One of these cultures has normalisedvegan and vegitarianism for centuries, the other is trying to wean a meat-obsessed population.
They are not the same thing, nor do they have the same requirements to reach their end goals
How prevalent is veganism in India? Whenever I look at Indian food, it’s butter this and milk that. Sure, there are some very good vegan choices, but it seems to me that Indians love their dairy.
Veganism is actually a fairly new phenomenon in general, a lot of Jains in particular have adopted it. But vegetarianism in India dates back over a thousand years BCE , so yeah, they’ve got a bit of a head start.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country
About 30% are vegetarian in India. Almost 10% are vegan.
So it’s very prevalent, but America likes to pretend we’re the only country in the world and that problems are never solved anywhere else.
Where are the Indian vegans? I have only ever met ONE in my entire life except myself.
Try India.
Maybe it’s a regional difference? I live in South India
Hi 👋
Source: me
Hi!
I don’t mean like, online. I’ve met plenty of online Indian vegans. But still, I find it hard to believe that every 1 in 10 people are vegan. Where?!
I would say about 30% of my Indian coworkers over the years have been vegan.
I think the challenge is that, unlike a lot of Western vegans, they don’t go out of their way to talk about it. My second job, I knew day 1 about the white girl who was vegan. It took me 2 years to learn that 4 of my Indian coworkers were vegan since birth. And I only learned it because they learned I was getting into Indian food so they all started bringing stuff in for me to try. Entire meals. Incredible meals. I miss that job, lol.
Exactly, we don’t go about our day preaching veganism.
My family loves to announce to the world that I don’t drink milk. It’s annoying. Idk they’re probably in shock or something that someone would choose not to abuse cows. (They’re vegetarians, I’m vegan)
Where do you live? I assume outside India? Hmm
no one abuses cows anyway
Tell me you know nothing about it without telling me you know nothing about it
Well yeah, very outside of India. I live in the US, though I try not to make my identity about that.
But one thing I’ve loved about working in Boston is how many cultures I’ve been exposed to in my life.
Vegetarian? Yes. Vegan? No.
I am a vegetarian. I eat dairy. I don’t eat meat and eggs.
Just eat eggs bro it’s just a chicken period
Except for the part where they’re kept in small cages or “free range” in dirty cramped pens. Luckily it’s easier to get eggs from chickens raised ethically than meats. You just gotta fork over a few extra bucks or get the hookup at a farmer’s market
or “free range” in dirty cramped pens.
We drive 10mph around here because the damn chickens like to “free range” in the road. Those are pretty large pens, the size of a damn town.
The USDA needs to get their pockets out of big ag’s hands. Free Range should be Free-Fucking-Range. I get to know the chicken I eat got to run wild 16 hours every day, but many people do not.
Yeah the fuckery that they pull when they list things as grass fed and free range is vile. Then they make a profit on top of it because they barely change anything but charge premium prices for the fancy label.
I’m lucky to have a beef farm in my state that ships locally and actually follows the spirit of grass fed up to grass finished in sprawling pastures. They also do individual slaughter. For eggs we’ve got a few locals that bring them to the farmers markets on Sundays. Beef is like a once a week thing for us these days and it’s usually just ground beef. Chicken and fish are our biggest sources of protein now. I don’t really do pork anymore. Can’t find any that’s remotely close to ethically sourced which is abysmal considering how intelligent pigs are. So I just stopped buying it.
Also, and I’m fully aware this could just be some kinda subconscious bias, but I swear the meat and eggs taste SO much better than the stuff from the grocery. Eggs especially. The yolks are so vibrant and hardly break when being fried. Even the shells seem stronger and less likely to shatter into tiny annoying bits.
Here’s my reason for trying to eat a little more beef than that. If I’m giving “lives lost” any value, you can’t beat cows for calories per animal death. It beats a lot of plant-based foods. And I do have local beef, though it is not fully sustained like local chicken is… which is why I eat more chicken and seafood as well. Not to mention, even though beef around me can be ecologically sustainable, it will not remain that way if too many people eat it because it needs to be supplemented by import. So some beef = good. More beef = less good.
We actually have some ethically sourced local pork, too. I guess it’s nice living in a farming area of my state, despite not living in a farming-state. The butcher’s pork section is always small, but he’s got some.
