Why try to imitate animal flesh with non-animal flesh? It makes no sense at all.

If you want to eat vegan, eat vegan. Trying to pretend vegan food items are meat is just plain dumb.

animal cruelty. It also is for people who want to eat seafood but have allergies.

This isn't just for vegans.

It might look like seafood, but it's something else. Why not eat what it is, rather than pretend it is something else?

The motives are good, but the deception is, well, deception. Why pretend?

a bit of an oxymoron.

I suppose the idea is to get people who are not vegans or non-meat eaters to try these food items. However, those very people are going to be the first to say, as I am saying, "that is not fish or shrimp or crab." They might try it, but are unlikely to switch to it. Instead, why not introduce new food items for what they actually are?

If someone presents me with vegan "toona" on sushi rice, I will immediately recognize that it is not "tuna" but something else, pretending to be tuna. I will know that I am not about to eat fish, but something engineered to look like fish and taste "somewhat similar" to fish. Why would I eat such a thing?

Instead, introduce new foods that have their own unique flavors and textures and call them what they are. I will gladly eat them, or at least try them to see if they appeal to me. I will not make a sandwich of "toona," nor will I eat sushi made of "ahimi." Why would I? If I crave sushi, then I want sushi, not something pretending to be sushi.

I have vegan friends. When they come to my house for dinner, as they often have, I create a vegan meal, built around actual food items that pretend to be nothing but themselves. I use my culinary skills to prepare them for maximum enjoyment and to please the palate. I do not present them as imitations of other foods. Why would I do that?

I reject imitation foods. I will not eat them. I will not serve them. I can prepare meals to suit any dietary preferences, using actual ingredients instead of masquerade ingredients. I will not do that, and efforts to convince people to do that will fail on a commercial basis. A pretend hamburger is not a hamburger, and will be rejected by people who want a hamburger. Instead, prepare a vegan dish that is delicious and appealing for what it actually is.

How simple!

have a thing about flameless candles, non-alcoholic wine and decaf coffee.

I have made some lovely vegan dishes for guests that don't rely on anything but being what they are.

creating a menu using it. It becomes more difficult if my guests are also gluten-intolerant or reject anything that might include GMO ingredients, but I can manage that as well.

Preparing food is both an art and a science. Presenting flavorful and well-prepared dishes doesn't depend on any single group of ingredients. Meat or other animal products aren't necessary, but can be used if people enjoy them. Similarly, it's not difficult to produce a lovely vegan dinner that generates compliments.

It's all food.

that closely replicates its tastes and textures. I love seafood, but it's becoming increasingly unavallable and the quality of what we can afford inland is usually poor.

I've also always been repelled by names like fake hamburger instead of pressed tofu, or whatever. Mock meat? For god's sake, go honest and give these creations some dignity.

A pet peeve has been trying to find good cookbooks that celebrating vegetables that haven't been purged of good recipes so they can be marketed to vegetarians and vegans. I now have a few secondhand, but know better than to look for them in Barnes & Noble these days, and the last thing I want is to go through it all over again with new sustainable foods.

So I'm with you all the way -- except for not eating anything that turns out to be good, and over time I expect some good stuff to be produced.

Maybe we should plan to call fake crab Craig or Carissa instead.

Crissa Meuniere
Lorian Thermadore

But I do enjoy a good black bean burger ...

Lots of folks might want to reduce their footprint, but find it difficult to just stop eating meat. The textures and flavors are quite ingrained in our palates. It can ease the transition to sustainability to have some familiar flavors available.

I'm learning that there are very good replacements, that aren't fake anything; just clever food preparation. For example, ground nuts spiced with taco seasoning, then simmered with some liquids (vinegar, water).

buy it it won't help the environment, human slavery animal cruelty and people with allergies who want to eat seafood.

If it tastes pretty much the same as seafood and it helps several causes you shouldn't be offended.

This stuff tends to have the words "Plant Based" all over the packaging.

We bought cookbooks instead and cook real things from scratch.

Fake meat and seafood doesn't taste like the real thing and it's silly to pretend that it does.

