Vegetarian Fake Meats

[TV and credit cards]

The problem with vegan meals is that they usually require a lot more meal preparation than simply making meat or poultry and steaming a variety of fresh vegetables. Most people don't have the time or motivation to spend on lengthy food preparation.

I was in front of a cutting board with a knife most every day. It got old.
On the plus side, clean up was easy. Many items just got a quick rinse in the sink and put in the rack.

 

[Fentoine Lum]

If your primary goal is to reduce the area of land used to raise the animals, total Veganism would seem more logical than vegetarianism lite; you do have to feed and house the cows in order for them to make milk for you.

That is indeed correct. But if one avoids meat, one will have gone part of the way.

Corporate control of the food supply is anathema to anyone being a free human being. Meat or otherwise.

 

[Fentoine Lum]

Quote Originally Posted by southernhybrid View Post
The problem with vegan meals is that they usually require a lot more meal preparation than simply making meat or poultry and steaming a variety of fresh vegetables. Most people don't have the time or motivation to spend on lengthy food preparation.

Most people don't have the time or motivation to spend on avoiding mass extinction and a huge catastrophic population/genetic bottleneck for humanity because it's only bearing down on others at the moment. And they're typically folks of the global south.

 

[steve_bank]

Red meat is nutrient dense. B vitamins are hard to get without it. Vegans commonly take a B complex supplement.

I do not see how vegan is more expensive. Rice, beans, nuts, potaotes,and corn can be combined to get a com;ete protein.

There is a reason why ethnic diets over centuries evolved to rice, beans, corn with a little meat. Rice , beans, and corn combined provide nutrition.

Chinese diet traditionally used meat as more of a condiment. At least for the average people. A few peanuts in top of a vegetable rice dish adds nutrition.

You can get close to a meat equivalent diet.

In the 50s 60s for average people a big meat meal was once a week. Big meat consumption is relatively new.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The problem with vegan meals is that they usually require a lot more meal preparation than simply making meat or poultry and steaming a variety of fresh vegetables. Most people don't have the time or motivation to spend on lengthy food preparation.

I was in front of a cutting board with a knife most every day. It got old.
On the plus side, clean up was easy. Many items just got a quick rinse in the sink and put in the rack.

The last two vegan meals I made were mulligatawny and pizza. I made a lot so a couple stints in the kitchen lasted ten days. It's not necessary to chop and prep everyday.

 

[bilby]

There are total vegans and lacto-ovo vegans who eat eggs and dairy products.

From a show I watched you have to watch 0ut for vegetarian meat alternatives. They tend to be loaded with fats to make it taste good along with other stuff.

Fast food burger places are now advertising vegetarian burgers that allegedly taste like the real thing. Who knows what is in it.

There is also 'test tube' grown meat coming out.

I eat more vegetables and fruit than meat, I feel better that way.

Getting western culture off meat is a near imposable task.

In 1850 you could have said the exact same thing about whale oil.

Times change. When an alternative product arises that's cheaper and/or better, existing products suddenly become obsolete and quickly vanish.

The first cars ran on vegetable oils, which were in many ways superior fuels to mineral oils such as gasoline and diesel. But light fraction mineral oils were so cheap (early Arabian oil refineries burned off gasoline as a hazardous waste product - it had less than zero value at the refinery gate) that vegetable oil powered cars quickly disappeared.

If someone invents a lab-grown meat or meat substitute that's sufficiently similar to the real thing, and sufficiently cheap in comparison, then meat production will collapse just as whale oil production collapsed when mineral oils became cheap and plentiful.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What I don't get is the anger. Okay, I get it... Trump minded folks are just grumpy fucks. You'd swear that BK was replacing the Whopper, not providing another option on the menu. But the people get upset. "If you like fake meat, why don't you eat meat?!"

 

[ideologyhunter]

What I don't get is the anger. Okay, I get it... Trump minded folks are just grumpy fucks. You'd swear that BK was replacing the Whopper, not providing another option on the menu. But the people get upset. "If you like fake meat, why don't you eat meat?!"

Hoo Yeah. I used to get that at work. All of those -- what are they called -- starts with c -- car -- car -- CARCASS GNAWERS, that's it, would pull this line about fake meat being hypocrisy or some such b.s. But the fake meat didn't have parents, folks. That's the difference, always. The fake meat didn't draw a breath of sweet morning air and cavort with its fellow creatures. Go back to your bones and sinews now (and that red water at the bottom of the bag o' hotdogs. You can have it all.) (Actually I don't care what people do, just get better arguments for it.)

 

[Fentoine Lum]

What I don't get is the anger. Okay, I get it... Trump minded folks are just grumpy fucks. You'd swear that BK was replacing the Whopper, not providing another option on the menu. But the people get upset. "If you like fake meat, why don't you eat meat?!"

