That VegNews story reminds me of a longstanding curiosity I have about the ethics of veganism and to a lesser extent vegetarianism. Much of the industry (movement?) suffers from profound meat envy. So many dishes are attempts to simulate the experience of eating meat. That’s understandable except so many vegan types insist we’re not supposed to eat meat. If that’s the case why come out with fake beef stew? It’s like pitching Beatlemania (some of you remember that, don’t you?) to people who don’t like the Beatles. I raised this point in an article Rich Lowry made me write for the magazine years ago. He insisted I go on a vegan diet (I did not like it).
I tried a wide array of “cheese” products made from various non-dairy substances. And guess what? They all taste like really smart scientists got in a room and tried to come up with a close approximation of cheese. But, sorry, soy pizza doesn’t taste like pizza; it tastes like something trying to taste like pizza. That doesn’t mean it tastes bad, but it only tastes good to the extent it approaches tasting like the real thing. Throughout my ordeal, I kept referring to my meals as “pod-people food”; when you think of what “pod people” are like in Body Snatchers movies, what makes them creepy is that they’re almost human. Meatless Chick’n nuggets, truth be told, don’t taste that bad. In fact, I was astounded by how well the manufacturers simulated not just the taste, but the chewy texture, of chicken. But that’s what was so off-putting: It’s not chicken, and you know it.
For example, the meatless buffalo wings, manufactured by Health Is Wealth, were one of my favorite dishes. Labeled “Completely Meatless and 100% Vegan and Vegetarian,” they’re made almost entirely from soy and stone-ground wheat. I was disappointed to discover they don’t contain fake bones. But why not create fake bones? Well, if one is to take the arguments of the ethical vegans at face value, isn’t it a bit disgusting or immoral to make products that look like the foods they consider most evil? Fake hamburgers are really a marvel, but while they still come up short on the taste front, they certainly look like hamburgers. If meat is murder, why hawk products that look like the mutilated corpse? Consider our views on cannibalism, then imagine selling faux human flesh in, say, the form of human thumbs — “It tastes just like a missionary!” Wouldn’t that still be in poor taste?
For once, I'm 100% with Jonah. People were meant to eat meat. Period.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think it's the same theory that has diet food mimic things dieters shouldn't eat -- diet milk shakes, candy bars, etc. Why not just eat lettuce?
But I can sort of understand it as a transitional crutch. If it looks like a hamburger and tastes awful, you might begin to lose your pleasant associations with eating hamburgers. On the other hand, you can eat real tomatoes and, uh, other veggies, so any pleasant associations there would be reinforced.
There are some tasty vegetarian Indian dishes (aloo gobi). But vegetarian renderings of classic American dishes are worse than "non-alcoholic" beer.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is something I never understood either. Why the fake meat. In Honolulu, there was/is an excellent vegetarian restaurant in the Chinese style. Their Dim Sum was delicious. I remarked I could be a vegetarian if the food all tasted like this. However, a friend, whose wife was a bit of a radical vegetarian, described a meal they had there where they ordered all the dishes with simulated meat. I could only ask, why, when their completely vegetable offerings were so good. My only regret is that the restaurant didn't offer a cookbook.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe great philosopher and interpreter of various Eastern faiths to the West, Alan Watts, once wrote about his attitude towards eating animals which, at the time, was causing quite a bit of concern amongst the vegan purists. He said:
"I love animals! I love them so much I could eat them! So I DO!"
A wise man, now gone, alas. Too bad. I'd have invited him out for a steak and some ribs and some wisdom anytime!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's the uncanny valley, for sure.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseit's really more like pitching Beatlemania to people who love the Beatles but are convinced they shouldn't
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm a great fan of vegetables, the simpler, the better.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI find the vegan fetish with making veggies into synthetic meat products repulsive and dishonest.
Wasn't it Groucho Marx who said: "I'm not a vegetarian, but I eat animals that are."