Like the other poster pointed out, some people can't eat seafood but love the taste. For instance, people who suffer with gout shouldn't eat shrimp. No reason they should be denied putting variety in their meals if the flavor and texture can be duplicated.

I'm simply saying that I don't eat food that pretends to be other food. If I eat vegan food, which I do, I eat foods that are vegan and are presented as what they are.

You've taken issue with why people eat vegan food that's made to taste like something else. I see no difference between that and adding salt & pepper to a meal or pouring tomato sauce on a bowl of pasta. Human beings alter food all the time. If that bothers you then so be it.

But please take the last word. I'm done.

They're approximations.

We have a vegan in the family and tried the fakes. Yuk. We bought cookbooks instead.

My husband has some conditions that greatly limit his food choices. Even the fakes made from soybean are out because beans are out except just once in a great while. So we made lists of what he can have and now shopping is easier than at first. Also, there are so many new choices from different ethnic cuisines available. But I've digressed from the original news in the op.

I know it is not meat that’s why I eat it.

I make BLT’s with veggie bacon. What’s the harm?

I said I don't eat food that pretends to be other food.

You might do something different. My point is that many people are not interested in imitation food. That's a marketing issue, really.

On the other hand, not many people would buy "Shrimp-Shaped Chinese Yam and Yellow Pea Nuggets," either.

Deceptive names for things are not good marketing strategies. It's simple.

"I said I don't eat food that pretends to be other food."

The food is not pretending to be anything other than what it is. People on the other hand try to pretend that it's other food. Point being, that food that other people are pretending to be something it's not should be okay to eat since it's got nothing to do with the food pretending to be other food. If someone says "try this, it's vegan Seafood", and if I try it and I like it then I will eat it dspite someone else pretending it's something that it's not. The vegan "seafood" has no say in the matter. It just is.

I have no issue with vegans, but if that is what they want, then they should develop unique dishes and not copy meat dishes. Just seems counterproductive to me.

as long as they only eat what you think they should eat.

I respect vegans that are totally into their food choices and don't give a shit about what meat eaters eat, other than the ethical reasons why vegans chose totally plant based diets over ones that have some part of it coming from animals. Anyone else is a wannabe, IMO.

I eat meat and have my own justifications and rationales for doing so, but if I go into a vegan restaurant, you better believe that I am not there to eat fake shrimp, hamburgers or hotdogs, I can get better choices for those in the meat world.

I am Vegan and I LOVE my field roast and tempeh rueben sandwiches, soooo good.

You see, people like different things. And that's ok.

You toss them to the dogs to keep them from bugging you for food. Hush, Puppies!

Because there is money to be made if they can figure out how to make it enjoyable to eat. People have all kinds of weird reasons for what they decide to eat or not eat. If someone can make a buck selling fake seafood, more power to them.

No appeal at all.

I do not get the fake meat thing.

On some school cafeterias is an item called "shrimp shapes." I have no idea of what the ingredients in them are. Probably surimi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surimi

I d do not understand wanting to eat something that tastes like meat if it is not meat.

it's psychological.

there is difference type of vegetarians and different reasons.
and even meat eaters can enjoy good chinese tofu dishes, just because it is delicious.

during certain religious holidays some people would not have meat, but the dish that can be made would taste and look like meat for psychological reason. Buddhist cuisine is the pioneer on making dishes that looks like meat and taste like meat.


of course, it doesn't make sense for vegans since they are vegetarians for a different reason.

wheat gluten. The most commonly known are mock duck and chicken. They're actually quite good, and make a good protein substitute in a variety of dishes. The mock duck is even molded to have a skin with simulated feather locations. You can find those products in any good oriental market, and they're fun to experiment with.

You can also buy the same wheat gluten that is not trying to look like some sort of poultry meat. It tastes the same and has the same texture. I like to use it, simply cubed and cooked in vegetable broth.

Tofu is not a pretend meat. It is, well, tofu, and comes in a variety of forms and textures. It is tofu, not something pretending to be meat.

For some, both products are not liked. The wheat gluten is gluten, and many people will not consume gluten, either by choice or due to gluten intolerance. Tofu is made from soybeans. Almost all soybeans today are GMO products. Not all, but finding non-GMO soybeans is getting more and more difficult.

