This has to be the most eat pray love meme I’ve ever seen. Hindus are vegetarian not vegan (disclaimer: they aren’t a monolith) and use a lot of ghee (milk product). That brown dude looks like a Sikh; they are typically not vegetarian or vegan.
When people complain about vegan diets lacking in x, y, or z I always point out that our diets are culturally balanced, as well as being balanced by the addition of vitamins to staple foods. If we all became deficient in say, iron, we would start fortifying iron in our water, flour, salt, rice etc, while at the same time we would culturally move towards eating more black beans and spinach than we currently do. When an individual removes a food group from their diet, it’s only reasonable that you will have to intentionally rebalance your diet in other places. This isn’t a deficiency inherent in a vegan diet.
If you have to supplement a vitamin or mineral that’s just part of your diet, so don’t @ me with your natural=good nonsense.
Nooch does not contain B12. It is sometimes added to it, perhaps even often in the US ? but in the EU for example I’ve never ever seen B12-fortified nooch.
Oh really? I didn’t know they made it without. I just checked mine and it says it has >100% of all the b complex vitamins in a serving (2 tbsp). I do live in the US but I got mine online.
Engevita Nutritional Yeast has B12 right on the front of the packaging. It's the most common brand in the UK. We're not in the EU anymore sadly but it's been the most common brand (only brand really) here for well over a decade now.
Also Vitamin D. You are not doing shit with merely getting sunlight, without having some D2 or D3 in body to breakdown and fuel. That comes from dairy for us Indians.
The secret is that meat on its own is garbage. Instead of using plants to make meat taste good (teriyaki, buffalo sauce, nearly a dozen herbs and spices, etc.), you can just use those plants to make plants taste good
I get that it’s a meme, but what’s the problem? I’m vegetarian/flirt with veganism; it’s purely for moral/ethical/environmental reasons.
Indian food is delicious. An Impossible burger on a pretzel bun dripping with grilled onions, avocado, vegan aioli and mustard with a side of steak fries? That’s also delicious, in my opinion.
Meat is delicious, and that’s not at all incompatible with my reasoning for being vegetarian.
For real. I was raised on slop, now that I’m a vegetarian, it doesn’t mean I don’t like the foods I grew up eating.
I guess the point is that we don’t need to rely on expensive substitutes made by the same corps that own slaughterhouses to make tasty, nutritious vegan food
The problem is that you’re still fixated on the form and experience of meat. A full mindset change is more robust.
It’s like how fake leather can help replace and reduce real leather usage, but if the trend of desiring leather died out in the first place, the whole problem is dropped altogether
not entirely, as leather is still a wildly useful fabric and material for many uses which synthetic leather can serve(to a greater or lesser extent, granted), but only in specific cases can meat not be replaced/not replaced effectively
I don’t want to stop eating meat, I want to stop the exploitation and suffering of animals.
While I want to stop the exploitation of animals more than I want to eat meat, if there is a path that allows me to do both, I will have a preference for that path.
The same goes for leather. It’s use isn’t worth what has to be done to create it, but it is a fantastic material with a lot of versatility that’s better than near all alternatives in plenty of applications. Fake leather and synthetic leather are wonderful innovations because we can enjoy the benefits without the negatives, and that’s something to be encouraged rather than avoided.
I get it but this is an emotional appeal. I’m just trying to explain the logic of what was being said here
I like the fake meat stuff too, and often try to make it myself even though I’ve never had meat on purpose in my life and actually throw up if I do accidentally. I just like the kitchen chemistry aspect of it I guess
I’m not saying we should stop making vegan alternatives to meat. I’m saying people should stop desiring meat or meat alternatives. Because logically that desire of meat is the cause of both meat and meat alternatives. Like how the cure to nicotine addiction isn’t nicotine patches alone
Nothing against people who prefer meat substitutes. But I do think they should be brave and just abandon meat altogether. If you keep relying on meat substitutes, you haven’t let go of meat entirely, I found it easy to get back to meat eating.
Being called stupid and criticizing my decisions kept me from “being brave”
Like “You’re not good enough until you are this much” bullshit. If that’s the attitude, then fuck no. Why do I wanna go even further into things if y’all are assholes right off the bat. Like, no. fuck you. If it’s this complicated then I am going to do what has been a life of hassle free eating. My guilt is very easily wiped away like that.