Also, and I’m fully aware this could just be some kinda subconscious bias, but I swear the meat and eggs taste SO much better than the stuff from the grocery
Not really a subconscious bias. They are fresher, and preservation techniques often have not been started on them. If you eat an egg that has never been refrigerated, of course it’s fresher. (or the opposite, lol)
The seafood my family fishes is right off a boat, generally only a couple hours harvested. After the fishermens’ cut, the best stuff goes to a couple local restaurants and seafood markets, and the rest are frozen and shipped. Yes, you can taste the difference. I never liked scallops until I tasted “the real thing” off a boat.
Same, got this one road where I always need to be careful about the hens.
Chickens are not people
I never said they were? I’m not even a vegetarian stop being so sensitive. I don’t care for making anything suffer when I can still have eggs without the suffering. It’s that simple. If you’ve based too much of your personality on macho meathead bullshit then do you boo. I’m sure that’s a great replacement for an actual personality.
To a vegan, that doesn’t matter because it’d be speciesism.
Yeah, Vitamin B12 defiencies make you act erratic
Somehow doesn’t sound as tasty.
chickens don’t have periods
Yeah I have a lot of vegetarian Indian friends, not as many vegan.
9% of the population apparently, the highest in the world tied with Mexico.
It’s not vegan so much as veggie. They definitely respect those cows they get the milk from though.
This is what people don’t get, if you’ve been veggie for years then you don’t need meat substitutes, these products are for normies trying to cut back or give up while they break the cultural training.
I’ve been vegetarian for… more than a decade? I love meat substitutes and generally prefer having the substitute present in meals (either as the main thing, like a burger, or as an inclusion). I do agree that meat substitutes are a fantastic way of reducing meat consumption for meat-eaters, but that doesn’t mean you need to do away with it completely once you’re in ‘full veg’ mode
One of these cultures has normalised vegan and vegetarianism for centuries, the other is trying to wean a meat-obsessed population
As someone who works in a grocery store, the worst fucking people are the ones who go up to the deli counter and yell at the clerks, demanding the "bloodiest* roast beef they’ve got. That or the spiciest turkey, or whatever.
Dudes who’s entire sense of self is invested in eating meat. Easily the most annoying kind of guy I encounter in my daily life.
That and the ‘for every animal you don’t eat i’m gonna eat THREE!’ Yay well done so macho you get threatened by what another person eats fucking yay for you sir gold star.
Dudes who’s entire sense of self is invested in eating meat
This might sound silly. But maybe they enjoy the taste of rare roast beef? Before this “make meat seem like it’s not dead animal” trend, the rule used to be anything over medium was overcooked for most meats. For some odd reason (actually, not odd. freaking additives) a lot of roast beef is sold medium-well. Which is tasteless enough to make someone go vegan!
I don’t understand “yell at the clerks”. I’ve never seen that. But I agree it’s rude. Just **not **because they are buying meat.
Hence this meme
which would be fine if it were just a straight comparison but it starts bleating about chemicals and preservatives and it’s a bit too purity politicking for my tastes.
Maybe. While I do sometime choose the plant-based meat, thinking of it as a substitute was my initial reluctance to try vegetarian food. Back then, I ridiculed the idea of a “veggie burger”, but really liked grilling a “black bean patty”. Did you realize Mac and Cheese can be vegetarian? “Greek veggie dip” is horrible, but I love hummus. I always loved various potatoes, but it was quite a revelation that you could spice them up and use them as a meal. My latest infatuation is Halloumi or Paneer - don’t ever call a nice grilling cheese a substitute for anything.
At least for me, it is easier to choose foods for their own value, rather than suffer with a substitute, r a variation “without”. I’m not a vegetarian and have no interest in it, but I will choose what looks good to me at any given time, on its own merits
veganism was invented in the 1940s in Britain
inaccurate. Even a brief wiki would correct you on this.
saying something doesn’t make it true. alluding to the existence of evidence is not the same as presenting evidence.
what on earth are you on about.
One of the earliest known vegans was the Arab poet al-Maʿarri, famous for his poem “I No Longer Steal From Nature”. (c. 973 – c. 1057).
The first known vegan cookbook was Asenath Nicholson’s Kitchen Philosophy for Vegetarians, published in 1849
These are documented historical facts. Not “saying something” which ironically appears to be the position you are claiming.
