feel guilty for wishing I was a bacon eater.
Anything that makes you feel guilty for wanting it, it’s better to just avoid altogether. Now that she no longer keeps kosher, she know what she’s missing.
Oh. My. God. Bacon is goooooood. But in the nearly twenty years since I’ve observed the laws of kashrut, I still have yet to cook bacon in my own home. And likely, I never will, for two reasons: First, I have a definite mental block on allowing blatantly nonkosher items into my kitchen. There’s been no pig of any kind here, nor any shellfish. It’s just too far over the line, I guess. And second, bacon in particular is crazy unhealthy.
I disagree with her that it’s unhealthy, but like I said in the beginning, that’s a story for another day. The point I’m taking from her article is that she knows better than to even let it in the house. But then she goes and gets facon.
If you don’t know that looks like dog treats, then you’ve never had a dog.
So I’ve got a sincere question for anyone who doesn’t eat meat, but does eat things made to resemble meat: Why?
* Speaking of “too much butter”, I know what each of those words mean, but I don’t think it’s grammatically correct to use them in that order.
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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46 Comments
I followed a vegan diet for a while. While I did eat some meat analogs during that time, it seemed strange to me. One day I picked up a package of vegan bacon and looked at the ingredients list. Right then and there I gave up being vegan. As bad as real bacon is for me, I decided eating a serving or two of nothing but chemicals was worse.
My guess as to “why?” is that the American diet is so meat-based that those who have switched to a vegan diet want something to replicate the taste and texture of meat. Unlike many other cultures, we don’t have a long history of meatless dishes or dishes than can be made with meat or without.
Americans have made burgers from soy and from beans and grains, but they’re definitely substitutes for a hamburger. Unlike, say, falafel, which is what it is, not a substitute for something else.
I’ve grown up as a vegetarian (initially for religious reasons and then for moral/health ones), and I’ve only had a meat substitute once in my life. It honestly wasn’t that good and tasted a bit like cardboard to me (a soy hamburger patty that I covered in a copious amount of other tasty stuff). The idea that people willingly eat this is beyond me, but Americans have a habit of willingly eating fake food, so I suppose fake meat isn’t that far off.
I don’t understand the need for a meat substitute if one is trying to be vegetarian or vegan. There is a plethora of satisfying, vegetarian meal ideas out there, and many cultures thrive on the vegetarian diet. Not eating meat shouldn’t feel like a burden; it should be satisfying. I think that eating meat substitute is a bad habit wrought from laziness. It takes more effort to make a wholesome meal than it does to buy something quick and easy from the grocery store, and the price for the convenience is poorer health.
My dog would touch that “facon” with a 10-foot pole – he likes the real thing far too much.
Lots of people don’t stop eating meat because they don’t like it. They have other personal, ethical reasons. Meat substitutes seem like an easy way to get their protein without changing their diets or cooking habits radically.
However, most people don’t stop and think about what the meat substitutes are and what they might do to their body because we’re a convenience-based society, and they’re damn convenient.
But beckus, if there are other sources of protein, why not just eat them as they are? Why make them look and taste like meat first?
Taste: again, because people don’t necessarily give up meat because they don’t like the taste. Often, they enjoy the flavor but have other ethical reasons. So these fake meat products allow them to, in a sense, continue eating as they’d been eating. They don’t have to miss the flavors they loved, or the dishes they loved, or learn to cook and think differently in order to embrace the lifestyle change.
Look: I think that’s all just marketing funk. A novelty that caught on. I agree, it’s kind of creepy.
As a meat eater and a fake meat eater, I’m happy to comment on this one. When I eat fake meat, it’s usually not because I want meat. It in no way tastes, looks or feels like real meat, and I think that’s widely recognized. But whatever it tastes, feels, or looks like, I like it. Maybe it’s an acquired taste, but I think it’s really good. And I look for the ones that use organic, non-GMO soy and natural flavors, whatever those could be.
Evan, that’s a reason I can understand. But I don’t think it’s “widely recognized” that the fake stuff is “in no way” like real meat. The manufacturers sure want us to believe it is.
One huge, glaring ommission from this post is the lasting impact of factory farms on our environment, health, and resources. That alone is enough to trade up “real meat” (laden with hormones, bacteria, and cruelty) at least a few meals a week. The current demand for meat products is very, very unsustainable.
