How do you feel about vegetarian products made as ersatz animal based foods?

Cafe Society
1

Oat “milk” came up in another thread and inspired me to rant a bit about vegetarian products that are designed to be as much like a specific animal based product as possible.

The vegetarian based “milks” are the lowest tier example. (And @puzzlegal noted that the precedent of calling a beverage made of almonds “almond milk” and using it as a let’s pretend dairy substitute during Lent at least goes back to at least Medieval times.)

It had been in my mind after my wife and I went to a new local vegan place and most of the options were vegan faux meat products. Fake meats, chicken, even fake shrimp. We are not vegans and do eat meat but we also like vegetarian meals and eating “plant forward” at least somewhat. The restaurant was a disappointment. I like my vegetables to not be ashamed of what they are and trying to pass as animal based foods. The high level of processing often involved in trying to pass makes them less healthy than unashamed vegetarian food and possibly even less healthy than the animal based food it is trying to pretend to be.

Who is the market for this stuff? Anyone here?

People who prefer animal based products or who are just very used to have them as the focus of their diets but who are wanting to cut down on them for any of variety of reasons (ethical, environmental, health) and who find actual vegetables, legumes, seeds, nuts, etc. unappealing or insufficient?

Specific health cases of true food allergy or intolerance or some sort?

Trend followers?

2

My thinking is that since you already know what the original meat product tastes like, you’re inevitably disappointed. So instead I think you’re better off just eating foods that are not pretending to be something else. Some cuisines like Indian or Italian have wonderful dishes that are naturally vegetarian.

3

“Convenience vegan”* here and I think one of the points you may be missing is that a lot of the point is just because some kind of substitute is needed and/or to know what something goes well with.

That is to say, to me, “veggie burger” means something vegetarian that will fit in a burger bun and taste good with onions and ketchup. And likewise with veggie chicken I assume it will work with the same kinds of sauces as white meat. Though I agree it’s a bit weird if a lot of effort is going towards making something look like flesh.
And the same with restaurants and having a good expectation of what I am getting.

\* I’m vegan, but give myself a pass in a couple situations like when I’m on holiday (I still try to go meat-free).

4

I don’t care for milk, so have used soy/now almond milks for cereal. They taste better.
I eat meat so have no desire for meat substitutes but a brand, cant recall the name, has a great tasting bean burger.

5

I’m in scouting, so we have need to make meals for groups of people from time to time. As we have a wide variety of participants, that includes ethical, religious, and allergy restrictions. Faux meats do a nice job of allowing someone to make a traditional dish, like chili, that has the taste expected by the omnivores, but doesn’t exclude the vegetarian, vegan, or kosher folks.

A vegetarian stew or bean soup would be similarly inclusive, but the faux meat expands the recipe book, especially if the cook isn’t a vegetarian and wants to modify one of their standby dishes.

6

I occasionally buy Quorn products which are mushroom-bsed - the chicken substitute stuff is quite good (my daughter likes the nuggets) and it’s similar to processed chicken in taste and texture. It’s not ever going to match an actual roast chicken or that sort of thing but it’s fine and it keeps well. Their beef products are a little less convincing - the meatballs are decent enough but the mince can be very dry if you don’t add oil or sauce (because obvs there’s no fat in it). Note that Quorn isn’t vegan because it includes egg white as a binding agent.

That said, I’ve also tried some meat substitute products that were absolutely dire, the most recent being a vegetarian “bacon” that was just gross in texture and taste. The uncooked fakon did look like uncooked bacon but that’s where the resemblance ended.

So you’ve just got to try some of these and see what you like, if only to mix up your menu a bit. And I’ve tried (and continue to drink) a range of milk substitute products (mostly oat milk and almond) because too much dairy upsets my system.

7

I’m looking forward to lab-grown meat products disguised as vegetarian options.

Eggplant-Inspired Cutlets™ will be tops on my list.

8

My lovely wife can’t eat dairy, among other iatrogenic food intolerance issues acquired in adulthood. Oat milk matters for her coffee, cereal, and cooking. There’s a vegan fake Boursin that tastes good and makes it possible for her to have ‘cheese’ and crackers. Trader Joe’s has a pretty good non-dairy tzatziki. Some non-dairy ‘ice creams’ are fine. You don’t have to eat this stuff; she does if she ever wants anything dairy-like or want to make, say, cookies.