When I prepare vegan meals, I generally focus on legumes to provide protein in recipes. Lentils, beans, peas, etc. I use a variety of mushrooms for flavor, umami, and texture. The full range of fruits and vegetables is also available, although making sure you're not using GMO varieties can be somewhat difficult in some cases.

Vegan food preparation is its own thing. The goal, in my case, is not to attempt to duplicate dishes that traditionally include animal flesh. Instead, I work with the available flavors, textures, and other features of plant-based ingredients. I never try to create a dish that is "like" anything. Even my popular loaf recipe does not pretend to be meat-based. It's nothing like meat, but it's wonderfully tasty.

Some "substitute" dishes taste really good. Some not so much.

Some vegetarian/vegan dishes that aren't meant to evolve other foods taste good, and some not so much.

I like the ones that taste good from either category.

but I might try this out of curiosity.

This is a good option for people who like the flavor/texture of meat, but abstain for ethical/environmental reasons.

so what's the big deal with a new presentation of something edible?

We eat with our eyes, nose and intellect before anything enters our mouth. If a food sounds like it is going to be flavorful it sets expectations. If offered slow braised tender beef served in a soft crustini with a rich cream sauce or shit on a shingle which would you choose? Pale grey meat straight from the microwave or golden brown and delicious?

I will eat anything once. If it has an attractive appearance, pleasant texture, pleasing aroma and flavorful mix of flavors I'll eat it again.

Eat a plant-based diet because it tastes good - it doesn't need to imitate something it can never match. People who are looking for the real thing are going to reject it becuase it will never taste like what it is imitating. And there are much more enticing vegetarian/vegan meals than processed crap that pretends to be something it isn't.

The last vegan restaurant I went to went out of business because the majority if its dishes were fake meat. People who insist that every meal has to include meat went once, or not at all. People who went looking for fine vegan cuisine didn't go back because it didn't serve fine vegan cuisine - it served largely (probably 2/3) fake meat.

If I want meat, I'll eat meat - not some imitation. I would no more eat fake meat than I would use imitation almond or vanilla instead of almond or vanilla almond extract in baking. I don't care how much better it is - it is still pretending to be something it is not, rather than celebrating what it is.

Why simulate something that is completely out of step with that culture?

vegan food. Don't copy something that is completely opposite culturally.

My absolute favorite restaurant, which happened to be vegatarian, closed becuase it decided it had to chase the meat market - and alienated its loyal customer base without replacing that base with enough meat eaters to make up for the loss, so it became unsustainable.

The vegan restaurant that I had high hopes for lasted less than a year for similar reasons. It never could convince the people who need meat in every meal that its fake meat menu was any good - meat eaters tended to eat it once and not return & it was so obsessed with fake meat that it never developed a robust vegetarian or vegan menu that celebrated the best vegetarian or vegan food.

So largely it is selfish. I want food that celebrates the best of plant-based food - and that's not fake meat.

I grew up eating meat. I was a kid in the 70s in Wyoming — we didn’t know what nutrition was, but we knew how to shoot things and eat them.

If you grow up with a slice of meat in your sandwich it is nice to have a slice of “meat” for your vegan sandwich. Burgers are good, and having a veggie burger allows me to enjoy them without killing a cow. Same with hot dogs and chicken patties and shredded pork tacos; I can make the compassionate choice while still having something reminiscent of the things I grew up enjoying.

You can get shrimp all over the pace from non "slave labor" outfits.

Maligning a whole industry in order to advertise for upcoming products lacks ethics.

The answers to these problems are government. Not questionable advertising in hopes of being the next massive profit center off the backs of unwitting Americans.

Exactly. I know there is shrimp that should not be eaten, you just have to find it.

I love the taste of shellfish. I just can’t eat it. If there is a vegan alternative then I may just try it.

Ooops. No one would profit from that one. Advertising works.

Watch just about any food commercial.

I don’t lie about that. Just as I won’t unethicall malign a whole industry just to fill my bank account.