Jeffrey, that was omitted intentionally. Did you notice where I said I was specifically not talking about why people didn’t eat meat?
The question was: If you don’t eat meat — for whatever reason — why would you eat something made to resemble meat?
But since you brought it up, there are sources of meat that aren’t hormone or bacteria laden. I won’t debate “cruelty” with you, since some people believe there is no way to slaughter animals that isn’t cruel.
What a strange coincidence! I am in the process of converting from a [humane] meat eater to a vegetarian and then, I hope, a vegan, and I’ve been reading this book that really encourages you to eat fake meat. Now, I like veggie burgers and those fake chkn nugget things – not because they taste like meat but because they are like fast food in the freezer that you don’t have to feel [as] guilty about – but I am extremely skeptical of eating soysage and tofu ham slices. And soy cheese? Forget it – I’d rather have no cheese. But maybe this will change once I’ve been off the real stuff for a while? I’ll report back and let you know.
I’m a ‘mostly vegetarian,’ because I don’t like meat – particularly red meat. I will occasionally eat meat when it is in something and there’s not another alternative available (e.g. I’m visiting friends and they serve spaghetti with meat sauce), but I stay far, far away from the fake stuff. If I don’t like meat, why would I want to eat a mere imitation!
The trap too many vegetarians fall into is to prepare the same meals they grew up with/they used to prepare, but with meat substitute or no meat at all, and that simply isn’t satisfying in a lot of cases. There are so many wonderful foods and cuisines out there where meat simply isn’t the central part. Once I finally found a couple of good cookbooks that built different meals, rather than the same meals from different parts, food became much more enjoyable.
Great post. I was some form of veg*n for more than a decade & I’m still recovering from the super junky diet I ate during those years, including that facon.
Now, we laugh about it. But it’s totally true – there’s no point that I can accept as valid. It’s not healthier or better for anyone or anything.
Oh by the way, when my kids are pretending to cry or be sad we say, “You’re fakin’ like soy bacon.” So, I love the use of facon here. Love.
I am a meat restrictor. And it’s for a variety of reasons. And it’s for a variety of reasons why I’m not a full vegetarian. Anyway. I was just talking about this to a chef friend of mine. The city I live in is…unique. We have an extremely “hippy-dippy”/”crunchy-granola” area of town. In some neighborhoods, you’d be hard-pressed to find a carnivore. Yet we haven’t had a full on vegetarian restaurant in a few years. Tons of great places with great vegetarian/vegan/gluten-free offerings but not a place entirely no meat. One just opened up finally this past year. I was very hesitant to try it because the entire premise seems to be meat alternatives. Don’t get me wrong, I love (some) veggie burgers and grilled portabella mushrooms. But not because I need a substitute for meat. Because I like the taste. I would rather have a great veggie entree than something that resembles something else. And for that matter, one of the myriad reasons I don’t eat some meat is because of the taste. So why the heck would I want something that tastes like something I don’t like?
I also concur with the seeming hypocrisy of forgoing meat and animal products for health reasons and then eating chemical substitutes. If it’s for ethical reasons, while I still disagree with the degree it’s being taken to, I at least don’t get the hypocrite vibe. And, sorry for another tangent, but that reminds me of a funny story. My step-brother worked at a smoothie place. They had one with apples in it. This woman came in, and after making sure it could be made with soy milk, asked if the apples had been picked from the tree or off the ground. She wanted to make sure the apple hadn’t been hurt. She didn’t get the smoothie.
I was veg*n for about a decade until I went to Peru to do my anthropological fieldwork. It’s so rude in Latin America to refuse food that I knew it would be unfeasible to do so. Moreover, when a friend lovingly raises an animal in her own home on table scraps, vegetable trimmings, and alfalfa, then slaughters it and cooks it in anticipation of your visit… turning it down would be inhuman(e). One of the first meats I ate in a decade was guinea pig. I had them as pets as a kid. Guess what? They make better dinner than pets, but they’ll never catch on in the U.S. because they’re a pain to skin — and insanely cute, of course.
I started the diet to lower my triglycerides, and continued it because factory farming was repugnant (from a health standpoint, and a human rights standpoint, more than a moral one) and more pointedly, because it’s a lot better for the environment to avoid meat. (This was before “everyone” knew that a locavore diet avoiding factory farmed/nonorganic meats was better for the environment, and before alternatives were widely available.) Nothing about that has changed: if you are an environmentalist, you will avoid factory farmed, and perhaps ALL, meat. Period. I am grinding other axes right now and haven’t returned to vegetarianism, but I still think it’s morally right for reasons of environmentalism. I’ve never been an “ethical” veg*n by most veg*ns’ standards: for reasons of cruelty.
