Vegans, vegetarians....fake meat eaters

[PhoenixFemmeFatale]

Why are there so many fake meat products in the vegan/ vegetarian section of the grocery store? Why are non-meat eaters pretending to eat meat? I don't get it.... Eat some bacon or DON'T - Why FAKE it!?!

[maryanimal]

I think it's all psychological PFF .. They subconsciously want to eat meat, even though they think it's cruel to eat animals. They really want sink their teeth into a thick juicy steak, medium rare!! Yummmy!

[Ano]

I eat that stuff around family that isn't comfortable with me being a vegetarian... It allows me to blend in, so to speak.

[maryanimal]

I eat that stuff around family that isn't comfortable with me being a vegetarian... It allows me to blend in, so to speak.

Actually I did the vegetarian thing for almost a year once, my friends and family accommodated me. It's a shame you can't be yourself in front of your family. Next time bring your own food!

[Eric]

I like the flavor, nothing died, that's good enough for me. You don't like it, don't eat it,. Getting yourself all frothy because people make different choices than you is stupid - and that's whether you're a veg or a meat eater.

Christ, this is really turning into the year of "fill-in-the-blankier Than Thou"



Oh - I also have no subconscious desire to eat real meat, after 26 years as a vegetarian the idea of me eating a slab of dead animal is repulsive to me. I don't push my views on anyone else, and rarely talk about it, and my boyfriend is quite the omnivore, which is fine with me. My vegetarianism is by my choice, and my only rule is that he can't cook fish in the house unless I get to throw up in front of him, because that smell is nauseating. Of course, I've also thrown up to the smell of popcorn, one of the most disgusting smells in the universe... *shudder*

[maryanimal]

So, my post was not to be taken seriously, with the exception of me being a vegetarian for almost a year. What other people eat, or don't eat is none of my business. I was responding to the OP's post and her ranting about vegetarians. It was never my intention to judge anyone.

[Eric]

Don't worry MA, just one of those things that caught on a swamped day.

[Sic Pup]

One of the things I've learned from cooking for vegan groups is that there are many rationales, some don't eat meat in the name of animal protection, some do it for the health aspect and some appear to be doing it to come off as morally superior (or any combination of the three). I do see the irony in eating super processed products and calling it healthy, though. But I also think we all need to grant ourselves permission, on occasion, and do something a little decadent that doesn't compromise our values if it gives us pleasure. Leave the self-denying stuff to the religious zealots, masochists and self-haters. I have been known to take Beyond Meat strips, marinate them in hot sauce, dredge them in flour and a mixture of herbs and spices and deep fry them until they're golden and crunchy. Hell, even I, an unapologetic carnivore, will eat that stuff. Let's remember potato chips and Coca Cola can also be a vegan diet.

Pollan puts forth the theory in his new book, Cooked that in as much as the emergence of agriculture has allowed us to progress as a species, the control of fire and the process of cooking our food thereby breaking down proteins that would be unattainable otherwise that has allowed out brains to develop is equally as important. It's a fascinating read and highly recommended to anyone who cares about food.

For the record, I'm not morally opposed to blowing the living crap out of defenseless kernels, dowsing them with desiccated seawater and drowning them in the coagulated seepage from nasty cow teets. That said, I do find the act of smashing a potato unnecessarily violent*.



*but it's never stopped me from doing it before and most likely won't in the future

[graidawg]

one thing has always mystified me is fake meat vege sausages. i mean vege sausages are great and lets be honest even meat sausages are largely veg. so why make one that pretends to be meat? just have your quorn bacon or whatever or a vege sausage.

personally i have no issues with vegetarians or eating vege food (even fake bacon) but faking a sausage just annoys me.

[Zhust]

Why are there so many fake meat products in the vegan/ vegetarian section of the grocery store? Why are non-meat eaters pretending to eat meat? I don't get it.... Eat some bacon or DON'T - Why FAKE it!?!

If I read this correctly, you make no distinction on what you eat — you don't raise, slaughter, and butcher your own pigs, you don't get bacon from a rancher or butcher, you don't buy any specific brands of bacon over another, you don't check expiration dates, and you don't even bother to check if it has been stored properly — but simply see "bacon" and buy it?

But if my facetious rhetorical question is to be answered in the negative, then you also have rationale for why you eat one thing and not another. And if so, can't we make equally presumptuous questions about your decision-making process?

