If you are a low/no meat eater, how do you feel about meat imitations?

I don't crave meat really, so I don't generally care for fake meat. I prefer to eat soy at a less refined level (bean or tofu) than at a more refined level (fake meats). I do like fake bacon though.

Though I haven't had them in quite awhile. My oven is kaput, I particularly like the corndogs, sausages, and the faux spicy chicken patties.

I'm not a vegetarian. My only complaint is about them is their high sodium content.

I'm not a fan of the Boca burgers. I'd eat em if I was starving and someone served them to me but I wouldn't buy them myself unless they were on ubersale which never happens for any of the veggie burger and their assorted veggie faux meat relatives.

Ooooohhh, corndogs are good too!

The fake mini corndogs are my downfall!

I'm not a vegetarian, but..

I like the garden burger at one of our local places here (Model Drug Store, which has an old fashioned coffee shop). I don't know their source, probably pre made garden burgers, but they're a pretty good place so they might make them from scratch.

I've gone so far as to look up and save how to make my own, with recipes usually involving black beans, but not tried it yet.

I think that's as faux as I'd go. I already eat a moderate amount of meals sans meat, mostly italian food, and would eat a lot of japanese/veggie stuff if there was a place around here I liked.

But those corn dog things sound dangerous to me, as I'd probably like them...
dammit, now I have to look up and see if one can make one's own. I prefer unpackaged food, re both ingredients and expense.

you're so fresh

I've tried one of the Morningstar Farm veggie burger products and found it to be extremely salty... so salty that I tossed it rather than ate it.

I make my own now.

I don't eat meat because I don't like it. It's only recently become a moral issue to me and that's since I've learned how much of the world's natural resources are squandered to raise cattle, sheep, lambs and pigs to feed people.
So I have no interest in meat substitutes as a matter of taste. I probably would like them, salt and all, better than the meat, but I have no desire to try to replace meat, because it generally doesn't appeal to me.

But there's this thing they call a nut roast that I really love. It's a vegetarian alternative to a roast - they serve it on Sundays a lot over here- and it's delicious. It's sort of like stuffing with grated vegetable in it.

I eat that when other people are having roast only because I like it. I'd ten times rather have that than roast beef.

We barbecue the fake stuff (we also bbq chicken, tofu and a ton o' veggies) but usually don't eat it unless it's in the context of bbq. Since I'm working from home, I do have the occasional fake burger or hot dog for lunch but, as has been said above, there is a definite sodium issue there.

i don't think i'd eat fake meat, i like tofu as a substitute, but i don't care if it looks like meat

i also like these

hmmmmm.

nut roast means something different out here...

I love the taste of meat, but I have severely reduced my intake of it for two reasons. First, I'm finding that this change substantially helps me control my cholesterol levels, and through them, my blood sugar level. Second, Peter Singer's books Practical Ethics, The Ethics of What we Eat, and Animal Liberation have convinced me that raising animals for meat in factory farms is unconscionable. I ought not vote for this industry with my dollars. Indeed, I think I ought to be a Vegan. But my long-cultivated omnivorous instincts haven't quite caught up with what I know yet. So the best I can hope to do is substitute more and more meat with substitutes. The point of all this being, I'm probably the prime target for the merchants of fake meats.

How do I feel about those fake meats? It depends---not all of them are created equal. I like tofu and tempeh, which you may or may not count as "fake meats". But so far I've been underwhelmed with all soy-based, honest-to-Gaia fake meats I have ever tried: soy hot dogs, soy bacon, soy breakfast sausage patties, you name it. I have since removed them from my diet.

Seitan on the other hand---that's cooked wheat gluten---has worked just wonderful for me. Unlike the soy-based fake meats, Seitan has almost the same chewy and stringy consistency you would expect from a piece of chicken. And when you make it from scratch, the taste is as good as you can make it with the vegetable broth and the spices of your choice. Another plus: seitan can be cheap as dirt. For example, a 50-lb bag of vital wheat gluten costs $100. You mix it 1:1 with vegetable broth, knead the dough until it's smooth and bouncy, cook it in some flavored liquid of your choice (I use more vegetable broth myself), and you're done. It's my discovery of Seitan that gave me hope I might, eventually, actually become a Vegan someday and stick with the program.


No. (I'm a Utilitarian and hence a consequentialist; I don't really do virtue.)


Sure.


Not at all---what's there to feel guilty about?

I'm a still-trying-to-be no meat eater. But we give in and eat those Elevation Hamburgers now and then. Can't say I've ever found a meat substitute that I'd rush to eat again. So, we eat mostly chicken and fish in any variety imaginable. Love veggie dishes.

If folks are going to insist on living in huge collections of people and buildings, the need for "factory farms" will present itself as the most convenient and marketeable solution for food production. To label an industry as "unconscionable" is merely a method by which you try to distance yourself and absolve yourself from the reponsibility of raising and butchering the chickens and the piggy.

How is the concept of eating only veggies and plants that are grown in monocultured farms any different than eating meat?

