• southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    Being real, I wish like hell vegan food makers would stop trying to be “better” than meat. Just make a damn good product, and even us meat eaters will get on board. Make good food, and it might be something that non vegans will eat instead of a meat product. But if they keep trying to “replace” meats, they’re competing in a game they can’t win.

    I swear, despite not being vegan, I’ve tried a lot of the supposed meat/animal replacements, and they’re not a replacement. At best, they’re okay on their own as a thing. At worst, they’re horrible tasting with bad texture. And there’s so many great vegetable/plant foods that are so much better than the crappy fakes. Like, I get it, people cling to comfort and nostalgia foods, so if you aren’t raised on good plant based diets, you’ll miss animal based foods.

    But, come on. Trying to shoe-horn things into a replacement and ending up with something meh that’s also unhealthy, or non sustainable? That’s just bad, period.

    Now, I enjoy trolling vegans sometimes. It’s absurdly easy, and hilarious. But the idea behind it (vegan eating/living) isn’t bad. Reducing environmental harm, reducing cruelty, these are great goals. The way to doing that isn’t fake chicken nuggets out of a bag. It takes rethinking how each individual and family/household approaches food. The whole fake meat thing is just corporate bullshit trying to milk vegans and vegetarians for cash.

    Sorry, I know outsider rants in niche communities tend to be disliked, but this subject is something I have a major problem with. And, ffs, I cook vegan meals for people I care about that are vegan, so I don’t even think I’m a true outsider on the matter of good vegan foods.

    • MidRomney@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I’m not a vegan, but I’ve eaten at a few vegan restaurants that were highly rated. The delicious vegan food that you’re talking about already exists, but most people will never go to a vegan restaurant over a non-vegan one.

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        Yeah, it’s a hard ask for most people. I’m an adventurous eater, so I’ll usually try any new place at least once. And I have gone to a really great full vegan restaurant and loved it. It was my cousin’s birthday, and I was just not able to cook for him the way I usually do, so I asked him if he knew anywhere.

        Anyway, it was me, him, his gf, and his mom. Nobody else in the family would go. Which, tbh, we don’t usually do restaurants for things like that, so that was part of it. But it definitely points to what you said. Most of my family is pretty chill about him being vegan, we try to make sure he’s fed at gatherings and the like, don’t give him grief. But asking any of them to show up there instead of my place, even with the money part covered, it just wasn’t happening.

        • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          And if you can get a vegan meal at the Burger Barn or Grills R Us, which is just as good as corpse, then it’s a lot easier for vegans and vegan-curious carnists

          • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            Dude. The whole “carnist” thing? Just don’t. It’s a bad look. It ain’t a religion, or if it is, then veganism is too, and that’s how I usually bait the hell out of the silly vegans when I’m trolling. Carnist is just another word that separates people into outsiders and insiders, which is a horrible thing to do.

            But, yeah, I’m fully behind good plant based options at any of the usual meat-centric places. I’ve worked in fast food and short order places before. It costs next to nothing extra to have the options available, and it’s a great way to make sure customers that don’t really want to be there have a pleasant memory of your establishment. It would cost more at a higher end place to keep the supplies in stock, but I still think it would be worth it.

            Most of those chains aren’t mixing their burgers fresh anyway. It’s usually prepackaged and/or frozen. There’s no good reason to not have the option there.

    • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It’s all about selling the idea that you can do away with meat if you’re a meat lover. For a lot of them, that’s not going to happen by just saying “hey eat vegan food!”

      But if you say “yo, taste this burger - whadayathink? I know right?!! Can you believe it’s not made out of cow?!” Then maybe, maybe, the dude will say “you know what? For my next bbq Imma use impossi-burgers - damn tasty those thingies!”

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        Man, one of the best burgers I ever had was vegan! Kelp based, with some binders and spices. Home made too, back in 89 or 90 by a guy my kinda gf knew. That was the first I had ever heard the word vegan lol.

        I lost track of the guy, so I never got the recipe, but I’ve tried to get close a few times, and never quite matched it.

    • IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      if they keep trying to “replace” meats, they’re competing in a game they can’t win

      Except they literally won, lol.

    • BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      This is true for people who already are vegans. My sister tries to use less meat, and when she wants to cook something where she used chicken before, she buts the “vegan chicken” and so on. I love trying new and maybe weird stuff, but people with 40 year old habits are not gonne buy cube shaped mystery things that are sometimes more expensive than the meaty counterpart.

    • davepleasebehave@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      we have evolved to enjoy the flavours of meat. and cooked meat. making a delicious product means copying some of these elements. it seems that these nuggets play on that and expand on that.