It seems there is a huge effort to make Vegan burgers, vegan hotdogs, etc. Is there anything new in the vegan world or is it constantly trying to make foods to imitate meat based recipes?

  • NoumenalInstance@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Like another commenter mentioned, definitely look at other cultures foods. For example lots of Indian, Thai, Vietnamese and even Chinese food either has vegan or foods that are really easy to make vegan. Some example swaps: Indian food uses lots of ghee which can be subbed for vegan butter and East Asian food uses lots of fish sauce /oyster sauce which is easy to buy vegan versions of.

      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        It takes time, effort and a bit of creativity to work with the many vegan protein sources. For example, most people are familiar with the concept of lentils, but when I tell people that I chuck red lentils into my tomato sauce, they look at me like that cannot possibly work. Mainly, because they’re not familiar with red lentils.

        On the other hand, if a product promises that it tastes like bolognese / minced meat, they’ll know that they can chuck it into tomato sauce, even though it’s just as non-traditional of a protein for this usage.

        I guess, it should also be said that there’s no marketing budget behind lentils. There’s no “Beyond Meat” brand that tells you how awesome beans and nuts are. As a result, they may not be as publicly visible, even though many vegans do make use of them.

  • Aksamit@slrpnk.net
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    2 months ago

    Is there anything new and original in the non-vegan world? Or is it all just constantly finding different ways of serving animal products?

    Just because we have the tech now to be exploring realistic plant based alternatives to meat, doesn’t mean that is all vegans eat or cook.

    And after fucking years of hearing “I’d go vegie/vegan if there were good realistic meat alternatives” from you people, this new spin of “why do vegans want so many realistic meat alternatives?!” is kinda pathetic tbh.

    Most of these new plant meats are made and marketed to help get omni’s off meat. The megre handful of vegans in the world are not the target market here, and the vast majority of us vegans have always been pretty content with our beans and tofus for protein.

    And yes, there are plant based food innovations happening all the time, but they probably don’t count for you because omnivores don’t see food as ‘real’ or ‘good’ unless it contains tortured animal parts.

  • Pandemanium@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Humans have been eating food for a very long time. There are only so many cooking methods available and we are not creating new fruits or vegetables (unless you count stuff like pink pineapples or pluots or whatever). I think by now we’ve probably tried every possible combination of ingredients imaginable. Most dishes are already recreations or reinterpretations or fusions of more historical dishes. The only food frontier left is creating new highly processed ingredients, and that’s exactly what these meat substitutes are.