I don’t eat fake meat very often but to me it’s a useful option and not a cop-out. I guess I don’t really understand why some vegetarians and vegans object to fake meat... sure, there are plenty of alternative foods that aren’t imitations of meat, but I like fake meat. Many people don’t, but I do.

Plus this is great news for non-vegetarians who worry about sustainability.

who are offended by the existence of fake meat.

That makes no sense to me at all, but I've noticed the same thing on Reddit too!

I'm allergic to shellfish, so I was thinking, "well, I may finally find an alternative. Let's click on the link and... oh, here we go-- triggered people trivializing something completely irrelevant to them. 'natch."

They better not try to charge me shellfish prices though

I've got a newish vegan (a few years) and he struggles to get enough protein. He also remembers the taste of meat. I think some of these products just add variety and protein without trying to be a stand in for real meat. I can't see the harm in it.

The rest sounds equally yucky.

Seems to appear in a lot of vegan products.

The ingredients in shrimp are: shrimp.

What is D-Xylose? That's not in shrimp, either.

Looks like it takes a lot of ingredients to imitate shrimp.

ETA: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/D-xylopyranose#section=Top

it is not one of the common saccharides in the human diet, though. It's not sugar in the sense that we recognize sugar, although it has a sweet taste. It's a food additive.

It's like 'almond milk'.

No one believes almond milk comes from a cow. That's just silly.

I love them. No meat whatsoever. And I love meat.

I had a party, and some friends ended up sleeping it off overnight. So we decided to have a morning hangover breakfast/gaming party. I walked to the local store to grab some stuff to cook, and all they had was morningstar sausage.

Man, that stuff was dryyyyyyyyyy. I even tried steaming it, and it just wouldn't retain moisture, making the texture so weirdly off.

I'll give you the chicken patties, though. They honestly aren't too bad.

I dice them up and fry em in corn oil til they're chewy then dust with flour and sage hit with tobasco, black pepper and scalding milk. Its damn close to the real deal.

I'll try that should I come across them again.

For whatever reason sage makes vegan gravies just pop.

tasty

Thank you for taking the time to come on here to tell us you're too cool for "fake" meats, with attitude. Good for you.

I hope these "fake meat" and "fake seafood" companies keep developing technology to create tasty alternatives to "real" foods. I see absolutely no problem with that. Zero. And I could care less what these alternatives are called. Unicorn prime steaks, Megalodon fish sticks etc etc.

"It's fake electricity because it's not from coal!! Now get off my lawn!"

Heaven forbid one seek to give those who enjoy meat products but have ethical qualms about factory farming and overfishing a cruelty-free alternative that tastes at least something like the original.

eating seafood is like playing russian roulette. You cannot tell where the 'fish' you're eating was caught, what species it is or if it's really even 'fish' at all without having it tested at a lab. There's so much money involved that 'most' seafood is intentionally mislabelled.

PCBs, DDT, radiation, Frankenfish etc, the oceans are virtual sewers.

Eat it, don't eat it. Whatever works for you.

There have always been mock meats, even before they became a marketed item. Tuna sandwiches from my kitchen are made of mashed garbanzo beans, nori, dry mustard & green onions. Burgers might be made with beans & walnuts. Is there any longtime vegan who hasn't made a nut roast of one kind or another?

For me, it's just for fun. I haven't eaten meat in over 30 years. When I stopped, there weren't many mass-market analogues available. Now there are. At my house, we sometimes might eat field roast or soyrizo for shits and grins. Why does anyone care?

Commercially-available mock meats were sooooo bad.

And really, anyone who gets all het up about how 'not dogs are food pretending to be something they're not' has never been served canned corn on a bun at a cookout.

There were two vegetarian restaurants in Chicago back then. Now there are more than 20 vegan restaurants in Chicago.

I do remember freaking out my friend in college making morningstar farm bacon one morning. He smelled and said "what the hell are you doing?" There just wasn't that sort of thing available back then. We had a good laugh when he realized what it was.

Blech. The bad old days-- seems some people would prefer we'd stayed there.