Hoo Yeah. I used to get that at work. All of those -- what are they called -- starts with c -- car -- car -- CARCASS GNAWERS, that's it, would pull this line about fake meat being hypocrisy or some such b.s. But the fake meat didn't have parents, folks. That's the difference, always. The fake meat didn't draw a breath of sweet morning air and cavort with its fellow creatures. Go back to your bones and sinews now (and that red water at the bottom of the bag o' hotdogs. You can have it all.) (Actually I don't care what people do, just get better arguments for it.)

Begging the query, why do they feel so threatened by anyone who makes a different choice in their own personal lives; odd, no? Those who eat from/prey upon a herd become the/a herd themselves and resent the unherdable.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I got the strong feeling in the staff lunchroom that they assumed my vegetarianism was an implicit accusation. 'I'm abstaining; why aren't you? I'm repulsed by the slaughterhouse; why aren't you?' Whereas I don't care at all when I'm in the minority or out on the fringe. That's where you find the more interesting things, innit? Country blues from the 1920s. Silent film. Out of print, forgotten novels. Atheism, hell yeah. John Waters movies. Travelling to Lucas, Kansas, to see the homemade Garden of Eden. Now you're talking fun.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

What I don't get is the anger. Okay, I get it... Trump minded folks are just grumpy fucks. You'd swear that BK was replacing the Whopper, not providing another option on the menu. But the people get upset. "If you like fake meat, why don't you eat meat?!"

Hoo Yeah. I used to get that at work. All of those -- what are they called -- starts with c -- car -- car -- CARCASS GNAWERS, that's it, would pull this line about fake meat being hypocrisy or some such b.s. But the fake meat didn't have parents, folks. That's the difference, always. The fake meat didn't draw a breath of sweet morning air and cavort with its fellow creatures. Go back to your bones and sinews now (and that red water at the bottom of the bag o' hotdogs. You can have it all.) (Actually I don't care what people do, just get better arguments for it.)

Begging the query, why do they feel so threatened by anyone who makes a different choice in their own personal lives; odd, no? Those who eat from/prey upon a herd become the/a herd themselves and resent the unherdable.

We've all heard that idiocy, "I didn't rise to the top of the food chain so I can eat beans." It's so idiotically, satisfyingly, self-serving and must sound so clever to the speaker that it makes me cringe when I hear it. Eat meat if you want but please don't sound like a pseudo-intellectual idiot.

 

[Fentoine Lum]

What I don't get is the anger. Okay, I get it... Trump minded folks are just grumpy fucks. You'd swear that BK was replacing the Whopper, not providing another option on the menu. But the people get upset. "If you like fake meat, why don't you eat meat?!"

If you think they're angry, see the Chik-Fil-A folks. If you're str8.

 

[southernhybrid]

The problem with vegan meals is that they usually require a lot more meal preparation than simply making meat or poultry and steaming a variety of fresh vegetables. Most people don't have the time or motivation to spend on lengthy food preparation.

I was in front of a cutting board with a knife most every day. It got old.
On the plus side, clean up was easy. Many items just got a quick rinse in the sink and put in the rack.

The last two vegan meals I made were mulligatawny and pizza. I made a lot so a couple stints in the kitchen lasted ten days. It's not necessary to chop and prep everyday.

True. There are many vegan meals that are simple to make. We eat black beans and rice quite often with fruit on the side. But, my favorite vegan meals do take a lot of prep work. We're not the ones who refuse to make them, but I know plenty of people who are always in a hurry and don't seem to have the time or desire to do prep work.

My Hgb is low again. Maybe I need to eat more meat. Seriously. Some of us don't absorb iron well from non heme sources of food. We are all different when it comes to what works. If I had to eat all Vegan, I guess in addition to Vit. B12, which I already take, as it's very common for older adults to be low in B12, I'd probably also have to take iron supplements. Taking iron supplements for a long time can be harmful, plus they often have GI side effects. I do think it would be good if we all cut back on our intake of animal food, but we did evolve primarily as omnivores so going 100 percent vegan doesn't work well for everyone. Supposedly, eating meat had something to do with human brain development. It's just easier to get most of the essential vitamins, protein and iron from meat. When I used to do t he cooking, I made a lot more vegan food than my husband does. My protein level was always on the low side back then. It's normal now. Why not just make a goal to cut back meat intake to no more than once a day, and keep portions small. Portion size in the US is absurd. Consider those crazy burgers that restaurants serve these days. Some are about a lb. of meat. Yuck! Anyone else here old enough to remember when the quarter pounder was considered a huge burger. We need to get back to that, if we're going to eat meat.