The basic problem is population , since the planet has a finite carrying capacity and , unless we all decide that were just gonna harvest algae from the sea and actually begin a soylent fed society, farming will always be a necessary evil. The SIngers and Pollards have merely found a receptive ear from people who have no idea how their foods are raised.
Veggies and row crops are destructive ag means to raise large volumes of these food plants. No matter whether theplants are used for animal feed or not, the methods to grow them exhausts the soil and cripples the surrounding environment. Ag areas can actually be diversity deserts , but so what, as long as you have some feeling of virtue for being a vegan.

Grass fed cattle raising is an expensive and more sustainable means to have responsible non factory fed beef , lamb, mutton, and poultry (yes its possible to raise chickens on a grass diet (like amaranth and seedhead grasses) Chickens are effective foragers . The only thing is that the cost of production of all these more sustainable means of livestock production is naturally higher. Is it in your means to expend maybe 30% of your income on food? Sustainable and "Responsible" (In whose eyes?) farming costs more than it pays, and the product isnt necessarily more palatble or healthy. (Michael Pollard would have you believe that it is).
I could devote my farm to grass fed cattle only. Id then have to cut the herds in half to make my pastures and hay fields extend as an exclusive fodder. The result would be that the charge per pond would go from a 2.60 a hundred weight to maybe 5. 0r 6 $ a hundredweight ( these are "On the hoof" live prices that I would realize at the market cattle auctions).
The actual supply chain for production and distribution of meat (Assuming a grass fed economy) would require more interaction by the customer . ASO you(the cutomer) would have to deal with me the farmer rather than rely on a faceless and (high costing) supply line from auction to market and in which only the prime through choice cuts are used and the bulk of the animal "Goes away".

Same thing would be required with a responsible "veggie life". You still interact with a supply and market line which robs the farmer of the bulk of the product worth and applies exhorbitant fees for 'halving" or "Boxing" and "delivery".

If markets , or the customer base would demand only local products for the bulk of theoir foods, then a commensal relationship between farmers and customers could be maintained.
Rather than decrying the MEANS of production, you should become more familiar with the components of production and delivery so that you could interact better as a customer and assure that farmers will be fairly treated as will you the ultimate recipient of the foodstuffs.
Im a little tired of hearing how farmingmethods are "Unconscionable" yet farmers , who have undertaken large service contracts with food production companies are only producing what they percieve their contracts require. (fertilizer and ag chemical use for veggies, to feed stuffs used for poultry grown by contract).

There is no "conscionable" farming, there are only degrees of production efficiency. Were you the customer to demand that ADM no longer pump high fructose corn syrup into everything they make, or if youd tell Tyson foods to stop feeding massive doses of sulfur and iron ore residues into chickens , then you could say that you are responsibly interacting with your food.Why not go to the farms of Connecticut or NEw Jersey and set up a "Thomas supply line" wherein you develop a market basket approach to buying your meats and veggies. You could do this for several others as a service and you could do it for your neighborhood vegans and set up a business that would be based upon your own ethical model.

PS, anyone who eats tofu or rice should be at the end of the line when it comes to saying what is or is not unconscionable. These two crops are almost a plague to the environment. Rice farming is a larger air pollutant than are open dumps. At this time of year in Louisiana and the San Juaquin Valley, the air is turning unhealthy for tens of millions of people just because the rice farmers are burning the "duff" of last yewars production, in preparation to reflooding their fields. Soybean farmers too, are causing vast deserts of diversity and promoting the evolution of super weeds that are taking over vast areas and are invasively displacing tall prairie grasses, hedgerows and forest margins.

Clean row cropping of soy bean fields, the standard practice, also means extenstive wind and water erosion--principally water erosion. Soy bean farming has ecologically killed the Illinois River, which is a high volume but "slow" river which simply cannot clear the silt, leading to the death of the plants from which fish used to feed, and therefore the death of the fish. Tofu eaters are about the biggest hypocrites among the ranks of the "virtuous vegans."

I think that Thomas, when he wakes up this AM will respond to us nicely .


"virtuous vegans" seems to summit up for me

I'm sure our heartfelt concern not simply for our environment, but his bodily and moral well-being will shine through our posts.

armen

But If I didn't eat chickens and piggies, because I ate plant products instead, I would have no responsibility to absolve myself from. Hence my current efforts to reduce my meat intake, and my hope to eat completely vegan at some time in the future.


In two ways: The first difference is in the amount of suffering caused to sentient beings. By eating veggies and plants from monocultured farms, I wouldn't pay farmers to cause pain to animals that clearly can suffer. The second difference is efficiency: Our supply of soy, corn, and wheat will go a lot farther in nourishing humans when we stop passing them through pigs and chicken first.


I agree. Indeed, we would address this problem by eating plants without first passing them through animals---because in doing so, we would drastically reduce populations. Specifically, the populations of animals raised for meat.


Why don't we solve this problem anarchistically? You decide what's unconscionable to you; I decide what's unconscionable to me.


Not just production efficiency, consumption efficiency too. Consuming plants instead of consuming plant-fed animals increases consumption efficiency several times.