I never gave up meat for the taste, and it doesn’t conceptually repel me, as it would some other veg*ns. That said, it tastes a bit too intensely gamy if you’ve been avoiding it and I soon lost my interest in the real thing. So I gave a LOT of fake meat products a whirl. They can be great, if prepared at home or with ingenuity. On their own, they’re usually just like any other prepared food: horribly salty, bland, and texturally questionable. But one or two are stand-0uts that I still reach for when I crave them. And I still really like some soy products in their own right: tofu and tempeh are awesome, and still find their way onto my dinner table relatively frequently.
Tofurkey is vilely salty, but the dressing is delicious. Really delicious. It isn’t pretty, but then, most veg*ns don’t want to see a dead bird when they want a festive meal — they KNOW they’re not eating meat and that’s fine with them. Fake bacon makes a fine BLT (the homemade stuff is superior to the bright red “snausagey” looking stuff) — and bacon tastes truly, truly disgusting to a veg*n palate. I had some crumbled into the filling of a pita while veg*n and despite a total lack of moral repugnance, still had to pick out all the crumbles … it was overwhelmingly salty, gamey, and greasy. Yuck. (I like it again now in moderation, but still avoid the “extra-thick-cut” stuff.)
Regarding the phytoestrogen issues with soy: there’s a lot of hype and controversy on this subject. Results suggesting that soy is injurious to human development or digestive systems have been unconvincing. There are always other factors that cannot be isolated out which may provide the effects noted. Studies of human beings are notoriously improbable to perform in isolated laboratory conditions — and the few examples we have of such studies are infamous and wrong. For every study, there is an equal and opposite study. And do you really feel better about hormones and antibiotics not approved for human use, which show up in conventionally produced meat? Yuck. Bottom line: I still feel safe eating soy, even while pregnant; however, I am varying all my foods, including protein sources, both to “eat the rainbow” and to avoid too much of any one toxin.
That said, the school lunch programs are scandalous anyway: fast food, sugary drinks, the lowest grade of meat considered edible by humans, and side dishes of questionable nutritive value (seriously, kids already eat the same meat prepared for other institutional use: i.e. prisons) — and not enough time to eat the fiddly bits, so most kids eat only a portion and go hungry without a square meal. And never fear that Junior will eat anything s/he doesn’t find appealing: the kids just don’t, and most of the food gets thrown away. I highly recommend the fascinating blog “Fed Up With The School Lunch Project” at http://fedupwithschoollunch.blogspot.com/ for a peek into the “quality” nutrition that soy products may augment.
All of this ranting is to say that there is a place in the American diet for fake meats. Athletes I know sometimes eat a lot of “burger” patties to give them extra protein without extra cholesterol; veg*ns are social animals too, and like to eat things their friends eat on holidays and at other times — even if they don’t simply miss the “fix’ns” that a “not dog” or “veggie burger” can provide a familiar background for; environmentalists might like something reminiscent of meat but not feel able to waver in their commitments; like me, others may simply like some of these products enough to keep them in dietary rotation, side by side with the real thing.
excellent post. very well said.
Linda, I love that you have thought about all the various issues, and are able to acknowledge their value without being strident about any of them.
Thanks so much! I always fear that I’ll come across as strident on the internet, when I don’t feel like being that way.
By the way, the vast majority of the veg*ns I know are repelled by most meat substitutes; humane veg*ns in particular don’t actually like the mouthfeel or resemblance (such as it is) to meat. I was speaking only for those of us who do like (some of) the stuff.
Also, I forgot totally to say this: the WORST thing about those fake meats is that many of them are not vegan and some of them are not even vegetarian. The bigger companies, owned by larger, non-veg*n interests, are the most notorious offenders in this regard. This really alienates a lot of the community.
Personally, for me, the “fake meat” foods were a crutch, or a transition food if you will. I gave up meat for a lot of reasons, but at first I still missed the occasional burger, so I used the substitutes to get me through.