Did the modern name come about in the 40’s? yes, that’s the etymology of it. But you’re treating that fact like the movement or ideology was formed at the same time, which is tremendously, provably wrong. It’s like claiming gay people are a relatively new invention because the term “homosexual” wasn’t coined until the 1890’s
veganism is a specific philosophy, and while variations of vegetarianism predate it, veganism itself dates to the 1940s.
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
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.
Not just the meat, there is cheese and milk involved in a lot of it as well.
It’s not just culture, or itch, or whatever.
I just love the taste of meat! My body craves for it. But if I can keep that delicious flavour in my plate without killing an animal, that’s great!
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.
What does a British person’s home made curry taste like? I’m curious.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
You started a certified veganism struggle session, good job.
Yeah, it seems that “your meme is kinda gatekeepy” is a pretty good way to start some “spirited discussions.”
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.
You’re chatting out your ass, this is like saying lesbians shouldn’t use dildos in case they go back to fucking men
Keep it civil please.
🥰
Is cursing against the rules here, or just telling you that you’re ignorant?
You first
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
No, their metaphor was not ignorant at all.
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).
No, their metaphor was not ignorant at all.
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.
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
Your anecdote is meaningless as your sample size is not statistically significant.
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
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
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.
Nothing against people who prefer meat substitutes. But I do think they should be brave and just abandon meat altogether.
Looking at someone not eating meat: you should stop eating meat.
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.
Yeah same here. I like fake meat. I mean, if it tastes good and has no animal parts in it, it goes into my mouth. It’s not that complicated.
So your whole point is a slippery slope fallacy. Gotcha.
I don’t think meat substitutes is is the major problem to worry about. In fact, perhaps they could help?
https://plantbasednews.org/opinion/do-84-vegans-and-vegetarians-give-up-diets/
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.
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.
it would be easy to get back to meat eating
If it would “be easy” for you to get back to consuming animal products, it’s hard to imagine you’re vegan at all.
18 years meatless and counting
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.
Who cares for bravery? Avoiding meat is avoiding meat. Crazy strawman.
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
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.
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
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
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
You think leather is a desire?
You think people kill animals to obtain leather because it’s cool?
Leather has many purposes and advantages, it’s economically and practically sane to use it or mimick its features, even with fake leather.
A desire, he said… Sometimes I don’t get people anymore.
Water is a chemical. Salt is a preservative This is fucking stupid.
There’s actually a lot of plant based meat that are chemical / preservative free, Redefine Meat comes first to mind. As there is a lot of animal meat that is full of chemicals, preservatives, carcinogens, and antibiotics use.
I would only assume most fast food meals, meat ones included, are not chemical / preservative free. That’s a western fast food problem, vegan or not.
Lastly, vegan people broadly don’t eat plant based meats. Like it get the joke… It’s just broadly inaccurate. Meat eaters, people trying to eat less meat, and some vegetarians buy plant based meats.
Very true, great points all around
Now with that out of the way, this is literally just a lame “I’ve depicted the group I don’t agree with as the Soyjak and my group as the Chad, thus superiority confirmed”.
It was never going to be a balanced take
Lastly, vegan people broadly don’t eat plant based meats
I think it’s a demographics thing. There’s a whole lot of vegans who eat “fake meat” regularly or even exclusively. I have a successful restaurant chain near me that specialized in “plant-based alternative” meals, from burgers to lasagnas and everything in between. No it’s not all meat. Lots of “Cashew Cheese” and similar.
And honestly, I don’t think vegans should be faulted for “wanting meat but not eating it”. It’s the ones that get judgey of non-vegans like the other 99% are somehow inferior to them. I know way too many vegans who are vegan for good reasons or for personal-trauma reasons, and they should be left alone. Even if they want a miracle burger and mac 'n cashes.
There’s actually a lot of plant based meat that are chemical / preservative free
Literally everything in this sentence is wrong.
Thank you, it drives me nuts when people say shit like “chemical-free”. Everything is made out of chemicals, tell me which one otherwise I’ll just assume you’re uneducated and afraid of things you can’t pronounce.
My dude… Says who? You? It’s not hard to Google - you find lists of them when you do.
Chemical free food? Everything is a chemical. Not hard to google that
“plant-based” is not “meat”. Are there “meat-based plants?”
All food is comprised of “chemicals”.
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.