[BBadger]

We've humans after all. Being natural omnivores (no matter what nonsense some vegans may spout), some foods will just taste good as long as we can convince ourselves we're okay eating it. It's kind of like, you know, eating human babies... serve me up some babies with a great sauce, don't tell me what it is until after I've eaten it, and I'll tell you it was some damn tasty baby -- even if I (probably) wouldn't choose to eat it in the first place. It could also be like finding diet foods that replace non-diet foods but taste roughly the same -- people want the flavor, but not whatever "bad" thing they're seeking to avoid in their foods.

[lemur]

[PhoenixFemmeFatale]

Leave the self-denying stuff to the religious zealots, masochists and self-haters.

I love this advice!

[maryanimal]

Don't worry MA, just one of those things that caught on a swamped day.

I figured that Eric! *hug*

[GreyCoyote]

I stopped cooking for my veggie/vegan/whatever friends a long time ago. I support them in their choices, but if they want something special for their "needs" cooked at my house, they know where the pantry is and I invite them to help themselves. Sometimes the results are really spectacular and I wonder why the hell I even need meat. Other times I would rather have a terminal case of amoebic dysentary than take another bite of the swill they call "food". And if they dont like my kitchen, they can aleays bring their own food, and I am happy to supply the plates and silverware.

Life is just too short to futz with this stuff and to try to make everyone happy. It cant be done. So I respect their preferences passively by cooking what the majority will eat. Anything else is S.E.P (somebody elses problem). It gives them the opportunity to share their foods with us carnivores and they seem happy with that.

[lemur]

I don't get it.... Eat some bacon or DON'T - Why FAKE it!?!

back when i was running a rather large playa kitchen (225+/- people) we often ended up with about 30% as people of 'special needs' in terms of their diet (which isnt a shock when so many people are coming from west coast to a hippie festival).. and maybe 15 people total as ones with real food allergies that might result in Serious Shit.. such as peanut allergies or shellfish ..

in planning out meals we went out of our way to provide everyone something to eat.. something that would be 'the same meal' for everyone.. so if we had breakfast we would provide the real bacon and sausage and pancakes for the majority and where possible a meat substitute/some substitute that fit the meal for everyone who was a vegan/vegetarian/etc

so for breakfast the regular people got the regular meat and normal pancakes.. the vegans got the fake bacon and a vegetarian 'breakfast scramble' and the gluten free people got the buckwheat (or whatever it was) pancakes..

for the most part this worked out... the main idea was to make people feel a part of the meal, and so that they werent eating the same thing every single day.. for some of the more, shall we say.., fringe people, who had some more extreme choices in what theyd put into their body we would tell them that they were on their own for certain meals and they understood and were OK with it...

all of this was OK! and worth the smiling happy faces.... and of course, worth making people feel a part of the meal.

the only thing that ever really burned me.. and really has nothing to do with meat subtitutes, and more the whole vegan/vege thing in general.. were the few times that someone refused to eat because we didnt have dedicated pots and pans for vegan/vegetarian food... this really annoyed me! .. (while i do understand some would not take part in a meal with this objection for religious reasons i have some doubt it was applicable in all of the instances i encountered)

we took great effort to avoid cross contamination, great effort to sanitize all surfaces and great effort to make everything clean and sanitized before and after we did anything... along with the initial effort/expense to ensure that people who werent the majority had something to eat... and sometimes for some folks that still wasnt enough! our pans werent good enough?! bleh.. that really sucked and revealed a mindset of some of the folks in this, i guess its a subculture now, that was a bit unsavory and yuckie.

so.. back on topic.

i think people eat fake meat to be a part of the meal... it suits our cultural ideas of what meals are in america.. we eat bacon for breakfast, burgers for lunch and turkey for dinner...... so, we have fake bacon for breakfast, fake burgers for lunch and tofurkey for dinner..... Its a way to (whether knowingly or not) still keep the american cultural meals while rejecting the meats that often go with them.

[Elderberry]

I eat that stuff around family that isn't comfortable with me being a vegetarian... It allows me to blend in, so to speak.

Probably wise; that way you don't have to put up with their chiding you about it.

[Bless]

My girlfriend is a vegetarian and all I can say is thank god for fake meat.