Another reason I used to eat that garbage was because I didn’t know how to prepare vegetarian dishes. Fortunately, I have discovered an amazing vegetarian recipe magazine, and I don’t miss the taste of meat at all.
Now, I’m trying to eat completely veg*n (no milk, no cheese, no eggs), which is much harder because I luuuuuurve me some cheese. Unfortunately, cheese does not love me, if you get my drift. So I use the tofu or rice cheese to help me transition off, the end goal being to eliminate all processed foods from my diet at some point.
What’s with not spelling out vegan?
It’s shorthand for “veg[etaria]n or veg[a]n” — the community uses it as their inclusive version. Totally vegan diets and lifestyle are making massive inroads into the (formerly heavily ovo- and lacto-) vegetarian community; have you checked out the veg*n cookbook section of a bookstore lately? So it’s a polite way for the vegan maybe-majority to acknowledge similarity with less strict vegetarians.
Hi Drew, long time reader and lurker but this post has moved me to comment. I’m a vegetarian, have been for around 12 years now. I eat a certain amount of meat substitute products, particularly Quorn. I understand your confusion, but you should understand that a lot of people aren’t vegetarian because they hate meat. I used to be very fond of some meat, particularly chicken and turkey, but I made the decision to stop eating meat because I found it unethical. I love animals and found it hypocritical to talk about how much I adored my cat while tucking into a chicken sandwich… (But that was my personal decision and I wouldn’t try to foist it upon anyone else.) So these days I like having a quick and easy form of protein that looks and tastes reasonably like meat. For instance, you can get Quorn slices that look a lot like chicken – they’re great for sandwiches. (I find sandwiches tricky – I want something quick when I’m making lunch, I want something satisfying (not just salad sandwiches!), I try not to eat too much cheese for health reasons, and I don’t like non-savoury sandwiches for lunch. So meat alternatives are an easy and filling protein.)
And if my family are having a meaty meal, it can be nice to have food that’s similar to theirs. So if they’re having spaghetti bolognaise, sometimes we’ll make a small pot of sauce separately using ‘fake’ mince instead of beef. That way, I feel we’re eating similar food. It can get frustrating to always eat completely different food to everyone else.
I eat a varied diet, and I don’t live off meat substitutes; I eat a lot of beans, nuts, some dairy etc. But there are good meat replacements out there (as well as some terrible ones! That fake bacon doesn’t look at all appetising.) and I enjoy having them as part of my diet. From the variety of meat replacement products available, plenty of other people must feel the same.
* snort * hee hee hee Drew this is classic. Thanks for posting..and for calling out soy for what it is. Bacon, done right, isn’t unhealthy…fake bacon? Just a tragedy.
Proud carnivore who raises 98% of her own meat – your pal,
ohiofarmgirl
AWESOME that you raise your own meat. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone had the chance to know where their food comes from? So jealous.
As the writer of the facon post you’re discussing, I’ll tell you why I eat it: That’s what I had as a kid, when I was kosher and there was no other option. (Kosher “Beef fry” not only being too expensive for my parents’ budget, but also not even remotely bacon-like.) Facon *smells* like the real thing, which was enough to fool a kid who didn’t know any better. So it’s comfort food, of a sort, to me. It’s the only fake meat I eat, and I’ll probably continue to do so, occasionally, until I die. So maybe using me as your example wasn’t the best idea–I’m hardly representative of the larger fake-meat-eating universe
(BTW since I still haven’t allowed pork into my home, I now buy turkey bacon instead.)
Debbie, you’re the perfect example. When I said, “Why would you eat it?” that was a serious question. I really want to hear the reasons people have.
“I was raised on it” is probably one of the most common reasons people have for the things they do, but I’ll admit it hadn’t even occurred to me that it would apply in this case.
About 10 years ago I went on a vegan diet because I was trying to control inexplicable weight gain. Despite having a food blog, I am not much of an eater portion wise and it sounded like a step in the right direction. Having a husband and 4 kids at home (devoted carnivores all of them), I used the fake meats and cheeses for myself just to survive meal times. Some were good tasting, some absolutely repulsive. My kids would run out the back door if they smelled tofu dogs cooking. The diet nearly killed me literally and I won’t bore you with the details. Turned out I am hyper sensitive to sugar and carbohydrates. I switched to a diet of real meat, butter, cheese, eggs, full fat dairy, low starch vegetables, and low sugar fruits. I dropped all the extra weight and my health is much better according to my physician I have been seeing for years. I get a lot of crap from people who don’t understand and try to “convert” me back to a vegetarian diet. I’m polite until they become not so much and then I have no compunction about telling them to stuff it as I’m cutting into my rare t-bone purchased on sale at the grocery store. But then again, my internet handle is Aunt Cranky. ;o)
Fristly, Linda S, loved your post – really interesting and informative but not preachy. Thanks very much.