90% of “vegetarian versions” of dishes are just the dish without meat. 9% of the remainder are the dish with black beans and/or mushrooms
I mean personally I’d sub it in for something with some protein, though you definitely don’t need nearly the amount you get from a piece of meat.
You need it.
Maybe you do.
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.
Still here, after nearly thirty years.
I’d swap the chicken for eggplant personally.
What was first, the eggplant or the chickenplant?.. 😛
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 should still be eating protein…
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.
Vegans are great, especially with garlic in a nice butter sauce.
✅ Peppers
❌ Capsaicin
YW
A lot of Indian cooking is vegetarian, not vegan. Ghee is very often used.
And paneer.
Not quite the same, but if you want to replace ghee with something vegan, try avocado or coconut oil. There is vegan ghee (made from palm oil I think?) but it’s bad for you the same way old timey margerine is bad.
Incidentally, unprocessed red palm oil could be a nice replacement, but it has a characteristic earthy/almondy taste. I love it on fish dishes but it’s not the taste you expect from Indian food I think.
Yea there are probably more vegans in Europe than in India
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“I fucking love Ghee, it’s like freebasing butter” - Malcolm Tucker
Yeah I don’t get the whole “replace meat with a vegan steak” idea. Just prepare a delicious Dahl, the recipe of which has been around for hundreds of years!
They’re not made for people like us who have been veggie or vegan for years and have learned to cook with pulses, legumes, etc. They’re designed for people who want to cut back or give up meat but have to break the cultural training that every meal needs meat. Also they allow casual food places that don’t have professional chefs like pubs, cafes, etc to have quick and easy veggie options on the menu.
I think there’s a more commercial aspect to it. It’s cheap processed food, and in fact it’s often cheaper than meat-based processed foods. The real offense is that they charge more for it.
As someone who has seen both made, I think the prices are what you’d expect against materials and work involed. Plant-based meats require more ingredients, with more sourcing, and more processing. And then fewer are made and sold overall (economics of scale).
And people don’t realize, the subsidies hurt a lot of the manufacturing chains that are pricemakers for the meat. Ranchers have to pay the infamous feed tax when they sell their meat, which funds one of the biggest subsidies in the farming world, only paid out to the largest factory farms. Because mega-factory-farms can’t actually afford to charge the prices that ranchers charge, what after all those massive bonuses the top couple people make.
Plant-based meats require more ingredients, with more sourcing, and more processing.
You’re just using an animal to perform the processing instead. I wonder why poultry or beef isn’t required to list all of the antibiotics or growth horomones that those animals were fed as included ingredients.
You’re just using an animal to perform the processing instead
Which they do efficiently. There’s no grass in the resulting meat, or feed, or sunlight. That’s why they’re not on the ingredient list. And water is in everything.
I wonder why poultry or beef isn’t required to list all of the antibiotics or growth horomones that those animals were fed as included ingredients.
Per the Iowa Farm Bureau, because there ARE NO antibiotics or residue in the resultant meat. An ingredient is something actually in the product. Nobody says there’s gasoline in your food vegetables because of the harvester, or insects in your vegetables because… well there actually are!
As for growth hormones… nobody has to say there’s growth hormones in it because they’re everywhere. Beef from a hormone-treated cow has thousands (to millions) of times less growth hormonesthan many plant-based products like peanuts or soy flour. Nobody has to list Estrogen on soy milk.
Animals do not produce food efficiently. It’s not like everything put into an animal is converted into edible flesh, not even a tenth of it is.
They produce meat more efficiently than any artifical process, especially any process line using nuclear medicine (what businesses are trying now).
And for what it’s worth, there is no other mechanism that converts indigestible starches into highly digestible proteins efficiently.
It’s not like everything put into an animal is converted into edible flesh, not even a tenth of it is.
The typical chicken caloric conversion rate is 2-5x. That means 10000 calories of feed produces 5000 total calories that are higher quality than the feed was, about 2000 of those calories is meat, where the remaining 3000 is used for other purposes, like creating broths. This is incredibly, miraculously efficient.
Real-world numbers seem a bit better. 100-320kcal/day (more in winter and as they grow) per day in feed, and produce 2500 of straight meat after 40 days. That looks like more like 4x conversion than 5x.
Egg-laying chickens have a ramp up (where you feed them but they don’t produce eggs), but then produce an egg almost daily. That’s 80 calories in eggs for 260-340 calories in feed. (so almost 100% return on the extra cals). And yes, you can still eat the chicken when she’s too old to lay eggs. She’ll just be a bit more tough.
