this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2024
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My old man yelling at cloud rant :
i hate vegan products that try to position themselves as the vegan replacement to a non vegan product. They have their own qualities, and it hurts the product that it is compared to the meat alternative. If someone wants to eat chicken, no amount of marketing and spices will make it taste like chicken and will always be inferior to their meat counterparts for the meat eater.
Vegan recipes on internet are 95% terrible. They try to put 100 flavors in one meal. Take whatever recipe your normally eat with meat and simply replace the protein for a vegan protein of your choice (pvt, tofu, bean curds, etc). Grill your tofu to your heart content, make that bean curd extra delicious by dunking it in soy sauce and eat with vegetables and rice or make a simple rice and bean with a side of fresh avocado.
There are so many good vegan products with fucking terrible marketing. Meat eaters will not change their habits because you green wash your marketing. Go balls to the wall with that shit.
I disagree on this point. It's convenient for a vegan, vegetarian or just someone who is trying to eat less meat to be able to make a substitution in a recipe. Tempeh is a great protein, but you have to know how to prepare it and what dishes it will work best in, whereas vegan "chicken" or plant based "beef" can be easily substituted 1:1 in recipes. As you get more comfortable, you can start substituting things like ground tofu, lentils or seitan, but having the culinary shorthand is helpful for lots of people.
I've had the opposite experience. Most of the vegan recipes I've found online use clever plant based substitutions that aren't processed meat alternatives. A good exercise is to take your favorite dish and Google "vegan [that dish]" and see what ingredients are in those recipes. Many of the recipes you find will likely have whole food ingredients!
I don't think vegan food brands are trying to change hearts and minds necessarily. I think they're just providing easily substitutable alternatives for people who have already decided to eat fewer animal products.
This is why I prefaced my comment with the old man bit. There is a lot of exaggeration in my comment.
My experiences has been that meat substitutes marketed as such are usually chuck full of spices, ultra-processed and just taste bad on their own. 95% of the recipes I make with meat, I often replace with a vegan alternative protein.
I do think that vegan brands try to appeal to a lot of meat eater and lean hard on the green/healthy marketing, but it has been played out and abused by marketing and doesn't mean much anymore. Just market the products on their own merits.
There is so much good vegan food out there, but it's often branded as the X alternative. IMO, it hurts the product because it pidgeon hole it in that comparison.
But your points are entirely valid, and my point are really just an uneducated opinion without backing data. I just know that I avoid vegan products marketed as meat alternative to X because they taste terrible 99% of the time.
Pretty good rant.
If anyone likes pumpkin pie for thanksgiving, but doesn't want to use milk/eggs...this recipe turns out amazing, and family didn't notice it was Vegan. https://www.noracooks.com/vegan-pumpkin-pie/