Cubes of plain tofu at the salad bar. You don't eat meat..then here is extra cheese!

there was some sort of hotdog from a can. I think it was soy but I can't remember.

I also don't see why this bothers some people.

Nooooooooo

my boss would open up stuff and let the employees try it. My favorite items were Nectar Pies, Salt Free Potato Chips, and Tigers Milk Bars. Sounds like stuff a teen would like.

Occasionally, he'd send me to McDonalds and tell me to get a burger for myself and a Big Mac minus the meat for him. I think he was just trying to be nice and feed me. Or get me out of the store so he could smoke pot.

of the carob thing. I tried it a few times and couldn’t wrap my head around it.

I always thought that was pretty funny.

We live a few miles from the town of Loma Linda (I was born there in the university hospital, even) and in the early days of my meat-free lifestyle I drove to the Loma Linda Market to shop. The whole range of nigh-inedible congealed nastiness in mystery liquid laid out before the unsuspecting shopper.

Ever had the canned TuNo? Holy Jebus what a vile concoction.

I made the vegan switch in ‘89. There wasn’t much commercially available that was worth a darn. A good thing I enjoyed salads.

Have you tried the Sophie's Kitchen Toona? I think it's absolutely hideous. Even the smell when I opened the can was gross. I actually bought a 2nd can from a different store because I was convinced that the first can must of been contaminated somehow. No. It's just bad.

I'll stick with chickpeas and dulse flakes. As a matter of fact, I'm making chickpea salad for lunch tomorrow. OTOH, the Gardein Fishless fillets are great. And Loving Hut uses some kind of super tasty shrimp substitute (I've never seen it in a store) that even looks like shrimp.

to the chickpeas; for some reason it really kicks it up to another level.

I'll try that.

I quit buying most seafood products a long time ago.

This is a good thing.

Sad that even a progressive message board is so hostile to alternatives.

So rare in the trump age!

I will weigh in. 90% of the seafood I eat is what the wife and I catch or I buy from the boat.

20% of the meat I eat I kill and process myself myself. Wish it was more. Most of the remainder I buy from locally producers. Beef is the one local thing difficult to find in Florida so we eat less beef.

That said, we try to have 2-3 meatless dinners a week. Mainly beans and such but I do love good tofu and that Chinese style wheat protein product I get a restaurants but have never cooked.

I work with and know a fair number of vegans and do find eating imatation meat odd when in my experience other non-meat protein sources are so much better. But no big deal to me. Perhaps I have not tried the better ones.

The vegans I know are usually interesting folks and surprisingly none have criticized my hunting. The very few who do eat meat.

But one stereotype is true in my opinion. You generally know someone is a vegan within 15 minutes of casual conversation which show that it is an important commitment they have made.

Although I still eat it on occasion, Factory meat is horrible in so many ways.

Definite imitation of real food. Something a little off in texture and taste there

Double fake if it's plant based

If Hormel comes out with vegan Spam...

It's also kind of gelatinous, and salty. Edible fried within an inch of its life, though.

I can imagine what musubi must taste like, doesn't seem right to me. Maybe that's a characteristic of a lot of great regional food: it doesn't have to make sense if you didn't grow up on it

I get that vegans believe that meat and animal bi-products are bad. But why do so many of them need to make a meatless “meat” version out of so many veggies and fruits?

Can’t veggies and fruits just be themselves?

Some vegans like meat but won't or can't eat it for whatever reason. It really is that simple.

and being able to eat a compassionate alternative to meat is nice. I grew up with lunch meats and burgers and hot dogs and chicken, so a version of those foods that isn’t composed of a dead animal carcass pleases me.

That’s been explained many times in this and many similar threads.

It's not only vegans who might want something like this. Fried clams, for example, are so delicious that a substitute that's only half as good as the original would still be worth eating. I'd be first in line to try this, if I wouldn't or couldn't eat real seafood for whatever reason.

Much less the physical pain. Do crabs mourn the loss of their crabmates? Lobsters tremble in fear as they wait their turn in the tank at Red Lobster?

I've caught fish, threw them back, and watched them swim over and hammer my buddie's bait within a few seconds of having a hook ripped from their mouth.