Observations-Fake Meat

There has been a deluge of fast food companies capitalizing on the development of vegetarian meat replacement products and offering fake meat products on their menus. They are doing this in response to the demand of those who have chosen the vegetarian diet and lifestyle.

The response has been quite good, people like the product. Comments like: it tastes just like a real hamburger; you really won’t miss the animal protein; it is so much healthier and yet it still gives me the satisfaction of eating meat.

If you miss meat so much, why don’t you just eat meat?

People change their diets to a vegetarian one for many reasons: religious, spiritual, health, and as a response to the environmental impact of meat production on the earth. I really have no beef  (😊)with that. It is their choice and they are much better than I for being able to live this way.

I do have an issue with why they are seeking to replace meat in all of its culinary glory: the taste, the unctuous mouth feel, the smell of animal fat charring, and the fibrous texture, by imitation.

I am an omnivore, you won’t see me turn down extra helpings of vegetables, but you also won’t see me replacing my meat consumption with faux meat. Even as I get older and I am cutting back on my meat consumption, I would rather consume more vegetables, fish, and chicken than consume something that came out of a test tube and tries to be a reasonable facsimile of meat. Mainly because a reasonable facsimile is not a reasonable facsimile.

The question has always puzzled me: why make something into something that nature had not intended in order to make you feel good about yourself? It seems every culture that has chosen to consume only vegetables have gone out of their way to create something meat-like yet is not meat. Tofu, seitan, tempeh, textured soy protein, jackfruits, beans, lentils, are amongst the many others have been used as meat substitutes, they have been successful to varying degrees but never completely successful. They tell me that the most recent attempts have been more successful.

It seems to me that those who have declared their intention to live as herbivores should hold on to the lofty standards of that lifestyle. There is a large amount of resolve and discipline in becoming and staying a vegetarian; it is indeed a large sacrifice and an intellectual commitment to the rules of whatever form of vegetarianism they claim. It feels like cheating, in my mind when you create substitutes for meat, you are saying: I don’t really want to give up all the gustatory pleasures of eating meat, I just want to not eat meat while I still can derive the same pleasure. It seems contradictory and bordering on the hypocritical.

It is my experience that Asian cultures have tastier vegetarian foods. The requirements of the various Asian religions have caused the Asian vegetarians to react the same way as the western vegetarian: create meat substitutes; even though the Asian vegetarian foods tastes much better and are seemingly more clever in how they disguise the fact that there is no meat in their recipes. Part of it is that the culinary traditions of the Asian cultures are not as meat centered as the western cultures. The amount of meat that are served in each dish is much less than that of a western dish: the proportions of meat to vegetable and starch in much smaller in the Asian culture than the western culture, so it was easier to disguise the lack of meat because there was less to disguise. Speaking for myself, I think the Asian cultures have also had more time to develop their clever ways of making a vegetarian dish - the western vegetarianism became in vogue only relatively recently. There have always been vegetarians in the western cultures, but they did not number in as large a proportion of the general population as vegetarians in Asia.

It is no wonder that the nouveau vegetarians are left hankering for meat replacements, they have much more to replace and their culinary techniques for vegetarian foods are lagging in evolution. But that still begs the question of: why even bother to do this in the first place.

Circling back to the original argument, if once one decides to become vegetarian, should they not be held to that standard of consumption, at least by their own conscience? Why is it that they allow themselves the right to declare as vegetarians and still cheat in order to sate their taste buds?

Believe me when I say that I am not claiming moral superiority because I would not be able to live a vegetarian lifestyle. I can live eating an omnivore diet that is heavily weighed towards vegetables, but I would not be able to give up meat completely. But at least I am honest about my foibles and lack of discipline and not cheat to pretend that I don’t miss meat.

I guess it is more of a moral and philosophical question than a culinary question. What does being vegetarian mean to a vegetarian?