So if you’re comparing the production of meat to burning gasoline, then no chicken is not as efficient. If you’re comparing it to any food-related process (or hell, many mechanical processes), it’s downright jawdroppingly good.
Compare to corn. Only 10% of the calories in a typical grain crop are edible by humans. You’ll never guess what we use most of the other 90% for.
Hmm I was 27 years a meat eater, advocating for meat consumption in the face of a vegan mate. Saying things like “we need a little bit of meat in our diets…they’re killed humanely…etc”
Took me one moment of realisation, then I dunno, I just tried, not even that hard, vegan 7 years now.
I can see that the transitional foods are a good stepping stone, but imo, the second you see inside the animal agriculture industry without any blinders on (biases), you’ll choose to act within your life, if you have the compassion/empathy to.
If someone sees the reality of what goes on behind closed doors and continues to consume animals in much the same way, it says more about that persons internal morality than anything else.
Think this post confuses veganism and vegetarianism. Also it’s chemicals all the way down. Those spices? Made of chemicals.
Those alternative burgers are actually pretty tasty but also very heavy because they are imitating beef. For American fare I’d generally prefer a sandwich with deli style meats made out of tofu or seitan, or a bean burger.
I love both, I’m not sure I know any real person who thinks this is a competition
Same, it’s nice having more options. Apparently that’s a bad thing according to some.
It’s not enough to be vegan, or enough to tell people you are vegan. You have to be a better vegan than them.
You have to be a better vegan than them.
Didn’t you know? Todd’s vegan!
Most vegans in the US do not eat food that mimics meat.
Most Western butt holes cannot handle Indian food that well. The couple times I went to Indian weddings, I was clamoring for anything that would not burn my butthole. The good combined with the ridiculous amount of alcohol made the toilets cry.
Try a fiber supplement. Or eating vegetables.
The fiber is not the issue. I’m good on that. It was the spiciness that was the problem. I can handle a little bit of spice but there was pretty much no reprieve.
You need to focus on the creamy, typically lighter colored curries. Butter chicken, korma, things like that.
As a Canadian Caucasian I concur that we should all eat more vegetables.
I’ll have you know our British digestive systems can handle almost anything from over 60 years of Indian, Pakistani, Carribbean and Mexican food. When Taco Bell arrived on our shores it was bland disappointment compared to existing burrito outlets, especially given all the hype that it apparently puts an American in the toilet for hours :(
Thats from the meat quality, not the spicyness
when I went vegan, I started eating practically exclusively Indian food. dal, chana masala, aloo gobi, so many delicious foods.
Samosa!!
Most veg Indian food has dairy added tho. Avoiding ghee is like going through an obstacle course of nice aunties and uncles trying to feed you. And don’t even get me started on curd.
Indian vegans also often use substitutes. I’m for vegan food unity: don’t harm and exploit animals and I support you.
How is the dairy industry in India? I would assume it is nowhere near as cruel as it is in the West, where sadistic practices are incorporated at every stage of the process in the name of efficiency.
CW: how the dairy/meat industry works.
It’s basically the same. The driving factor of mass death in the dairy industry is that to make cows produce milk they’ve gotta get pregnant and calf, so you end up with a bunch of cows that are too old to produce enough milk for market and a big of calves that won’t produce milk, ever.
In the West, those “extra”, “non-productive” animals get killed (the dairy industry is the meat industry). In India, this is still often the case as not everyone is veg and not everyone who’s non-veg avoids beef. But there are enough people that refuse beef for there to be an impetus to follow a “traditional” alternative: you kick the animal out of the dairy for it to fend for itself. In reality, they tend to just starve to death over a long period of time.
For there to be dairy without a culling there would need to be like 30 pet cows for every 1 dairy cow. Assuming the cost of raising the cow is what people pay for, that would mean milk costing 10X more.
My dumb ass assuming India’s culture of reverence for cows would lead to slightly better treatment for them but forgetting that capitalism will always demand the most profitable option.
What a bunch of dumb gatekeeping
It’s a meme
It’s still stupid and spawning stupid conversations
…which you’re participating in. So what does that make you? 🧐
Humor is not an impenetrable shield against criticism. Memes shape discourse. For better and worse.
No, it’s shit.
