30-year vegetarian here (with a few weeks off when I was at basic training, and I didn’t have a choice with the field chow); I became a vegetarian because I don’t like meat. At first I used to eat it occasionally, when I was at my grandmother’s, or something, and I didn’t want to offend her, but it got to the point where I didn’t eat it often enough, and it started to make me sick. When I realized I had to eat it at basic, I eased back in. And hoarded MRE peanut butter.
Anyway, I don’t eat a lot of fake meat, but when I do, it like it for itself. I love Tofurky, for example, and I hated turkey when I was a kid, so clearly Tofurky doesn’t taste that much like turkey.
My point is that for a lot of vegetarians, fake meat products is just a way of varying how you prepare soy; it’s not a way of actually trying to have meat. Occasionally it’s a way of “joining in,” such as when there’s a cook-out, and someone includes some tofu hotdogs, but we don’t really need them to exactly duplicate meat. Personally, if I wanted that, I’d just eat meat.
That all makes sense to me. And it makes sense if people who have moral qualms about meat, or allergies or something, eat fake meat and hope it tastes kinda like meat.
What doesn’t make sense is people who eat meat choosing fake vegetarian meat and hoping it will taste like meat. Or vegetarians saying, “you should eat this, it’s just as good”. I don’t understand those.
And when a kosher friend came to a barbeque, I happily threw the garden burger he brought into the grill (with some protective aluminum foil, so it didn’t actually touch the grill or anything.) And I bought kosher burger buns, so he could “join in”.
I’ve read that for kosher purposes, vegetarian burgers are considered to be meat when it comes to the prohibition of putting cheese on burgers. (And non-beef meat is considered to be beef in that situation as well.) But that’s a topic for another thread.
I’ve not yet found a “fake meat” product I’ve cared for or was even remotely convincing except for maybe whatever TVP gets used to mimic finely ground meat in stuff like canned chili. But you could probably put tiny bits of dryer lint in that and it wouldn’t taste any different. stuff like Quorn just is spongy meh.
the Morning Star “burger” patties are really good (esp. the spicy chipotle black bean ones I could only find at Costco) but as their own thing, not as a legit “meat replacement.”
there’s a place near me which serves that now. I’m going to give it a shot at first opportunity.
I’ve tried most of the various meat substitutes, I do like the Quorn products. Most of the products seem to taste better as part of soups or with sauces etc.
However…
I recently had two burgers, from http://beyondmeat.com/products/view/beyond-burger which I have decided are the closest yet to a “real” hamburger…(depending what the heck real is, after all the fillers fillers more fillers and additives to the meat are added). I thought they were almost to the 90-95% range of tasting just like a mediium rare, charbroiled burger…ad one a good bun, onions, ketchup, relish etc…It was REALLY good:D
$6 for two. I havn’t tried the companies other products yet.
I’d be interested in trying the impossible burger but almost everything I’ve tried in the fake meat category was a poor substitute. I use to make tacos from vegi-chicken nuggets cut up with fake bacon and that was OK. It was an attempt at a BLT vegi-taco.
I use to get a vegi-burger from a vending machine at work that was really tasty but it wasn’t because it tasted like meat. It was good on it’s own merits. It was made from rice and mushrooms and other stuff that just happened to be between a hamburger bun. I think the vendor made it themselves. I’d buy that on a regular basis if it was in stores.
I don’t like fake meat, other than of course Spam and good quality hot dogs. The cheap hotdogs almost taste like they are made of tofu sometimes.
I don’t even want to eat lab grown meat, that just isn’t natural to eat meat grown in a test tube. What is wrong with feeding a cow and treating it decently then eating it when it is about two years old? At least it gets to live, if we plant grains to feed the masses, it would mean more fields. That also means we would have to kill all the animals that would eat these grains. It is better to live for a few years than not to live at all. I like the taste of an older chicken much better than the ones that grow super fast. It is hard to find one that has lived for a couple of years now, unless you get an old laying hen.
I like the Morning Star black bean “burgers”. They don’t taste a thing like meat but for what they are they’re pretty good. I throw them on my George Foreman grill and then add the usual burger toppings for a quick dinner.
That’s an interesting product. I wonder what the actual impact of it is, as compared to a dead cow…around here, raising meat is one of the few things people do with land to make money other than cover out with houses, so there’s that.
It violates my general food preference of “I want to be able to see what plant or animal died to give me this meal”, though.
This fake-meat nonsense is strictly for Westerners. I have known Indian vegetarians who won’t touch anything that even looks like meat, because just the sight makes them want to puke.
There are two possibilities: A meat substitute will either taste like meat, or it won’t. If it doesn’t, then what it does taste like might still be good, and so a meat-eater might still be interested in eating it for variety. And if it does, then why wouldn’t a meat-eater eat it?
Of course, in reality, there are many other potential reasons to choose one or the other. There might be a price difference, which might go either way. You might be planning a meal for a mixed group of vegetarians and meat-eaters, and it’s easier to just have the same menu for everyone. Nutritional factors other than protein might be relevant, which might favor one or the other. A vegetarian meat-substitute might keep for a longer time in the refrigerator, or in an unrefrigerated lunchbox. A person might not be a strict vegetarian, but might still want to decrease their consumption of dead animals for one reason or another. In any event, having a greater variety of products available, from a greater variety of sources, and with a greater variety of flavors, is always going to be a positive.
I think there are plenty of people out there like me who are dedicated omnivores, but have some issues with the environmental impact of meat and the meat industry as a whole. Anybody who knows me, knows that I love meat, but if there were a fake meat product (or even lab produced meat) that was close enough to the real deal and economically viable, it might actually push my diet more in that direction. For example, I would definitely have that Impossible Burger again if I could find it commonly and it was about the same price as a regular hamburger.
Not all vegetarians will find fake meat unpalatable: While some don’t eat meat because they like it, and obviously they aren’t in the market for fake meat, there are also some who like meat just fine, but abstain for health or ethical reasons. And not all meat-eaters will find it lesser, and even if they do, they might consider that an acceptable trade-off for other benefits like those I mentioned above.
I personally find fake meat pointless. If I want a vegetarian dish, I’d rather just have a good vegetarian dish (or vegetarian variant on a dish) than take a fake meat and try to pretend it’s meat. For example, I have a vegan friend who makes a great Shepard’s pie variant that uses mushrooms for the ‘meaty’ part, and while I wouldn’t mistake it for a lamb- or beef-based version, it was a great dish (not just ‘great for a vegetarian version’). I would almost certainly not like a variation that crumbled in some fake meat and tried to pretend it was a regular one, plus the fake meat would almost certainly cost more than either the real meat one or her variation. Yeah if someone made a fake meat that cost the same (or less) and actually tasted like real meat I’d have no problem with it, but from my experience none of the fake meats manage that, the best ones are just ‘well it doesn’t taste bad, and it’s kind of like meat’.