I’m vegan and I eat plenty of fake meat. I’m vegan because I think it’s right, not because I dislike meat. Don’t listen to OP. You are good enough, and any reduction in the consumption of animal products is better than no reduction.
I went through a long period of transition before cutting out animal produce entirely, but have now been vegan for a good few years.
I went through a long period of transition before cutting out animal produce entirely, but have now been vegan for a good few years.
This is the way. It’s like a relationship: if you have to force it, it’s gonna be shit.
I cut down on meat significantly in the past 3 years. I eat mostly vegetarian, fish once a week and meat every once in a while. Overall, my meat consumption decreased by about 90% which I call good enough and I don’t really have the intention to change that.
I’ve been talking a bunch of shit out of annoyance. And there’s a bunch of posts echoing exactly what I was complaining about.
Even getting called a liar.
This is the only reasonable or polite response I’ve seen. Missed one maybe?
So thanks. I really shouldn’t be painting the entire lifestyle with the same brush, because well here we are.
So I’ll shut up, and say thanks. And for the record, my kid still makes me get the impossible patties. She’s not veg anything, so ita just cause they’re good and that on its own should be good enough. Not all is lost in my removed.
If I’m at a barbecue and someone is grilling up impossible burgers, I’m not going to request they instead make a bowl of curry for me. Likewise when I grill for people.
That is not at all what this is like, completely ignorant metaphor
Imagine someone addicted to eating their poop. Perhaps they are reforming their ways, and for some time they take half measures like eating smelly chili. Eventually they realize their unhealthy fixation isn’t really overcome by this, so they move onto food that doesn’t resemble poop, like a salad maybe
Animal products have good taste for most people. The issue with them is not their taste, or the actual act of consumption of them, it’s the fact that their production necessarily involves the torture and killing of sapient beings.
If you can have “meat” without such effects (so, those fake vegan “meats”), then there is nothing wrong with it at all (I still prefer most of the time my rice, beans, tofu and TSP if only due to the cost but again, nothing wrong with it, quite the contrary).
I was half-joking, but yes it was ignorant? Lesbians don’t choose their sexuality, but people do choose to be vegan. There is an ignorance of sexuality and diet there. Also, people do try going vegan, eat some fake meat and cheese, and eventually go back to eating meat because they still crave meat in itself. This does happen. This is also related to those people who sneak in or revert to eating meat because of some cultural or family tradition, or peer pressure from friends. One vegan I knew who was going on for 25 years ate a steak to impress his business friends instead of speaking up to say he didn’t want to eat at a meat-only restaurant. Take a look at my other comments here, I am speaking about this topic at the social level, not how individuals like the taste of meat or fake meat.
there is nothing wrong with it at all
Yeah I know, I have been saying that. This is not a moral argument. This is a rational one, and one perhaps from a medical or public health perspective: the cultural desire to obtain “meat” as a thing in itself is the cause for the demand of meat or meat alternatives. It’s great that under capitalism that solutions can be provided via the market and supply-and-demand, whatever, but it doesn’t address the reason why there is a demand in the first place.
How I know it’s a cultivated desire: it doesn’t exist across cultures. Hell it doesn’t exist within the western fake meat market itself: how much fake seafood do you see engineered out there? Or exotic meats ie objects perfectly engineered to mimic dog, cat, or even human meat? I’m sure human taste buds can enjoy long pork, real or fake. Yet basically no one is asking for this right?
how much fake seafood do you see engineered out there?
Crab sticks are usually fake, but generally, fish is harder to immigrate accurately than other meats, and there’s less demand for it since people in the west don’t generally eat tons of fish anyway.
Less demand for real fish means less demand for imitation fish, though there is apparently a company somewhere making lab grown salmon and tuna.
Right so, I have literally never eaten meat in my life. I was raised vegetarian. I still think plant based burger patties or sausages or whatever are delicious. Its literally just food. You gonna think that I’m “relying” on meat substitutes or “haven’t let go of meat entirely” when I haven’t even eaten meat before? :P
Just let people enjoy things! Plant based “meat” doesn’t hurt anyone and its a great option to add to your choices of meals.
Nothing against people who prefer meat substitutes
That’s good.
I do think they should be brave and just abandon meat altogether
That’s bad.
