I have zero problems with them. If they weren’t more expensive I’d eat more of them. whether they taste like meat isnt my main concern, just whether they taste good.
the plant milks are just nice to have as I can’t have dairy and none taste all that much like milk. I also like the cheeses, as sometimes I want cheese, especially Mac and cheese or the occasional cheese on a sandwich or pizza or sprinkled on spaghetti.
I like veggies but often I feel like there is something missing if they are all I get, unless I get something that fills the meat part. it doesnt have to be too close, but it needs to be there.
of course I’m also not vegan. but I suspect there are vegans like me.
(I really can’t afford to be vegan even if I wanted to be. not with my dietary restrictions and mental state.)
I agree, until I lived in Asia for a few years and saw what they did with tofu. It wasn’t a substitute it was the STAR.
My partner won’t touch anything if it alludes in anyway to meat. However I enjoy the faux meat products in recreating dishes I loved before going vegan. And it’s been long enough that I am happy with the results of how plant based ‘meats’ taste. I’m a big fan of everything Field Roast and Gardein does, in the plant-based department.
To this day, I still can’t make any faux-meat dish taste as good as the tofu from the corner Chinese place. I don’t know what they do to make plain tofu so amazing. It’s probably the lard
Same! They are much more “daily edible” than Beyond and Impossible, for whatever reason. What do you think of Daring?
I used to eat half a bag in the airfryer after work every other day. I’m not sure if it was a recipe change or just bad quality control, but the texture was like unchewable rubber. I had tried maybe 3 bags more after that, and without improvement I haven’t tried it since. (It’s been a few years, perhaps I should go bad and see if its back to how I used to like it)
Huh. Interesting. I had vaguely noticed something similar, but brushed it off thinking it was my fault — we had changed air fryers several times in the same timespan. Maybe the product itself actually changed?
We still use the unbreaded kind in pastas, and that works fine (when there’s enough moisture)… but yeah, cooked too much, they can definitely get rubbery.
I switched to almond “milk” a few years ago for health reasons. Most of the brands still call it “milk” except for Trader Joe’s, who call it almond “beverage” LOL.
We get veggie burger patties for me, I think they are Impossible brand, and my family calls them hockey pucks, and never fail to mock me when we have burgers. The only reason I eat them is so we can all enjoy preparing and eating the same meal together, and besides, on my veggie burgers, the toppings are more of what I am into than the patty - I load it with a veritable salad and heavy on the spreads, too.
I agree with the OP about vegetable-based foods trying to be what they are not - most of them are awful, like the fake cheese. I have tofu occasionally and while I treat it like meat when I am cooking, I hold no pretense that it is not, and enjoy it for what it is. I like the tastes and textures of most vegetables anyway, and don’t need to pretend I am eating meat to be satisfied.
I think this is why i don’t like the fake meat products. When i eat a burger, i might add ketchup, mushroom, and cheese, if I’m going all out. Or, if it’s good burger meat, i might just put it on my plate and eat it with a fork and knife.
If i happen to get a decent burger with salad on it, i remove the salad before it goes soggy, and eat it as a side salad. If i get a burger loaded with sauce, i look for something else to eat. Because I’m not eating that.
I like tofu. I often get a side dish of agadashi tofu at the local Japanese place. I like it in stir fry, too. But i don’t think I’d it as a meat substitute, just as another ingredient.
So far pretty much over the board, I should’ve done a poll! The most common reason seems to be in the want something like the animal food for a recipe adaptation but close behind is intolerance or allergy to the animal based product. A smattering of ethical, the needs of others being cooked for, and prefer the taste (milk).
Impressed that no one is thinking these highly processed animal food replacements must be healthier than the real item because plant is better. Surprised that there are no like meat but environmental concerns votes (meat uses up lots of resources and is a big greenhouse gas contributor).
I’m lactose intolerant. For a bit I was using Ripple, a pea protein based “milk” beverage and it was the closest to taste and feel to milk I found. Also lasts in the fridge for a long time. Now I use kefir and Greek yogurt with my cereal. Does NOT taste like regular milk but I like the flavor. Low enough in lactose that I can have a cereal bowl worth no problem. And I am very convinced of the health advantage of the dairy matrix and of fermented foods as part of my nutritional pattern.
This I do not understand. Beans, seeds, nuts and peanuts and butter of same, with a variety of vegetables, fruits, and things like brown rice, whole grain pasta, potatoes, whole grain breads, are a very economical meal plan.
And “plant forward”, that is including modest amounts of dairy, eggs, fish (including cheap but nutritionally dense tinned sardines and mackerel), some meats and chicken too, just not as the only star, not huge portions, and not every day, staying away from the highly processed options mostly in all aspects, is not much more expensive. Plenty of heathy patterns that fit that.
I am willing to see data saying the fake meats are environmentally superior. But price is often a good first-order estimate of environmental cost. And they aren’t any cheaper than meat. And they are highly processed, which means a lot of resources are used to make them.
Lentils are environmentally superior to meat, by a huge margin. They are also really cheap. I’m not convinced “beyond” is.