9

One of my fellow students in my Anthropology of Food classes was a vegan, and he felt the same. He said he didn’t have any desire to eat animal products, so never felt the need to purchase vegan products designed to mimic them.

My guess is this stuff is marketed at people who a vegan-curious or omnivores going out with their vegan friends. I hated tofu for years because people kept telling me it was a meat substitute. “Oh, just flavor it however you want and you won’t know the difference!” Baloney! Now that I no longer expect tofu to be something it isn’t, I like it much more than I used to.

10

Not me. I’m an unabashed carnivore with vegetarian and vegan friends. When i cook for vegans, i make lentils and chick pans and roasted root vegetables. (All of which i enjoy.) And maybe a nice fruit salad for dessert.

I’ve tried most of the vegan milks. Oat and coconut are probably my favorites, and there are places I’m okay using them. Soy tastes nasty to me (which is funny, because i love tofu) and almond is always disappointing because i expect it to be richer and more almond-y. Unless I’m dining with vegans, i drink cow milk and eat cow yogurt. And all the cheese i buy is made with the milk of some mammal.

I find things like “vegan chili” to be sad. They make me unhappy that the cook is modifying my food for the vegans. Maybe we could have deconstructed tacos and the vegans could just leave off the beef and sour cream, and go heavy on the beans and guac? Or maybe there could be two pots of chili?

But i admit my vegan repertoire is limited. I can probably only cook 4 or 5 nice dinners that are completely vegan. I imagine fake meats provide variety in vegan households.

I’ve served veggie burgers at the request of guests. But i note that portabello mushroom caps fit nicely on a burger and taste fabulous.

I’m looking forward to lab-grown meat so I can eat meat without killing animals/confirming them in nasty living conditions.

11

Some of them are OK, but I’m mostly not a big fan, especially of the ones that are trying to be textured like meat. (Trader Joe’s masala burgers, OTOH, are really good, but they’re not pretending to be anything other than a potato patty with some other vegetables and spices.) Generally, I feel the same way about them as I do about nonalcoholic beer: I am not the target audience, but I’m glad the product exists.

12

I once had some coconut oil (really a fat, as it was solid at room temp) that i had to use up, and i made shortbread, using a regular shortbread recipe but replacing the butter with coconut oil. They were really good, if you like coconut. (My husband doesn’t, which is why i had to get rid of the stuff. I gave away a lot of the cookies.)

Shortening that’s made from palm oil is chemically almost identical to lard, and works really well in recipes that call for lard, like pie crusts. For anything but a meat pie, i prefer it to lard, as i find the porky flavor of lard distracting in, say, a blueberry pie. (I prefer a butter-based crust, but i make vegan crusts when I’m entertaining vegans.)

13

I’ve been vegan for nearly two decades, mostly for environmental/ethical reasons. My partner has been vegetarian for a bit longer than that.

The fake meats are something we occasionally buy just to mix in to standard omnivorous recipes (say, broccoli and fake beef or pasta and fake chicken). For us, it’s not really that we miss meat — we don’t, and we frankly don’t even remember what real meat tastes like. It’s more that there’s not a lot of variety in traditional vegan foods. You can only have so many variations of rice and beans before you get sick of it… rice and red beans, rice and lentils, rice and edamame… the fake meats add variety by being easily substituted into traditional omnivorous recipes, especially now that you can easily add fake egg (“Just Egg”) and cheese (various brands, but usually Daiya).

Most of those brands don’t really seek to pretend to be meat altogether, just offer an alternative processed product that mimics the “corporate” rich taste that omnivore foods typically have, especially when you eat out — that usually means higher in salt, sugar, fat, etc. As a result, they are indeed often (much) less healthy than a whole-foods diet (plant or animal based). But sometimes junk food is simply tastier. They’re also a nice change of pace from the powdered kibble we usually eat because we’re lazy.