[Eric]

the only thing that ever really burned me.. and really has nothing to do with meat subtitutes, and more the whole vegan/vege thing in general.. were the few times that someone refused to eat because we didnt have dedicated pots and pans for vegan/vegetarian food... this really annoyed me! .. (while i do understand some would not take part in a meal with this objection for religious reasons i have some doubt it was applicable in all of the instances i encountered)

I'm a long term veg, and this annoys me too. The only dedicated pans we have are our cast iron ones, for obvious reasons. He's got a small meat one, mainly for bacon & sausage, we have a big one for everything else. Having some Orthodox Jews in the family I understand about the separate dishes thing, but, unless your pots & pans are porous, like cast iron, there's no reason other than superiority for a vegetarian to do it unless they live with an omnivore who won't clean up after themsleves.

In SF there is such a huge range of what people choose to eat that most places are accommodating, and most gatherings with friends make sure that everyone is covered with something they can eat. It's just not an issue, and rarely ever comes up (this thread is the most I've talked on the topic in ages).

Though, I will say that when my family visited a while ago I whipped them up a batch of my chili. I was putting something away & came back into the room & my mom and sister-in-law were looking at me quizzically, and asked if I was a vegetarian except for my chili. Doesn't even have any fake meat in it - I just spent a long time working & experimenting to get the flavor & texture of the kidney-bean chili I grew up on. Being a vegetarian is no reason to eat shitty food.

[lemur]

on that subject.. of secretly vegetarian food..

the year we made vegetarian taco meat with textured vegetable protein.. and other stuff.. along side the regular beef tacos made using the bulk COSTCO style 'taco seasoning' mix.. both of them were equally good...

from my tasting of a lot of the various meat substitutes (so that i knew if things were 'ok' to serve) i found that it seemed like TEXTURE was the most important criteria for the meat substitute being right.. ..not the taste... the bacon didnt really taste all that much like bacon, but it had the right texture to be bacon (it wouldnt be out of place on a BLT.. the fake bacon) ..same went for the burgers and sasuages and shockingly.. the fake turkey (for the day that we would do thanksgiving dinner on the playa)


i grew up a midwest meat and potatoes type person.. i barely eat my veggies as is.... and the same went for most of my friends/family/pals.. all my trips to burning man, and the strong west coast contingent (over 60% of my camp in various years) was my first real exposure to this group of folks..... sometimes its odd.... sometimes i wonder why exceptions, 'just for tonight' cant be made for some things made/served with love..... I mean, its not like alcoholism! where ya might fear getting back on the booze for good.... but whatever it may be.. its certainly a varied and widely complex issue that cant be pegged down so easily.. perhaps we/I will never know why people want meat substitutes!

like almost everything in life.. some people go in to it and are reasonable.. and some people go overboard and arent really all that reasonable.. along with a mix in between..





apropos of nothing.. and perhaps the oddest experience I had running a burning man kitchen was one of our campers who walked off the job because he couldnt or wouldnt, for some unknown reason, add more vegetable oil to some breakfast potatoes that he was tasked with cooking...

things were going grand until the person next to him, who was also cooking with potatoes with some vegetable oil, offered him the bottle and politely suggested his pan was a bit dry and it could use some more.. dry pan guy said no...when i politely agreed with his coworker and told dry pan guy what we were using it for and why it needed more oil (they were steaming and turning in to mashed potatoes, not 'searing' anymore..like one might like on crisp breakfast taters) he said that he 'couldnt add more oil' and that he was sorry but he 'would have to stop' ....and so he did....i doubt i will ever understand that one.. he wasnt mad or reacting harshly to the suggestions.. it was clearly an objection to adding more oil.. perhaps he didnt agree with how we were doing it.

[BBadger]

While I'll usually plan a vegetarian component -- i.e. enough non-meat foods in the group food that people can still eat -- for those exceptional cases requiring separate pans, or no oil, or even allergies: those people need to cook the food for themselves. I'm not going to guarantee or certify anything I cook is going to lack certain ingredients down to the molecular level. If it's so damn important it puzzles me why those people would trust outside heathens to ensure their strict standards.

[Sic Pup]

Being a vegetarian is no reason to eat shitty food.

This.

