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?
