Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Mark Bittman with an Op-Ed and and a video.

A Chicken Without Guilt

Thanks for posting this Jim as I don't regularly read the NYT. The whole food plant based movement continues to grow and for good reason.

I recently had a meal with friends and all the they talked about was "Forks Over Knives." Another point on the curve of the plant based movement.
http://www.forksoverknives.com/

For the record, as a non-meat eater, the last thing I want is fake meat.

It's also my experience that people who are vegetarian for moral reasons, and eat lots of fake meat products, go back to eating real meat in 2-5 years. I've seen it happen half a dozen times.

Also, frankly, Bittman doesn't exactly sell the new stuff:



In other words, we can use soy to reproduce really bad chicken. Color me underwhelmed.

Now, when someone can figure out a way to produce really convincing fake bacon, then they'll make a fortune.

There's an earlier quote:So in fairness perhaps it's a better fake chicken.

If you watch the video, the (vegan) creator says the product would not be intended to appeal to full-time vegetarians or vegans but for people who are looking far a low impact, high acceptability way to have a meatless meal once or twice a week. If you've ever eaten with a kid who asks "what's in it?" or doesn't eat foods of a certain color you'd appreciate acceptability in the food substitutes.

Hey, I know those kids. It is also probably a good product for a carnivore cooking for vegetarians as they can make a dish they are more familiar with. Or a fast source of protein for vegetarians who want something quick and easy. The meat like subs I have tasted have left me underwhelmed and I would prefer a vegetarian meal that isn't a weak imitation of some variations of meat and potatoes. I think if I were a vegetarian I would miss the "chew" of meat that you just don't get anywhere else. And things on bones. And the smell. And the animal pleasure of raw beef. I would stink at being a vegetarian.

Mary

Fake meat is not intended for vegetarians or shameless omnivores. It is for
Guiltivores like Mark Bittman and many of the rest of us who may never stop eating meat, but feel guilty about the possibility of damage to the environment, and the suffering of the animals destined to feed us and want to reduce our consumption.

Every time we put cheap chicken or pork in our grocery carts knowing that its price does not reflect the true, full cost and knowing that we should be paying 3-4 times as much for sustainable, cruelty free and environmentally friendly animal protein the guilt comes in waves. It helps knowing that my $2 pork loins are being subsidized by high demand at rib-raunts and that revelers in wing bars are responsible for my $2 BSCB’s, but are times that guilt becomes so bad that only way I can face another meal is to fire up the grill and fill the neighborhood with the aroma of a carefully selected Angus rib eye searing over the coals.

Whereas I generally find those things repulsive. Well, except for the chew part, but I get that from sourdough bread.

Meat is my cilantro. Especially beef.

One of my long-time vegetarian friends told me once that the only meat he had liked as a kid (he went all veggie in college) was veal. When he realized the only thing he liked about it was that it tasted the least like meat, he just gave up meat and never looked back. He also doesn't go in for the fake meat products. My on-again, off-again vegetarian friend (always a friend, just not always a vegetarian) does eat the fake stuff. About every two years he succumbs to the lure of a Big Mac and will eat meat for a couple of months before going back on the wagon.

Those who eat fake meat are crypto-carnivores

Not having children, I don't know about that part, but I've found a huge world of meat-less, fake or otherwise, meals out there that are delicious (I'm not veg, we just try to limit our meat intake the 'daily recommended' amount, which means no meat on some days...). I think if you were trying to tightly control carbs, it would get quite a bit more difficult though as a lot of the great meatless food tends to have a substantial amount of carbs.

This is SO ending up on Twitter.