And, if we all did go vegan, I wonder if there would be consequences from the dramatic increase in agriculture needed to feed everyone.

 

[Fentoine Lum]

The last two vegan meals I made were mulligatawny and pizza. I made a lot so a couple stints in the kitchen lasted ten days. It's not necessary to chop and prep everyday.

True. There are many vegan meals that are simple to make. We eat black beans and rice quite often with fruit on the side. But, my favorite vegan meals do take a lot of prep work. We're not the ones who refuse to make them, but I know plenty of people who are always in a hurry and don't seem to have the time or desire to do prep work.

My Hgb is low again. Maybe I need to eat more meat. Seriously. Some of us don't absorb iron well from non heme sources of food. We are all different when it comes to what works. If I had to eat all Vegan, I guess in addition to Vit. B12, which I already take, as it's very common for older adults to be low in B12, I'd probably also have to take iron supplements. Taking iron supplements for a long time can be harmful, plus they often have GI side effects. I do think it would be good if we all cut back on our intake of animal food, but we did evolve primarily as omnivores so going 100 percent vegan doesn't work well for everyone. Supposedly, eating meat had something to do with human brain development. It's just easier to get most of the essential vitamins, protein and iron from meat. When I used to do t he cooking, I made a lot more vegan food than my husband does. My protein level was always on the low side back then. It's normal now. Why not just make a goal to cut back meat intake to no more than once a day, and keep portions small. Portion size in the US is absurd. Consider those crazy burgers that restaurants serve these days. Some are about a lb. of meat. Yuck! Anyone else here old enough to remember when the quarter pounder was considered a huge burger. We need to get back to that, if we're going to eat meat.

And, if we all did go vegan, I wonder if there would be consequences from the dramatic increase in agriculture needed to feed everyone.

Yes, we will war over water in the not so distant future and corporate state control of the food supply will come to bite us all in the arse.

 

[lpetrich]

My Hgb is low again. Maybe I need to eat more meat. Seriously. Some of us don't absorb iron well from non heme sources of food. We are all different when it comes to what works.

southernhybrid, the Impossible Burger from Impossible Foods could be suitable for you. It uses a heme-containing protein much like what meat has. It's leghemoglobin made by genetically engineered yeast, using genes from legumes. Those plants express those genes in their root nodules, making leghemoglobin there. This protein is much like hemoglobin (in vertebrate blood) and myoglobin (in muscles).

I checked on Where to Buy Impossible and it's apparently available in all 50 US states and DC, but not in any other nation, not even in Canada.

 

[lpetrich]

There is already a kind of vegetarian fake butter: margarine. "Vegan butter" is margarine without any animal products.

I've found vegetarian fake cream, fake sour cream, and fake whipped cream. Also vegetarian fake ice cream. Or more properly vegan all of these.

I've found vegetarian fake fish and fake shrimp and fake calamari (squid) and fake escargot (snail), but no fake crab or fake clam or other fake mollusk.

There is a fungus kind of fake meat: Quorn. It is made from the mycelium, or mat of strands, of a soil fungus, Fusarium venenatum. Mushrooms are also fungi - fungus fruiting bodies.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Not happy with Beyond Meat ground in a bag, especially at the price. Rubbery. They do sell a ground beef as well which might be better.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

And, if we all did go vegan, I wonder if there would be consequences from the dramatic increase in agriculture needed to feed everyone.

My understanding is we'd use less agricultural resources. Raising and feeding and housing and slaughtering animals is costly. And it isn't necessary to completely eliminate animal protein anyway, less is good, I'm probably down 90%.

And taking B12 is a no-brainer if that's all you have to supplement. I take a daily vitamin that is about 50% of my RDAs but 100% B12.

The impossible burger is quite tasty but I still prefer a home made black bean burger if I'm going for a veggie burger. The BK Whopper is still my go to when I get the urge. Being vegetarian is not religious for me, just a health choice.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

And, if we all did go vegan, I wonder if there would be consequences from the dramatic increase in agriculture needed to feed everyone.

My understanding is we'd use less agricultural resources. Raising and feeding and housing and slaughtering animals is costly. And it isn't necessary to completely eliminate animal protein anyway, less is good, I'm probably down 90%.

Yeah... animals eat too. So there would be a transition from infrastructure to feed animals to growing more plants. I can't imagine the globe going Vegan. The thing we'd need to worry more about would going fishless because we over fished the seas.

 

[ideologyhunter]

The problem of microplastic in the ocean -- almost entirely brought about in the last quarter century -- could derange the food chain from top to bottom. The most insane factor in this is that the majority of the plastic going into the ocean is coming from Asian countries. Try to imagine a world with 10 or 11 billion people facing reduced crop yields from parched farm land, flooded coasts, and a dying ocean.