Now, firstly, thank you for defining a lot of people cowards.
Secondly, while I like indian food, I like meat more. And I liked it since forever. If I can have the delicious taste of meat in my plate without killing an animal, that’s great. Fantastic! I’m eagerly waiting for lab crafted meat any day. I’m willing to pay it more than real meat, because I’m not fond of killing living beings to eat them. But if that’s not yet possible, I’d still have my steak and my hamburger.
Bravery has nothing to do with it. It tastes good, and there’s no harm to any animals. So why not eat it? Denial for the sake of denial is not a virtue.
If you keep relying on meat substitutes, you haven’t let go of meat entirely, and it would be easy to get back to meat eating.
That’s like saying that if you enjoy shooting people in video games, then you’re one step away from shooting people in real life. I’ve been eating fake meats for almost a decade now, and I’ve never been tempted to eat real meat.
I know how horrible and senseless factory farming is, and I have images of the slaughtered seared into my memory from vegan documentaries. Why would I go back to that when I can have substitutes that are just as good, if not better?
I can’t really answer the question of why, but the sample set of people I know who switch to vegetarianism and veganism bears out that the ones who rely in fake meats much more frequently switch back than those who focus on learning to cook foods that don’t imitate meat.
On the counterargument, I did miss cheese quite a bit, and learning to culture my own vegan cheeses hasn’t led to buying animal milk cheeses again, so ymmv
It wasn’t meaningless, and I went out of my way to make clear the sample size wasn’t statistically significant.
The point was that the parent comment implied there was no reason to start eating meat again after making a moral choice not to. My anecdote shows that some people do anyway, therefore there must be a reason.
That in my experience they tended to be the people who relied on meat substitutes was presented as an observation of interest, not as hard evidence of universal truth.
Good job but not everyone has the mental fortitude you have displayed. I know plenty of people who tried going vegan, ate the fake meat and egg stuff, and just went back to the real stuff for the taste
Anyways it’s not about the individual level, it’s more the social ie the social ingraining to have the form and experience of meat contributes to the “culture” and demand of meat
Do you think that you could’ve gotten those people converted to an Indian diet, and they would’ve remained vegan? Getting people to go vegan in the first place is extremely difficult. Try getting them to go vegan and replace their diet with Indian food.
Yeah, if they were Indian. The culture around meat is different than in the West eg. some people only eat meat on a certain day or weekend. Even then, the approach is that meat is disgusting and needs to be cooked and spiced thoroughly before consuming anyhow. And there is already a long and popular tradition of simple alternatives to meat dishes like using potatoes or paneer (or “soy paneer” aka tofu to make it vegan)
Again, my point is that it is not about the individual but the social ingraining and pressure around meat as a category in itself for individuals
Meat is generally spiced more heavily in warm climates because it spoils faster and hot spices both preserves meat by killing bacteria and disguise a certain degree of spoilage.
I would be surprised if the trend towards hot spices in a country that is generally both warm and humid is because of a difference in palette rather than the reasons above.
The fake stuff (and cultivated meat for that matter) are getting closer to parity every year. You don’t go back to something “for the taste”, if the alternative you switched to offers a near identical experience.
Okay but we aren’t there yet and the vegans who I know who have broken their mental attachment to this meat “culture” have not even been tempted to go back once compared to those others
I’d argue that the fake meat stuff has hurt veganism to at least some extent because it’s marketed so heavily and people think it’s the only way to eat vegan. You can see how prominent the ”all vegan food is processed” and ”it’s too expensive to be vegan” arguments have become, even in this thread.
I mean, isn’t all Indian food overspiced? You could probably make curry out of just about any meat or meat substitute and it will still taste like spices.
American food has a higher focus on meat flavor, which is why so many meat alternatives try to imitate meat. You can buy vegan Indian or Chinese food here that tastes decent, but it’s not a steak.
Depends which part of India you mean. Telegu food is often very spicy. Bengali and Gujarati food is actually mostly sweet. Himalayan food is 99% bland and 1% volcano hot.
I’m vegetarian. Western food is so focused on meat that people often have no idea how to make a meal that doesn’t contain it. My mother once asked me how to make a vegetarian version of Chicken Parmesan. So keep the tomato sauce, cheese, and spices, but swap out the chicken with pasta. Congrats you’ve made vegetarian Chicken Parmesan. I like to call it Spaghetti.