This is a really interesting post for me – I was a vegetarian for about two months when I was a child, but my sister stayed veggie until about three years ago. I absolutely love meat – the flavour, the texture, everything. But only *real* meat. And over the last couple of years I’ve started restricting the amount of meat I eat, as a health thing. However, I don’t substitute the meat I’m not eating for fake meat. For too many reasons – it smells awful, it looks like my 16mth old niece got a piece of cardboard and coloured part of it in fluoro-pink (yes, I’m talking to you, Fakon), the texture is freakin’ awful and, this is the biggy, why would I need to? On days that I don’t eat meat I eat something else – pasta, cous-cous, rice, pulses, lentils, beans, fish, seafood, eggs, tofu sometimes. I was a chef for years and, unlike many, veggie food doesn’t make me bizarrely angry, it excites me – it’s a challenge to make something incredibly tasty using just veggies and grains, not the fall-back flavour that comes from meat.
I have two theories as to why there is such a proliferation of fake meat (apart from the fact that people find it convenient to have it in the freezer). Firstly, I think that these huge conglomerates have done an impressive job of making people think that fake substitutes are better than the real thing. Hence, people eating Fakon, margarine, Quorn etc. Now, I’m not an expert but I have done a lot of reading about these kind of things, and it’s a really important topic for me, but it’s common sense and accepted wisdom that the real thing is way better than the fake (and that works for just about every part of life, btw), but *in moderation*. This makes sense to me – I watch my weight but I’d much rather have 1oz of really good, really mature farmhouse cheddar than I would have 2oz of half-fat, plastic pap white cheese. I’d rather have 1/2tsp unbleached Fairtrade golden caster sugar than I would 2tsp of Splenda. I’m fine with that. But we live in a culture of more now and that brings me to my second theory. People aren’t good at moderating their behaviour so they like to try and sneak an alternative. Ok, so I can’t eat 25 rashers of streaky bacon, but I can eat Fakon until it’s coming out of my ears because it’s not meat, not animal fat, that must be good for me. That seems to be becoming the accepted attitude now. People don’t like to feel as though they are denying themselves. But people are too quick to believe the hype, to take things at face value, turn over the pack, read all the unnatural ingredients, the chemicals and additive. But people think that low calorie/low fat is ‘healthy’ and that’s missing the point. Healthy is balanced, moderate, varied – a little of everything. A bit of meat, a bit of fish, a bit of carbs, lots of fruit and veggies, ease up on the processed stuff, a treat every now and again.
Oh, rant over. Sorry! Hope I don’t come over too preachy or pious, but it’s so important. I’m in the process of adoption and one of the most important things to me is how I will feed my little one – I want my child to eat fun, wholesome, real food – cooked with love and eaten with joy. And not a rasher of Fakon in sight!!
Thanks Drew, another great post.
Hear hear, on quality above quantity! Great post.
Heh. Yeah, the words “too much butter” in that order…I can only think of Julia Child’s admonition that one can never have too much butter. In any other context it’s a baffling statement. Kind of oxymoronic.
I grew up on margarine, and guiltily made the transition to butter about a year after I gave up meat… and have never, ever looked back. Yay butter!
Amen to the butter.
I also grew up on margarine, though I also know that that happened because it was a lot cheaper than butter. Now, not so. I switched to a butter spread a few years ago purely because I liked the taste. Now I’ve switched to full butter to get away from canola. And I still like the taste!
I also discovered my mum keeps butter around for some types of cooking because margarine “just doesn’t work”.
Lotsa comments from people avoiding meat for all sorts of reasons. I happen to like my meat and was thrilled to actually begin to learn how to properly cook lamb (and beef) so that it is genuinely nice, and not merely tough. For some reason, my mother doesn’t appear to have quite picked that up in all her years of cooking, which is odd as she’s normally quite a good cook.
My sister can’t stand the taste of lamb, though, which is why she prefers chicken.