Overall, I feel significantly less healthy than when I ate lean meats, but back then I also carefully counted every calorie and exercised 3-4 hours every day, on top of being 20 years younger. After that, there was a period of about 3-4 years when I ate nothing but farm-fresh organic whole foods from our local CSA and that felt great, but every meal took like 2-3 hours to gather and prepare. I’m much lazier now, and my body is failing in various small but noticeable ways. I attribute much of it to our poor vegan diet (yes, it’s totally possible!).

As a species we’re not really meant to be vegans; we don’t have the ability to process high amounts of plant matter the way herbivores can. Legumes are a stopgap, and the fake meats are a convenience food. Probably a lacto-ovo vegetarian (dairy and eggs) or pescatarian (fish) would be simpler, healthier, cheaper, and much tastier. I can’t bring myself to change, though… factory farming is still too icky, fish stinks, and by now I’m lactose intolerant. Shrug. I just consider myself another lab rat in the long experiment of human diet (and capitalism)…

As an aside, there were some Covid-era vegan brands like Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, and Oatly that are nearly bankrupt now. Those did target omnivores rather than specifically vegan-vegetarians, over-expanded during covid, and have crashed down to penny stocks. A couple of interesting short documentaries on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvkgSJuGPfY&t=1s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZtD-LIbn-M

Personally, I typically avoid Beyond and Impossible, because they are a little too meat-like in bad ways (too greasy and unhealthy, makes you feel like crap afterward). I prefer the “2nd generation” faux meats from before them, like the Gardein & Morningstar stuff, or the Daring Chicken that isn’t so unhealthy.

As for Oatly, it tastes good, but the Trader Joe’s oatmilk (or any store generic) is almost as good and much cheaper. They all lack the protein of cow’s milk, though, so it’s really more of an oat “juice” than anything I’d consider “milk”. Soymilk is protein-rich, but doesn’t have the same creaminess and umami flavor of oat unless you add in a lot of carrageenan (seaweed extract) or oils, which is what the omnivore-targeting brands like Silk do. Traditional, pure soymilk tastes like, well, liquid soybean — you can typically get the less-processed kind at Asian groceries or tofu shops.

14

I’m a big fan of vegetarian meat substitutes.

Who is the market for this stuff? People who want to eat something that tastes like meat without having to kill an animal to do so.

Sure, most meat substitutes don’t really taste a lot like real meat. (Though, they’ve been getting better. Impossible beef really does taste like real ground beef.) But they are at least reminiscent of meat, and are vegetarian.

15

I’ll be the contrarian here and say the only way you can get me to eat more vegetables is to disguise their taste as much as possible. If they can make a meat substitute that saves me a couple of bucks making do, all the better.

I realize that puts me in the minority even in my own family, but that’s life.

16

Heh, probably not. The fake meats are like three times more expensive than the real stuff, for maybe half the nutrition.

Anecdotally, in other countries, the state apparently eometimes subsidizes fake meat products (e.g. Finland). When I was there, every grocery store had a decent selection of fake meats, and a box would cost maybe $2-$3 USD (vs $7 or $8 in the US). They were tasty, healthy, and affordable enough to be staples. Meanwhile in the US, most of our fake meats are investor-funded and need to pay off their extremely expensive food science R&D, making them quite out of reach for the average household, especially nowadays.

17

If I’m going to eat meat, I want real meat. The veg imitations are getting a bit better… they used to taste like sawdust! But nowhere near convincing yet.

If I’m going to eat vegetarian, I’ll go for something like Indian, as Dewey_Finn said.

18

In 1973, my college started serving Bontrae (General Mills) spun soy meat substitute in a variety of dishes. I believe that the only products were ersatz ham and chicken. My memories are, of course, a bit colored by my woebegone youth, but I think that the Bontrae products really hit it on the nose as far as balancing the “fake meat” versus “obvious vegetable” aspects. The product was in basic cubes, but it had a decent flavor and texture. Even now, I’d probably prefer it to the “veggie burgers” and other simulated meat products I encounter from time to time. For example, I really liked it in a stew or soup.

19

Can you still get that? I’ve never seen or heard of it (Bontrae).

20

I don’t think so. I looked for it after I graduated and couldn’t find any. It was great as chicken a la king and similar dishes. Pretty good mouth feel. At the time, I got the impression that the college started serving it because of the rising movement against the abuse of animals/livestock. It was more political than due to health consciousness.