I think that speaks to OP’s point: instead of thinking in terms of trying to replicate the meat dish without meat, think in terms of making a vegetable dish that satisfies the same mood.
It’s just funny that someone was looking for a meatless chicken parm because the original recipe was eggplant parm, just someone thought it would be better with meat.
and people get so pissy about like ‘where is muh serving of protein??’ like just because you saw an infograph as a child doesn’t mean you have to have a hunk of a living creature every meal
You know what has protein? Every whole plant food. You don’t need a dedicated part of a meal that is high in protein when the whole meal contains protein.
Different plants have different macros. Ofc there are plants with high protein but don’t go around spouting carrots and fruit are a balanced diet. You need beans, legumes, nuts, etc.
There’s nothing childish about paying attention to macros. If you’ve ever spent time doing any programmed exercising that includes making linear progress, you know the difference protein can make. And it’s hard to achieve even when you’re not extremely limited in ingredients.
I’m not knocking vegan or vegetarian diets. Just saying it’s not at all easy, and that protein matters a lot.
Also most vegetarian Indian food is absolutely loaded with butter/ghee. It’s not “healthy.”
I think the poverty and lack of access to healthcare in some areas might be a bigger drag on life expectancy than cooking with butter, especially when a fair number of Italian dishes also include butter.
And there’s a lot of alternatives for many different prices. I remember how people used to berate me for being vegetarian while growing up, telling me I’d die and whatnot.
I mean, the United States has, to be fair, developed a food culture that emphasizes using a lot of meat, especially over the past century or so. It’s not surprising that people from an area that eats so much meat, who go vegan, are going to want to look for ways to still make dishes familiar to them
I think it is also a reason why a lot of vegetarian food options or certain ingredients like tofu in the US are seen as lesser.
Like this isnt a meatless example but how tofu is presented in the west is a good showcase of this disconnect. There are people who dont care for tofu because tofu has been presented to them as a meat fill in. Tofurkey instead of turkey, tofu dog instead of hot dog, tofu nuggest, and etc. And tofu is not meat. It’s tofu. So yeah when you replace a Turkey dinner with tofu and are told its just as good or good enough you start associating it as an inferior tasting meat substitute.
But tofu isnt a meat fill in and in fact many traditional recipes use it in conjunction with meat. Tofu is tofu. It is its own ingredient and recipe,and if you use it as such instead of trying to pretend it’s something else you can do good things.
Like the same goes for a lot of western vegetarian dishes. Instead of leaning into the flavor profile of the dish or digging up some old traditional meatless recipe(of which many exist even western dishes when you consider lent and meatless fridays were a thing traditionally). And dont get me wrong I understand that someone who went vegetarian or vegan may want to emulate a spicy chicken wing, or a burger, but it feels like a lot of the mainstream western options are all just drop in replacements.
Absolutely this. I eat meat, but I really like veg* cooking. I feel like it challenges me in the kitchen and there’s a whole world of veg* dishes especially in mediterranean/middle eastern, south asian and east asian cooking that are just amazing. But the number of wide-eyed vegans who have handed me a lump of some sort of isolated vegetable protein and insisted repeatedly that “it tastes just like meat, you’ll never know” makes me wonder if vegans can actually taste food. I’m sorry, Kaiyleigh, nothing you do to that tofu is gonna make it taste “just like a hot dog”. How about you press it, cube it, roll it in some seasoned corn starch and fry it until it’s a delicious golden brown crunchy little nugget of tofu instead? Let it be what it is rather than trying to force it to be something that it’s not. Either you’re lying to yourself, you’re lying to me or you physically cannot detect flavor compounds with your tongue.
tldr - fuck a vegan, but I’d love another bowl of that lentil dal
But tofu isnt a meat fill in and in fact many traditional recipes use it in conjunction with meat.
My best experiment with tofu to date involved a marinade and replacing half the chicken I would have otherwise used with it in a dish, and cooking it in the drippings from browning the chicken.
Tofu is tofu. It is its own ingredient and recipe,and if you use it as such instead of trying to pretend it’s something else you can do good things.
I’m good with tofu, but my wife HATES the texture of it. Is there some trick to make it less spongy?
