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 had to completely change my diet due to a health condition. Whilst I now eat a vegan diet I can’t tolerate many vegetables or a whole host of other things. It’s hard as I love veggies and would happily chomp on them all day.

the bigger variety of vegan foods and plant based foods means I have more choice

Why does anyone eat junk food? Just because someone doesn't want to eat rotting flesh it doesn't mean everything they buy has to be super healthy. I also don't get the why would you want something that looks like meat- the reality is things like this and burgers, sausages etc aren't meat shaped either! They look nought like they are fresh of the dead body of an animal, they're shaped to help with the cognitive dissonance so what's the problem with other foods being shaped like that also? Some also enjoy the taste of meat but not the principles, so why not try and create something that tastes similar.

There's also the inane assumption that only vegetarians and vegans are eating this food.

I eat a McPlant at McDonalds, I'm not vegan or veggie. I just like it.

No I haven't seen this, but I have seen Nutella advertised as containing milk, cocoa and Hazel nuts as if that makes it healthy so I wouldn't be surprised

Hopefully people are dense enough to think a plant based pizza, burger or cake is going to be good for you

I like the meat free beyond burgers. Prefer them to meat burgers.

BUT they eat it because it looks and 'tastes' like meat

Actually, in my experience it neither looks nor taste like meat.

It might look the same shape as some processed meat products but it doesn't actually look anything like actual meat and it certainly doesn't taste like meat.

Same except I'm vegetarian. I find the recent move towards lots of fake meat instead of interesting vegetable-based foods really frustrating.

I’m vegetarian because I don’t want to eat animals not because I don’t like meat.

Quorn fillets are really nice in the oven with a jacket potato and veg for an easy dinner. Do you never eat anything like that?

What many vegans do not appreciate is that changing the diet of the world to plant-based would only create more problems, and it's not possible anyway.

Over-production of soy, almonds and avocadoes is already destroying bio diversity and rain forests.

Look at the massive fields of crops in the UK, the destruction of hedges, and how the biodiversity is impacted by that.

Getting the variety of plant based food is not possible without airfreight, so anything that is 'saved' by stopping eating sheep, cows and pigs, is outweighed by destruction of the ozone layer by transport.

If you really want to be a vegan, stop eating fruit and veg that has air miles, and exist solely on UK produce.

I think you'd struggle struggle.

It's fine to say you don't want to eat animals, but take responsibility for what over-farming and air miles are doing to the planet.

I personally don't understand why anyone would choose to eat dead animal when it's so easy not to.

But I also understand that what other people eat is absolutely none of my business.

and the whole - 'why would you want something that looks like meat' is a stupid question when processed meat products have been specifically designed NOT to resemble meat. A hotdog doesn't look like a pig. A burger doesn't look like a cow. Why are YOU eating a beige slab that in no way resembles flesh?

And if you are vegetarian why would you want something that looked like meat

This is used all the time and it's such a ridiculous statement. Meat products don't look like 'meat' for goodness sake. Unless your every meal consists of an entire dead pig/chicken/cow? Why do meat eaters think they have the monopoly on the shape of food? Bizarre.

Aren't*

Crossposted, apologies skyfalldown

Whilst this is perfectly true on one level, it's also absolutely unlikely to ever happen. What is feasible that everyone in the Western world drastically reduces their consumption of meat and dairy products in the next 50-100 years, by say 75 or 80%, large scale factory farming of animals is virtually eliminated and there are enormous climate and ethical benefits as a result, but in this world there would still be a place for smaller scale, ethical farming of animals. Animals definitely have a place in a sustainable farming system particularly in climates like the UK where we have good rich grazing, as it's better to rotate your fields and crops rather than mono cultures, and the manure can act as a natural fertilizer and this would support biodiversity as well. Green hillsides could still be dotted with sheep and cows, you would absolutely not have to rip everything up to farm soy (quite a bit of the existing UK farmland is not suitable for soy in any case) just because we move towards a more flexitarian or plant based way of eating.

What it would mean however is we'd likely have to change our dietary habits quite drastically to view meat in particular as a much rarer treat with a lot of our protein coming from plant-based sources rather than eating meat at least daily if not at every meal as many people currently do. And we'd have to expect to pay more for many foods and particularly for meat and dairy (and for it to potentially be less desirable cuts and types of meat too, e.g. to go back to eating mutton rather than spring lamb all year round), and probably also reduce or abandon our dependence on out of season veg shipped or air freighted in from around the world and so back to a more seasonal way of eating. Maybe this is an unrealistic utopia, maybe it will never happen but personally I do think meat substitutes have a part to play in making it happen at least as a transitional thing, it's enough of a change to ask people to cut down their meat consumption without also expecting them to start eating unfamiliar foods like tofu or lentils, which they may not know how to prepare, which might cost more or require additional ingredients purchased to make a meal, which their kids might refuse to eat etc - like it or not lots of people do enjoy and rely on beige freezer foods as at least part of their normal diet and for me I'd rather see plant-based products start to replace some of the super cheaply/intensively farmed meat which we know is ethically very dubious...

It's completely daft, and very very non-ecological and climate UNfriendly.

Eat a plant-based diet - most of the rest of the world does. Look to Indian and east Asian cuisines. But do it properly, not by eating manufactured faux-meat or dairy. Change what you eat more wholeheartedly.

And do far less damage to the environment.

Judgemental much? I don't see how people would consume a lot of things that are unhealthy but I would never say it out loud. Why does this bother you so much?

It’s absolute shite OP.
I think the main issue is that it’s being peddled as healthy.

A lot of crops are grown to feed animals as well as people, so it's more accurate to look at the calculations for various foods as they would appear on your plate, than the crops themselves. There's quite a bit of research going on around this lately, and plant-based options come out well from it. Really interesting to read up on.

You are deluding yourself.

Sausages, burgers, fish fingers, bacon, the list goes on.

Of course they look like the meat/ fish alternative.

That's the whole point of the marketing.

The example in the OP is a chicken fillet. If you buy an actual chicken fillet, it is recognisably part of a chicken.

I buy the roast version of this from Asda occasionally when I fancy being able to join everyone else in a roast as opposed to just the trimmings or don't feel well enough to be making a nut roast or wellington (chronic illness). I don't like the Quorn one and Tesco discontinued theirs while Sainsbury's is too expensive. Sometimes you just want something pre made and easy and reasonably tasty like non veggies

Why do you care? If I posted a picture of some sausages made from pigs and said I wonder who eats this and why, processed meat being a known carcinogen, I’d quite rightly be flamed.

Lots of things people eat aren’t healthy. For anyone who eats this it’s likely to be a small part of their overall diet. I don’t eat animals and I’ve been thinking of trying something like this and and making a kind of hunter’s chicken type dish which I’d serve with vegetables and maybe mashed potato. Some meat alternatives don’t taste very good though.

👆👏

But most people eat prepared meals or products anyway that do NOT resemble any animal.

Burgers, mince, meat balls, lasagne, chicken nuggets, fish cakes, fish fingers.

None look remotely like an animal.

People want to think they can switch to be veggie/vegan/flexi for health reasons but don't want to actually change their diets.

When it comes to junk food, sometimes I'd rather have heavily processed non-meat like nuggets/burgers than heavily processed meat because you know that's all the ears, arseholes and gubbins that fell on the floor!