That should be enough, shouldn't it?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'd enjoy reading the full article on your vegan experiment, Mr. Goldberg. Can you post it?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseVegans and vegetarians are not the only ones that are in the market for such products. I love red meat but I rarly eat it because I have gout.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseArthur C. Clarke wrote a short story "The Food of the Gods," framed as testimony before Congress, and set in a time in the near future where all food is produced synthetically. The person testifying is an executive of a food-synthesis company specializing in "fake meat," and he was there to complain about a new product by a competing company that was threatening to monopolize the entire industry because of its popularity. In classic Clarke manner, he waits for the end of the story to deliver the twist, delivered as dialogue by the executive: "And now I ask you to consider a new word. It's spelled C-A-N-N-I-B-A-L..."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLike JKB, I know that vegetarian food need not be ersatz meat. In my vegetarian phase, my cookbooks and cooking were mostly Mediterranean, north-African, and Indian subcontinent recipes that had never had meat except as an extra. In some gourmet restaurants I often find that the vegetarian choices are the most interesting thing on the menu.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis served me well as a bachelor -- I never really knew when I would be home to cook and eat. I could keep the larder stocked with really cheap in-season veggies -- if I used them it was great, and if I didn't they went on the compost heap and I still saved money over buying prepared food or shopping hungry. I had lots of variety in my diet because I only bought the veggies that were the best value that week.
Meat for me required too much advance planning -- you have to either use it or freeze it, and if it is frozen you have to thaw it before use -- that pretty much meant that spur-of-the-moment changes in my evening plans could mean throwing away meat that I didn't use, which is expensive and wasteful.
Fake meat products are made for those who have given up meat but miss it, or are used to structuring their meals around it. It allows people to become vegetarian without revolutionising their eating habits.
I was raised a vegetarian and have little interest in them. In texture and look they remind me of meat, which I find unpleasant, and on top of that they have none of the flavour of meat - which is the only thing I've ever enjoyed about it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBeing a Celiac (100% gluten free diet) I can understand the point you are making. Most of the gluten free flour blends out there are expensive and quite frankly very poor imitations of gloriously tasty wheat flour, dang I'd love a donut right now, but I digress.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhile manufacturers try really hard to match the taste and texture in their bakery products to mimic the real thing, they are sadly, merely poor fakes.
Maybe the farther you get away from the memory of what a real donut tastes like, you can accept the substitutes.
I'm not there yet.
I can't speak for anyone else. But for my part--I gave up meat because modern agriculture causes incredible suffering to animals capable of feeling. (A pig is as smart and aware as any dog, and none of us would treat a dog the way pigs are routinely treated in factory farms.) I don't *need* to eat meat, so I decided I didn't want to contribute to that suffering any more.
My Tofurkey hot-dog or Gardein chik'n patty doesn't contribute to suffering, so I eat it. No problem.
Of course, I have recent memories of meat (I've only been veg for about two years), so it might be that it's just transitional for me. But to put it simply, I eat faux-meat because I like the taste.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseStarted dating a woman in October, she hadn't eaten meat in 16 years. Made bacon and eggs for breakfast one morning for my son and I. She was eating meat by Thanksgiving. Oh that wonderful allure of bacon.....mmmmmm bacon.......
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI used to have a similar attitude towards artificial sweeteners. I always thought that if you wanted sugar, you should eat sugar; otherwise, go have something healthy.
Then I was diagnosed as a diabetic. I get it now.
So I'm willing to cut the vegetarians a lot of slack in this matter. Since I don't think a hamburger is a murdered corpse, I don't have a problem with things that looked like hamburgers, and I'm not sure how to put myself in the mind of those that do. Plus, there are a number of vegetarians (including one of my best friends) who are doing it for health reasons rather than out of a love of animals. In which case I find it hard to begrudge them anything appetizing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"So many dishes are attempts to simulate the experience of eating meat. That’s understandable except so many vegan types insist we’re not supposed to eat meat. If that’s the case why come out with fake beef stew?"
Because it allows you to enjoy some aspects of meat-eating without actually killing an animal, which of course is what vegans usually object to.
Is...is this really hard to understand? I can't quite figure out what the problem is supposed to be.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe argument "A is bad, thus fake A is bad" is silly. Murder bad. Movie about murderer? Not bad. Violence bad. Violent video game? Not bad. Elephant-foot waste basket? Bad. Papier mache elephant-foot waste basket? Not bad. It doesn't seem like much of a leap from there to "Meat bad. Fake meat not bad."
The point about fake human thumbs is especially silly. If a cannibal society could be switched from eating people to eating vegetables, that would be a good thing, no? Even if the vegetables look like human thumbs, it would be a good thing. Isn't it better to kill vegetables for food that to kill people for food?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI've long been puzzled by this phenomenon too. I wonder if it's an identity thing: Vegans want to eat what only vegans would eat. Whereas meat-eaters might have a salad on occasions, they'd never consume meat substitutes regularly. Tofu hotdogs, soy salami, and meatless buffalo wings belong solely to the vegans.
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