Vegan food - disgusting and overpriced

[Alberto]

What's the thing about "vegan" food?

Don't take me wrong, I eat more veg than anyone else. Including beans, soy, lentils, etc. They taste great, healthy, good for the planet, and are ridicolosly low-cost.

And next there's "vegan", or fake meat. BTW why do you need overpriced "fake meat"? What for? Just eat meat or fish or veg. No?

So my teenager, in her growing up phase that she no longer even knows who she is, what she likes/dislikes, or in which universe she inhabits, she went for vegetarian. Actually, a meat-eating vegetarian, but never mind...
We decided to defrost the freezer, so now consuming the last leftovers vegan food that happened to be there.

Wow, this "vegan" taste so bad. Basically, what the industry does is: take crazy cheap but super tasty ingredients, turn them in disgusting overpriced stuff, add the label "vegan" (btw was it not vegan before they messed with it?), and sell it at x10 the cost. And people even buy it.
Smart, innit?

Rant over.
And it's not even Friday, it's Saturday night.

[Robinson100]

It´s just marketing!!!

A lot of it has to do with the people who want to have a "vegetarian/vegan day" in the week, but who do not want to not have the taste of meat/fish.

I´ve been vegetarian for the past 44 years or so, and have absolutely no wish to eat anything that tastes of meat, so I don´t even purchase "imitation" meat, and never will.

But still, the companies behind this type of marketing must be making an absolute fortune!!!

[Alberto]

I´ve been vegetarian for the past 44 years or so,

Wow.
What prompted you to turn vegetarian, if I may ask?
Do you suffer from iron deficiency? That's one of the reasons I still eat meat.

Btw, the record I found was a colleague, from India, at the time in her sixties, that's been vegetarian all her life. Because of religion. I remember asking her "do you miss meat?", she answered "I've never eaten meat in my life"

[Krieg]

Fake meat products have a massive market, in the past years there have been tons and tons of people who want to go vegan for different reasons but they miss eating beef and chicken, nothing wrong with that and totally understandable. It is great there is now all sort of replacements, so people can make their loved dishes and do not feel left out. For many people the alternative would be to be frustrated and maybe someday to give up.

But yes, those products are not cheap and their high prices can be easily understood when you research a bit about it. In order to find the good balance in taste, texture, etc you need a tons of different ingredients and the production is not easy. It is not anymore that hamburger patty made of lentils and beans, the vegetarian patties nowadays feel very close like the real deal. And because of this the most "successful" company has been actually financially struggling for many years and borderline bankrupt, Beyond Meat.

I myself eat such products sometimes, but I am not a vegetarian. The vegetarian hamburgers in Burger King and so close to the meat ones that it is very difficult to recognize which one is which one. It is still crap food, but at least it gives people a choice, and it is cool that Burger King makes every option vegetarian (beef and chicken).

P.S., It is important to know that many people are vegetarian or vegan because of animal rights, nothing to do with health.

[Alberto]

there is now all sort of replacements

Thanks for the contribution but I completely disagree.
Nothing wrong with people who do not eat meat or fish. But no, there is no "replacement" to meat and fish.
Meat is good. Fish is better. Veg is fantastic. But "fake meat" is super expensive and tastes horrible.
Just my opinion of course. Every opinion welcome.

[Krieg]

If you think it tastes horrible you clearly haven't taste a good one. Of course there are many that do not taste good, but there are plenty that are very tasteful.


PS. I agree it is not (yet) a real replacement from the point of view of nutrition, but I guess it will come the time they perfect it and they will add the missing nutritional bits. If you can make them in the form of a pill I see no reason why they can't add them to a hamburger patty.

[Alberto]

I ate very expensive ones from our Edeka (fake fish fingers, fake schnitzel, fake burger, not sure what brand). I say very expensive because they cost per Kg like x5 beans.
And I ate fake burger from some burger chain.

Maybe some good ones do exist and I haven't come across yet... but I'm skeptical.

I'm narrow minded I'll stay with "only" meat fish veg, thanks a lot.

[Krieg]

You seem to be driven a lot by what seems to you logical, but it seems you lack awareness of other reasons why people do things, it is not all about logic, decisions can be taken based on what people are used to, what people enjoy, or because they were put in such situation and they did the best of it. For example, a group of teenagers go on Fridays to eat out after school, been teenagers they go a lot to McDonalds and Burger King. There is a vegetarian teenager in the group, this kid will take the vegetarian option there and be happy that there is the option, because otherwise it is going there and eating only fries, not eating anything, or not joining at all.

Another example from another type of "fake" products is the vegetarian "milk" products that are popular nowadays. Some people decided to go that way for different reasons, but they somehow get hate from people from not drinking the real thing. A friend on mine criticized once that we buy such products, saying that if he wanted to eat oats he would just eat oats. I only told him that I like to drink lattes and throwing some flakes of oats in my coffee didn't feel the same.

It is clear those products are not for you and you are happy eating the real thing, nothing wrong. I only tried (and probably failed) to explain you what motivates people to eat such products. I do agree however, that basing a vegetarian/vegan diet in such products is not really a good idea and it is expensive.

[Fraufruit]

Those products might be expensive because so few like them and buy them. Supply and demand.

I don't spend much energy on what other people eat.

[Franklan]

I just felt the urge to point out that the supermarket chain "Netto" declared "January" to be "Veganuary", this is a part of their brochure for this week...

Veganuary.jpg (655.7 KiB) Viewed 573 times

[Fraufruit]

istockphoto-1191054746-2048x2048.jpg (244.94 KiB) Viewed 569 times

[kiplette]

Kid#1 has been a veggie (actually pescetarian) since she was a teenager. At home, we didn't do the fake meatery at all, just lentils et al. instead of meat.

A few years back, having left home, she started with the whole fake meat stuff, and I would certainly agree that it was very expensive, and a fair bit of it she would try and then reject, so presumably not tasty.

Thankfully now she has rediscovered the advantages of less processed food, which is brilliant. I, like Alberto, have a few bits left in the freezer, most notably some BBQ tofu strips, which frankly sound foul.

Veganuary has been going a while - a UK non-profit initiative since 2014, to encourage people to give veganism a try.

https://veganuary.com/

Netto's Bratwurst look rather dry and horrid, tbf. Falafel seem like a winner, since they are vegan by design.

[Alberto]

Falafel seem like a winner, since they are vegan by design.

Yes, exactly. Falafel is cheackpeas, right?
Then what's the difference, if any, between falafel and vegan falafel?????

[Fraufruit]

"Veganuary has been going a while"

So has dry January. I'm not buying any of it.

Hummus is also chickpeas. Just different things made out of the same ingredient like minced beef, etc.

[kiplette]

Yup, Alberto, most falafel are chickpea based, and so there is unlikely to be a difference between your average falafel and your vegan falafel.

Maybe marketing them to people who are clueless about the normal contents of a falafel with the 'vegan' label allows them to command a higher price?

Recently I have seen frozen chips with vegetable oil labelled as vegan - which seems obvious from the packaging anyway, and also something like a pack of tomatoes. It is ridiculous and mostly makes me laugh.

So has dry January. I'm not buying any of it.

Yes - I also remain unconvinced

[LeonG]

I know a couple who are vegetarian for the most part and I've tried some of the fake meat and it really wasn't too bad. I think it took some trial and error to find the good brands though.

[Krieg]

We ate last night vegetarian meatballs from IKEA (you buy them frozen) and they were great considering what they are.