I had to do a lot of cajoling to change the mindset that the vegan options for pizza could only be on whole wheat or multigrain dough. You make the pizza to order, you have the white dough are you worried about the cost of the extra five letters on the menu or just set in your thinking of what is and what isn't proper? Isn't it enough to have self-imposed limitations than to add to and embellish them? The chef at one point made a comment that lead me to believe he thought white flour was not vegan, he was also ignorant on honey and the way some sugars are processed (w/ animal bones).

My old kitchen had separate fryolators for veg and protein which makes a lot of sense when they fry fish my new kitchen uses one fryer for everything BUT they filter the oil ever day and change it more regularly since it's much busier. But the one unit is more due to space limitations than anything else.

As an aside my wife/daughter don't go for a lot of the meat substitutes because of texture if it's too meat-like of slimey they want no part of it (such as seitan). I can get on board with that intellectually but when you won't eat portobello I think you're ready for the guys with the white jackets. They eat mostly the various burgers and anxiously await for Quorn to offer vegan varieties (which they have in the UK). They like Beyond Meat as well but the marketing is aimed at omnivores and the gmo and gluten intolerant folk. I can understand why one would want to have a broad a customer base as possible. That's illustrative of another dynamic as well, if you label something as vegan you get an automatic refusal (if not a downright ewww) from certain groups of omnivores.

ETA- regarding refusal to add oil - was it canola? Maybe he was trying to limit the use of GMO sourced product (soybeans aren't soybeans any longer)? Or the fat he was objecting to?

[Eric]

If it's so damn important it puzzles me why those people would trust outside heathens to ensure their strict standards.

Radical Entitlement - it's not just for Burning Man anymore. There are lots of people who think they should always be accommodated, regardless of the reason - not just in food choices. Yea, 'Muricans!

I have a dairy allergy & have to avoid it like the plague on the playa, it's my job to read the ingredients on what I bring, it's my job to be aware of what I'm eating, and, when I'm shitfaced on a Thursday night & say yes to a grilled cheese sandwich, it's my job to put up with the consequences of that decision.

[Savannah]

I'm an omnivore, but I limit my meat consumption for health reasons.

I do sometimes eat the M. Farms faux sausage patties--because I actually like them. (Not the maple ones.) Good flavor. They keep well in the freezer pre-portioned + make a good work breakfast when paired with a Greek yogurt. The "ground beef" by the same brand is pretty good and almost distinguishable from fast food-style ground meat (better, actually). It makes a satisfying cheapie burrito.

The most difficult thing to mimic about meat seems to be texture. This is why I only seem to like fake meat whose textures aren't so hard to duplicate: sausage, ground meat. (Meatballs might be okay, too.) i.e., dishes that already involve meat being broken down and rebuilt. Heh!

Fake bacon is terrible, though.

[canexplain]

My gf is highly allergic to any pork products so we watch that close. It was funny though, just last month we went to this Mexican market/restaurant in Hot Springs Ark. There wasn't a single person in the entire place that spoke a word of English. I though that a bit odd. What we had to do is make "little piggy faces" and she caught on. I was a vegetarian for 10 years, vegan for 7. I eat meat now so for me it was/is just a choice in life at certain point.

[PhoenixFemmeFatale]

It was funny though, just last month we went to this Mexican market/restaurant in Hot Springs Ark. There wasn't a single person in the entire place that spoke a word of English. I though that a bit odd. What we had to do is make "little piggy faces" and she caught on.

I've been to places like that - Part of me always wonders if I'm being set up and they're all bilingual and getting a laugh at my expense.

[FIGJAM]

"Accept no substitutes!"

[Sic Pup]

If battery operated boyfriends are okay then I reckon faux meat must be generally acceptable.

[Savannah]

Just don't get 'em confused . . .

[Eric]

Fake bacon is terrible, though.

Absolutely the only fakon worth getting close to your mouth is the Morning Star brand. Even my omnivore boyfriend thinks it's good, and he eats the real stuff regularly. All the rest suck, and not in a way I enjoy. Same thing with "chorizo" - only one that doesn't suck is the Field Roast "Mexican Chipotle", again the omnivore boyfriend - sorry, for this the Mexican Omnivore Boyfriend - actually loves it. He grew up with the real thing. Both have good flavor & texture, which is pretty much what it's about for me.

I think Lemur sort of hit the nail on the head - it plays to tastes I grew up on & enjoy, without the baggage of involving animals, which I do not enjoy. I know it's basically a chemistry set in a convenient package, but so is a twinkie...