I came back after reading your newsletter, and my crackpot theory for why it inspired so many comments is because it is an issue near and dear to your own heart, which is making more conscious decisions about what to eat.
In the same way you may find irritating people who rag on butter and bacon as unhealthy, vegetarians are another group of “conscious” eaters who, at least in my experience, constantly feel they have to defend their choices. US citizens still, as a majority group, eat meat.
Plus, your readership has more of a selection bias: many of the posts on your blog are dedicated to manufactured food, and how unhealthy it is. Your eating is not just a practical decision, but it can also be a political statement. Would it help to think of vegetarians as same principle, different food choice people?
I’m an ex Ohioian and miss everything but the winters.
When I moved out to California to live with my late sister, she would let me buy frozen dinners with meat in them but would not let me bring raw meat into the house. She became a vegetarian for ethical reasons, not because she didn’t like meat. I think it was vegetables she didn’t like because the only vegetables I ever saw her eat were potatoes and peas.
She’d call me a Barbarian because I wouldn’t change my diet, but (unfortunately) I’m still here and she’s not (died at 58).
Debra, if she didn’t eat meat, and didn’t eat vegetables … what did she eat?
I don’t eat much meat or fake meat for this reason: It’s expensive and I’m too cheap! I have a friend however, who eats fake meat or fake fish with almost every meal. I didn’t get it so I asked her why. She explained that she doesn’t believe in killing animals for food but that her boyfriend wants a traditional meal every might. For them, the fake meat is a compromise – they have meals that look (and taste?) like meat lasagna or whatever, but no animals are harmed.
Get this. There’s a whole store for fake meat here, but, hey it’s Berkeley.
Not everyone likes just one thing. In all my years I have never seen anyone say “I gave up meat because no meat tastes good”
So if you like the taste/texture of meat, and you like being friendly to animals and the planet, you have to decide what you like more. So someone who likes not killing animals more than they like the taste of meat will sacrifice in one department to support their greater intrest, while still satisfying their lesser interests.
I agree, I tried the soy substitute back in my early teen years when soy was popular, never liked it and couldn’t understand how people would eat it.
Now i love meat, all kinds.
This may not apply to the majority of the folks commenting here, but still–this is the #2 question I get when I out myself as a veg*n–a very close second to “Then how do you get your protein??” Some people like fake meat products, some don’t, but what I’ve never gotten is why so many meat-eaters so interested in the question of yay/nay on the facon? There is a market for the product. Producers are happy to make it. Some people like to eat it. I might wonder the same thing about this or this but I don’t go around asking meat-eaters about them all the time as if they would obviously have an opinion or be “in the know.” I don’t mean to be a total crab, but…most of the veg*ns I know really do get asked this question A LOT.
Touché.
I was vegetarian for 12 years, and I ate some meat substitutes. What I found over the years though was that the foods that were trying to be most like meat were those that were most disappointing. I still love a burger made with a non-meat patty, but I like those that are bean and grain mixtures (often with cheese too) not pretending to be meat. I still love a gardenburger on occasion, but I have them with bacon now (real bacon). People laugh, but it’s a combination I found one evening when I really wanted something a bit more filling than a BLT, but without going all the way to a full, heavy burger.
One thing to note though, I don’t ever buy gardenburgers at the store. If I’m going to make burgers at home, I’m going to use beef that I’ve carefully seasoned and prepared with a panade that doesn’t give me that heavy feeling. So maybe this isn’t really an answer to the question, since my “meat substitutes” have always been more “veggies and such shaped into similar shapes to traditional meat options”.
I don’t eat meat because I’m against the factory farming that goes on. If I can kill it and cook it myself, I would have no problem with eating it, but since I don’t have the time, (and possibly the heart) I’m a vegetarian. I used to like the taste of meat, so the meat alternatives sometimes fill in nicely, despite the weird processed goo ingredients.
My sister-in-law and her boyfriend were self-described “junkfood vegans” – the only animal they were willing be harmed was themselves. Apparently Gushers are vegan – who knew? And they were overweight, unhealthy and unhappy. But self-righteous! I don’t have a beef (hehe) with veg*ns in general, but that was ridiculous.
I understand part of the soy conversation to be fermented vs. non-; fermented soy is evidently a lot easier to digest & more nutritious.
Also, HuFu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hufu
I’m stealing that line:
“The only animal vegans are willing to harm is themselves.”
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