Some of my best friends are vegan...

Being neither a vegan nor someone who plays one on TV, I've not commented much on going meatless here. I do, however, end up at a few sites for the non-meat-eaters amongst us regularly, especially over the summer when both the CSA and my bit of a garden are producing a bounty of the freshest and most local of food.

One of my favorite vegetarian/vegan sites is vegblog, which ran a very helpful post on what to do when your vegan friends come to dinner a little while back. I'm not sure I'd agree with all of the advice — there's a suggestion of how to approach an egg-less quiche rather than the "make something else you fool" response that the idea deserves — but there are a number of handy tips and pointers to more data. There is also a page of resources ranging from background on various schools of thought pertaining to veganism to blogs to pretty much everything else you might need to support a vegan lifestyle. Very cool stuff.

I do have one question though: What's with the faux meat?

I can understand it if you don't eat meat for medical reasons and really miss the flavor. From what I hear, soy-based meat analogs have come a long way in recent years and they actually taste meatlike. (Here I pause for a moment to note the irony of the faux meat tasting more like real meat at the same time that the "real" meat is tasting more like some cheaply made soy-based amalgam every year.)

But if you are a vegan for ethical reasons, I can't see how you could eat faux steak. You're not eating a cow because it's ethically wrong so why are you pretending to eat a cow? What's up with that?

of course, right afer I posted this I discovered vegblog is down so the links are dead... wih any luck they will be back soon!

Comments

[Kevin]

KM,
I'm with you on the faux meat thing. I've had it explained to me that, "I like the taste of meat, I just don't approve of killing." But I still think it's inconsistent. And have you read any of the posts by that PETA woman on Gather? She drives me bats!

[Layla42]

The faux meat thing has always confused me too. It's like the occasional "I'm a vegetarian, but I still eat seafood."
Huh?
It's denial. Ok, so the seafood-eating vegetarian is in more denial, but the principle's the same. You're a vegetarian because you don't want to eat meat, why are you eating something that tastes like what you aren't eating?

[vanessa]

The fake meat thing creeps me out. I had a friend take me to a vegetarian Chinese place where they were famed for their "tofu chicken." The lemon chicken (with tofu, mind you) was actually quite good, but I couldn't help, as a meat eater, to notice that the texture really was like chicken. The taste was, too. But I didn't care to tell my vegan friends how freakishly real it was. They were just happy to eat meat, but not really.

[Ryan]

Sorry for the delay in replying to this post, but here goes...

The simple answer:

I gave up meat for ethical reasons. I didn't give up meat because I disliked the taste. Thus, if I can have something that reminds me of the flavor and texture of meat that I enjoyed while also being cruelty-free, what's the problem?

The expanded version:

I hear a lot from people saying, "Oh God, soy ____? That's gross." But, to me, eating something made of soy or wheat, whatever it is, is much less disturbing than something made of an animal that used to be alive.

That said, I can understand why some vegans won't eat fake meat or are creeped out by it. For many, it reminds them too much of the real thing and the gag reflex may kick in. For me, though, knowing simply that it's not meat is enough for me to enjoy it with a good conscience.

In addition, fake meats are an awesome transitional food for new vegetarians coming from a meat-heavy background that have no clue what they're going to eat.

Does all that make sense?

(Thanks, also, for the kind words. I'm glad you enjoy the site and always appreciate your comments on my entries.)

[Art Karcher]

I don't get what the controversy is here, the soy wasn't kept in battery cages, it wasn't tethered to a pole where it can't even stand up, and it wasn't placed on a conveyor belt, strung up by it's hind leg and stabbed in the throat to bleed to death. It's a fucking plant, meat tastes good... unfortunately the great taste cannot outweigh the huge moral perversion associated with meat. If you can get the same thing, but take away the torture and killing, then there would be no reason to continue not eating it. Maybe some people have a gag reflex, who knows, but for those of us who ate meat for a long time and realized how fucked up it is soy meats are a godsend, especially considering I may be the only veg in the country who detests salad. By this logic we have to stop eating portebello mushrooms because I know at least at my school those are used as alternatives to steak in fajitas.

[kitchenmage]

Hmmm, but Art, you miss the point of the question. I would assume that when you think of meat, you think of the "torture and killing" that you see meat as involving. I'd further assume that when someone says "soy" to you, the visions that run through your head are somewhat more pastoral.

Thus my question is why would you want to invoke the torture and killing thoughts by calling the thing on your plate something meat-related (like tofurkey) and shaping the soy to look sort of like meat.

Eat soy all you want (and go argue with the WND idiot who says it will "make you gay") but CALL IT SOY. Don't call it a soy steak, or tofurkey or anything else designed to evoke thoughts of meat. Because if meat is torture, than faux meat is faux torture - and I would think you would want your soy to be proudly death-free.

By this logic you can eat all the portobello mushrooms, you just shouldn't call them steak.