We’re being advised to avoid highly processed foods so given that, something that starts off as a plant but is extensively modified to pretend to be a meat product seems like something to be avoided.
I’ll echo Reply’s sentiment – vegetarian for over a decade here, and rotating between tofu and chickpeas gets old. Would I love for there to be more options that aren’t just ultra-processed fake meat? Especially in restaurants? Yes, please, more of that. But in the meanwhile, we seem to be backsliding. I’ve noticed fewer “real” vegetarian options at restaurants since covid.
Maybe the fake meat industry is killing restaurant menu innovation, I don’t know. But fake meat options aren’t as plentiful as they used to be either. More and more we’re having to choose restaurants that specifically cater to plant-based eaters, as a lot of “normal” restaurants seem to be giving up on the vegan market.
Anyway, complaining about plant-based meats feels like omnivore privilege. It’s tough out there, especially as a vegan. Easier as a vegetarian but still, I’ll take what I can get.
Or that pretend to be something you’ve never had. Skip the vegan steak and lobster, go for the vegan T. rex and trilobite. (For desert, vegan Indricotherium milk ice cream.)
A vegan friend took me to a fancy vegan restaurant in nyc, and they had tons of options, none of them based on fake meat. (At least, none that we ate, and none that i remember.) A lot were mushroom based. Beans come in a variety of flavor profiles. Black beans, butter beans, black eyed peas, chick peas, and lentils all taste very different, and i use them completely differently.
I eat meat because i like meat, not because there’s a lack of variety in non-meat options.
Of course there’s variety. A lot of it is more time consuming to make at home than typical American meat-based meals, and beans are kinda beans after a while. There are great vegan restaurants, and then there are tons of places where your only option is some dry-ass black bean burger.
Trying to eat exclusively vegan for, say, 3 months is pretty eye opening.
I don’t know that you’d necessarily be disappointed in faux-meat products because my understanding is that some of them are very well “engineered”, if I may use the term. But I agree with your general sentiment. I’m trying to cut down on meat consumption, especially beef, but I have no use for fake meat. If I want to avoid meat, then there are wonderful dishes that are naturally vegetarian, especially as you say in Italian and Indian cuisine. I can be perfectly content with a nice spaghetti dinner with a good meatless pasta sauce and lots of freshly grated Parmesan (and maybe mushrooms sauteed in garlic butter – yum!)
I’ve seen this claim before on these boards, possibly from you, perhaps you can provide some background information on this (i.e. a cite)? For example, what kind of processing are you talking about? Chopping and grinding? Or treating with chemicals?
I expect that most veggie burgers are chopped or ground and then shaped to fit on a bun, possibly herbs and/or spices are added. When that is all that is going on, I can’t summon up any particular feelings about it. Nor about various plant-based liquids with the sobriquet of “milk.” But then I eat meat and dairy and eggs. I’m probably not the target market for your rant.
My spouse is pescatarian and lactose intolerant, and we eat a lot of vegetarian meals together.
The “fake meats” we buy are specifically in order to have, as @Reply aptly described it, the “corporate” taste. It’s a replacement for processed food, not a replacement for natural food.
We are always stocked with Quorn chicken nuggets, not because they taste like chicken, but because they’re a reasonable facsimile of chicken chicken nuggets, which are only vaguely about chicken in the first place. They’re a savory, salty snack or meal that goes good with a dipping sauce.
She also eats Tofurky brand Italian sausage, as a flavorful protein addition to rice or pasta.
On occasion we’ll do veggie versions of breakfast sausage, or ground “beef” for a pasta sauce. There’s one or two places nearby that do impossible burgers, and we will get those sometimes as well.
As far as various “milks” go… I think these fall into a different category, as they are not marketed as tasting like milk, but rather as a functional alternative. With that in mind, I enjoy oat milk in a chai or my cereal. I like a cleaner, spicy chai flavor, and the more watery (than milk) oat milk is a good vehicle for that. I prefer cow milk for cereal, but oat milk will do in a pinch.
I also suspect (but don’t know) that many of these highly processed animal food substitutes have comparable negative environmental impacts as the meat version does. And yes also on the highly processed not likely being healthy bit.
Wanting a close enough experience of the animal food when can’t because of intolerance or allergy, or out of ethical concern regarding the animals or religious practice, that makes sense.
And my experience of no real food options. Again I’m an omnivore just trying to eat more plant forward real food and it is disappointing how limited the options are.
We used to go semiregularly to a Chinese Islamic restaurant from work. They had this awesome bread that was made by pouring the batter in a big round on an iron grill. They were vegetarian, so all of the other dishes we are were either vegetable or fake meat. They were tasty, but we were really going for that bread.
I’ve tried a number of substitutes in the past that I didn’t find palatable (yeah, fake cheese I’m looking hard at you), so I don’t eat them hardly at all. If I’m going to eat vegetables, I’d rather eat them closer to their natural form than contorted into a meat substitute. But even though I don’t eat meat every day (and certainly not at every meal), I can’t see myself not eating real meat for the rest of my life.
