http://www.kelloggs.com/cgi-bin/brandpages/product.pl?product=4970&company=23
140 calories
3 g fat
.5 g sat fat
5 g carbs
23 g protein
Is this for real? I’m about to get it, but I’m having trouble believing there isn’t some hidden drawback. Besides the high sodium content, I see none. Has anyone ever tried this? How does it compare to real steak? Sorry, 23 g protein for 140 calories in a non-supplement food just seems unreal to me. I want more information.
They’re actually really yummy. We have them all the time. I like them teryaki-style with rice and veggies. Compared to real steak, I dunno… I mean it’s not meat, so don’t expect it to taste exactly like meat. It’s a pretty decent substitute if you’re used to the fake-meat stuff already.
My favorite is still Tofurkey Italian Sausage.
They’re mighty tasty and the chik’n strips are also good. I can’t compare them to flesh since I haven’t eaten flesh in well over a decade.
Well, one drawback is that it’s highly processed food.
USDA database has data on all kinds of real steak. The numbers you quoted are for serving size of 85g (= 3oz). A lean cut of real steak with the fat trimmed off seem to have very similar numbers.
Why is that a drawback?
My sense is that you’re better off eating food that’s been processed as little as possible, although I have no science on which to base this idea.
I’ve enjoyed all the Morningstar Farms products that I have tried (especially the sausages that they call Breakfast Links). The steak strips don’t really taste like steak to me, but they are quite tasty.
Moving thread from IMHO to [del]The Breakfast Nook[/del] Cafe Society.
Basically, what you’re looking at is commercialized wheat gluten.
Not too bad a product, but you’re paying a premium for a low-rent version of something that should be cheap cheap cheap. Why pay for Kelloggs’ marketing machine?
What you want to do is going to any asian or health-food market and pick up some Seitan, which is the same thing minus the bloated corporate jiggery-pokery.
Seitan is available in a number of forms. The most economical thing to do is to buy plain dried seitan. There’s an extra step in the preparation that way (marinading/reconstituting it before cooking) but it’s cheaper and you have the benefit of having more control over how you season it.
If you prefer convenience, you can also buy it frozen or in ready-to-heat cans.
It really is one of the Best Foods Ever – as versatile as meat, and toothsome and tasty. I was vegetarian for a decade or so and seitan became a big part of my diet – and now that I’m omnivorous again it’s still a big part of my diet. It’s awesome.
Snarf!
And apparently minus the appetizing photography. Not to incredibly crude, but that picture makes it look like something I’d wipe off my shoe.
That is strictly a photography thing, of course. Food photography is notoriously tricky – and the photographer there seemed to take a simple documentary approach to the existence of seitan. Not dressed or prepared at all, not coated in glycerin, clinical lighting – nothing’s going to look particularly appealing that way, not even Jenna Fischer. (And you can rest assured that the Morningstar product would look similarly excremental if you just took it out of the package and snapped away at it.)
I’ve often wondered if folks would snap up products like Puritan Irish Stew if they just put a snapshot of the product on the package. I mean, people intellectually know that it looks more like greasy, sweating dog food than the little plate of heaven of the tin – but it still goes into the cart. 