Thats a tricky one if they dont like the texture its hard to say. You can maybe make a dish with a less firm tofu thats softer if thats something she’s ok? Maybe do a ma po tofu with rice or something vaguely related.
Have you tried the classic of crispy tofu blocks? Just cube the tofu, toss in cornstarch and fry until the outside is good and crispy. Serve with rice and some kind of sauce or even eat it alone dusted with salt and pepper.
I tried something like that in the oven, with a sort of honey garlic glaze. Crisp outside, but the inside still has that spongy texture she doesn’t like. Maybe if I cut it really fine, into like thin pieces where there’s not much bulk to it, so theres a higher crust:sponge ratio? I hadn’t seen a recipe try really thin pieces, and I just assumed there was a reason.
From where I stand internationally though, it seems like a toxic culture too regarding it… Like, apparently, I’m meant to be considered more macho for eating meat somehow… I’m an omnivore, and I’ll eat what I want (the standard of vegetarian food actually seems much higher)
most of those meals involved meat. So took a bit of relearning. Being able to just make an old thing but with fake meat was nice. Then sometimes brain craves something from child hood, so have to find an alternative.
If its any indication into other factors, every time I try to make butter chicken it ends up tasting like a British persons home made curry recipe so there’s that. Jokes aside as someone who likes cooking, a lot of traditional recipes, of any culture are simply much more labor intensive than slapping a bean patty on a pan then furnishing it. I’d wager the pace of a lot of western lifestyles, the choice gets weighted quickly.
To be fair, a patty sandwich of any type (be it hamburgers, chicken sandwich, beans, or any kind of imitation meat) is going to be similarly labor intensive and time consuming if one had to make the patty and bread oneself rather than being able to just buy them. I’m sure traditional recipes for most cultures can be made similarly convenient if probably somewhat different from their original form, if demand exists for them to be premade and sold that way. There’s a specialty grocery store very close to my home that specializes in Indian food, tho also has some international foods from other places too, and it’s freezer section has all sorts of Indian dishes done up as tv dinners, or premade frozen samosas of various flavors one just has to fry in a pan for a few minutes, among other things.
Yup. I love a good microwaved samosa or Chana masala and it’s easier than grilling a frozen chemical burger frankly. I don’t think convenience is a fair argument here. Microwaved Chana is nowhere as good as a freshly made 3hour dish, don’t get me wrong, but there are convenience options that aren’t vegan chicken nuggets.
I mean comparing a frozen vegetable patty to a whole frozen meal is a bit of a stretch in quality and affordability imo. Honestly a lot of it has to do with things like how many pans and utensils you use too. Even if I make a burger from ground beef its still only one pan, two cutting boards (one for meat one for veg) and all the fresh produce just needs to be washed and cut, if you wanna grill the onions, same pan no problem, all you need is a knife and a spatula. When I tried to make butter chicken the tastiest recipe called for two different marinades and a sauce you make in stages. I can go over the video and look at the kitchen hardware necessary but I think it’s easy to imagine its a lot more. I’ve found quite a few Indian recipes in particular are similar that way so it seemed topical.
Depends on if they’re capitol E English or not, then I’d imagine you’d probably have South Asian and Jamaican styles being dominant. I was referring to the englishmans home cooked take on it. If you want the story, years ago I was in Australia and my neighbors there were UK English, I don’t know how to describe it other than it tasted like my early attempts at traditional recipes. If it helps I remember “Man I did all that and mine still just tastes like someone used a strange ramen flavoring packet.” So that’s probably how I’d describe it.
Yep. It's all about helping people transition. So much of American food culture is centered around burgers, steak, BBQ, etc. It's really hard to just drop all of that on a dime, even if you want to. These products help people with that mental itch.
Wrong. The fake meat in the top portion is overprocessed and tastes like garbage instead of delicious meat, while the bottom portion is 100% delicious vegan food.
Edit: downvotes from people who hate vegan food, I guess.
Depends on the brand IMO. I actually really like Impossible Meat; to me it tastes like decent quality beef with some really good hard to place seasoning. If it wasn't so damn expensive I'd get it over actual ground beef.
They were referring to the comma. Commonly used with a verbal pause. So like: "It's not...though?" As if the "though?" was its own thought and the only part of the sentence that had the question inflection.
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