To wonder who eats this food and why?

[BingoBonus]

https://groceries.asda.com/product/plant-based-meat-alternatives/plant-based-by-asda-chicken-style-fillets/1000383161908

Plant-based chicken-style breaded fillet. The main two ingredients are water and oil!

I don't understand the boom in plant-based ultra-processed foods...........do people actually buy these as a healthy option? And if you are vegetarian why would you want something that looked like meat?

I'm totally with you @BingoBonus I saw an add for this type of false food recently & thought 'Who on earth eats this junk?'. You leave meat out but then fake it? Madness.

I was referring to pretend bacon.

I definitely would no buy that sort of thing as a healthy option but do get these sorts of things quite a lot just cos it quick and easy and taste nice to me

Nothing more natural and veggie and environmentally conscious than ultra processed fake meat. Haha. Truth stranger than fiction.

But why is it madness for people who like the taste and texture of meat but choose not to eat it for whatever reason? I don't see what's "mad" about finding a substitute for a product that you have decided to give up?

It's not really to my taste, but if people like it, why is it different from any of the other crap that people buy?

I think vegetarians have had enough of meat-eaters being concerned for their welfare, personally – what things taste like, look like, their nutritional benefits. Vegetarians are adults who can and do make all the same food choices as adults – you can stop babysitting them.

What????? Maybe treat yourself to a basic biology book.

What part of this do you think is wrong? You do know that chickens only have one hole don't you?

Tbh I'm baffled as to why people eat dead flesh. And drink pus filled milk from a cows tit. And eggs that come out of a chickens butt.
But vegans are the weird ones!

A. We've been eating dead flesh since the dawn of time
B. People don't tend to eat the egg shell so it doesn't really matter if it made contact with a chicken's butt
C. Who said vegans are weird? Why play the victim? Nobody should be regularly eating processed crap like 'fake' meat

to everyone suggesting eating fake meat products are somehow environmentally worse than or equal to the impact of eating meat, I beg to differ, it's actually less than all the meat and dairy sources shown. Check out the facts in the graph attached.

I found this at this link

@MysteryBelle you might want to check out the graph and article linked above to clear that up for you.

It's unhealthier than a plain chicken breast, but let's not kid ourselves that carnivores aren't buying processed real meat products which are just as bad.

I like meat, but could go vegetarian quite easily if I wanted. I would not eat fake meat products though- there are so many nice vegetables dishes.

I buy a few of the veggie aisle things. Quorn mince, veggie sausages and vegetable bean burgers, vegan sausage rolls.

I'm not a vegetarian or vegan and I definitely don't buy them to be healthy. I just happen to quite like them. They certainly aren't a regular part of my diet but if dh and the dc are having a sausage roll I'll have a vegan version.

I agree that most of it looks and probably is a bit gross but so are a lot of things we eat.

@AllOfThemWitches to be fair the OP did start a thread bashing vegans and the food choices of some vegans (and non-vegans) who choose to eat these fake meats. This implies they are somehow "weird" or wrong.

😂

Grim.
Terrible for the environment too.

I'd rather go without and just have the veg than eat this crap.

@purplepencilcase less bad for the environment than all the forms of meat / dairy / eggs shown on this graph. Bad argument.

@ChildrenOfTheQuorn for that comment you win the internet today 😂😂

That's only one element of the environmental impact though isn't it @catsinwater ?
In reality the situation is a lot more complex than that and overall environmental impact isn't quite that easy to compare.
Look at transport. Its not that long ago that we were all being encouraged to drive diesels because of lower CO2 emissions but now they are seen as the work of the devil because of particulates. There is a tendency for lobbyists or those who have something to gain to home in on one element of the environmental impact of whatever they support whereas often there are pluses in some respects and minuses in others.
The most environmentally friendly diet would surely be if everyone ate seasonally using only products produced locally by traditional, low intensity farming methods but I can't see that happening ever again. We have too many people to feed and those are expensive ways to produce foods. We can probably all make some small contribution though, whatever type of diet we follow.

you might be interested to see this article, @MrsAvocet
https://earthbound.report/2021/02/16/local-food-vs-eating-less-meat/

from the article:

"Eating locally produced food can help to tackle those transport emissions, but that’s only a small chunk of the overall problem. Even if you could eat 100% local, it would have less impact than choosing a vegan diet for just one day a week."

not to mention all the water saved, even if you're using food shipped in from other countries. Vegan and veggie produced food has a massively lower water impact than any meat whether that's locally produced or not.

It's disgusting, the "plant based" ideology that is being pushed is so detrimental to health. Milk alternatives are toxic, fake meat is poison 😵‍💫 people are being sucked in to a money making scam

not to mention the difference in milk vs vegan milk

I agree that fake meats aren't ideal healthwise, but let's face most individuals promoting a vegan diet are not promoting the fake meat products, that is the supermarkets and food producers, which let's face it have never had the consumer's health at the forefront of their minds.

A healthy vegan diet, which is perfectly cheap (I'm not including the fake products in this assessment), and very healthy is fine. Beans, nuts, pulses, veggies, fruits, cereals.... you can take B12 (which by the way is only more abundant in animal foods because it is added to their feed artificially) if you need to.

And as for all vegan milks supposedly being unhealthy, there are plenty of healthy vegan milks, you can make your own for pennies from oats and water or buy soy milk or whatever.... the Japanese have subsisted on soy milk for years and are some of the healthiest around.

I have to say I think it's pretty strange that people who hate on being vegan choose to only focus on the fake meat foods then label everything vegan as terrible for health etc etc not bearing in mind that a vegan diet done properly without these products is not only really healthy and good for you but also cheaper and WAY more environmentally friendly overall.

The evidence is staring everyone in the face but they still insist on picking out the supposed worst part of the foods available and ignoring everything else. You can't even make the "local meat is better for the environment than vegan food" argument because the facts don't support it, see above.