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?

Ditto to this.

I find it quite hard to imagine our landscapes without the green hillsides with sheep grazing (I love the sound of sheep) and without farms with cows, pigs etc. Presumably, everything would be ploughed up to grow rapeseed, soy etc. so we would have more monoculture agriculture and consequently less biodiversity
A lot of hilly land isn't suitable for anything other than sheep grazing.

Rewilding - spraying agricultural land with glyphosate to kill everything. The land reverts to nature and weeds grow, so you end up with fields full of thuggish weeds, not wildflower and grasses.

You need to look at the actual science behind why plant based diets are better environmentally.

For starters, most soya is used in animal feed, followed by vegetable oil which is in basically every processed item of food, most of which are non vegan.

If we reduced the land used to farm animals and grow animal feed in the U.K. we could rewild it and support diversity.

Finally the vast majority of emissions are generated at the production, not the transport stage so the environmental impact of imported plants is lower than that of local animal products.

Some people do, but ultra-processed foods are just that - unhealthy whether meat or plant derived.

That is a concern I have, that people assume it's a healthy choice when it's actually ultra-processed.

None of the vegans or vegetarians I know (and cook for) will eat fake meat but many have replied to say they do so there is obviously a market for it.

I find it concerning that people are consuming more and more ultra processed foods, plant and meat-based.

They're tasty and I don't like being 'othered'. I don't buy things like this generally because I am health conscious and I love cooking, but if I were going to my Mum's for example and she were making a roast I'd buy a faux meat product that resembled a roast. I'd feel self conscious eating something completely different and I think it inspires people to eat less meat if they see that things like this are available.
I'm not under any illusion that they're healthy-but neither are a lot of meat products.
The product posted in the OP looks as much like a hen as a chicken fillet does?
OP if you eat meat, why do you buy it made into shapes (sausages, burgers etc) to not look like the animal it came from (just to use your own logic that products like this 'looks like meat')?

Because I haven’t always been a vegetarian and like the taste/flavour of meat but just don’t want to eat actual meat? God forbid someone who doesn’t eat meat gets choices other than a bowl of vegetables.

there seems to be a big campaign to discredit vegans and vegan foods at the moment.

wonder if the OP is a livestock farmer!

I'd definitely eat a sausage shaped like an entire tiny little pig.

But then I was raised in a world of turkey dinosaurs and Billy Bear ham and huge hunks of formed cooked chicken food product at the deli counter, shaped like a whole roast chicken but actually solid chicken-roll meat all the way through.

But yeah — there's nowhere on a cow you can point to and say, "and that stack of disc-shaped pieces there is the burgers". Meat-eaters don't have the monopoly on pucks of high-protein sandwich component.

I agree OP. A lot of this food is incredibly unhealthy.

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

Vegans and vegetarians are not the only ones who eat soy, avocados and almonds! I'm vegetarian and don't eat a lot of any of those things but my meat eating friend eats an avocado for lunch every day and has almond milk.

For the same reason people people buy the meat version probably! This is a vegan/ plant based convenience food, not a health food! Are we to assume you never buy unhealthy vegan and none vegan foods?

In the summer I sometimes buy those quorn picnic mini scotch eggs, only because they have absolutely no gristle in them and chomping down on a fatty lump makes be vomit.
Sometimes it's a texture issue.

If you have fewer farm animals then you need to grow less rapeseed/soy/corn etc, because you can feed plant calories directly to humans rather than growing them, shipping them to farms, feeding them to animals with enormous loss of efficiency along the way, and then feeding the animals to humans.

There are some exceptions for eg purely grass fed sheep living on land unsuitable for arable farming, but they're a tiny proportion of the global picture.

I'm veggie and I'm very happy to eat 'meat alternatives' as though it may be shaped like a sausage or burger, I know that I'm not eating a dead animal.

I eat fake meat because when given the option of a fillet something has died for or one no one has died for it's a pretty obvious choice for me

Its nothing to do with health (though you'll notice the veggie fillet didn't have to be pumped full of antibiotics and hormones before reaching my plate)

I just find the idea of eating a bit of dead animal gross and I'd rather have my dinner without a side of suffering 🙃

I'm vegan and I eat stuff like that occasionally. It measures up quite favourably against this - birds eye chicken burger. The vegan one has over twice as much protein and 5 times more fibre, just a negligible amount more saturated fat (1g vs 0.7g). So who eats it? Just people who eat food basically. Vegans, vegetarians and meat eaters who, as part of a balanced diet, sometimes eat processed food because they like the taste of it and it won't do them any harm occasionally.

How about I post a photo of a steak and say it’s disgusting who’d eat that etc - what’s the point of this thread?

Well red meat is not only incredibly nutrient dense but the nutrients in it are also highly available to humans in a way that quite a lot of plant based nutrition isn't due to the lack of necessary amino acids in them. It's really not even remotely bad for you. It's immensely healthy. I understand people not wanting to eat animals out of the mental and emotional discomfort of eating part of a cute cow/pig/lamb/deer. But it's far from a healthy lifestyle choice. With serious adaption and massive use of supplements, most of which are at least partially animal derived, it can be possible to be healthy and vegan. (But not if you are eating a lot of the UPF shit in the OP.) But it's much, much easier to be a healthy omnivore. Tbh, it seems it may even be easier to be a healthy carnivore but that honestly sounds fucking grim to me.

This ^

I wonder who buys cheap shit processed meat, made of connective tissue, aresehole and scrapings off the abbotoir floor. Animal suffering and environmental depletion in every grim mouthful. Yet wierdly, people do.

I tend to mainly throw various beans, peas, nuts etc in my meals for protein and batch cook. That's mainly because of taste preferences and price.

I eat fake meats sometimes because I fancy junk food or want a quick dinner. I eat fake chicken nuggets. I'm under no illusion they are healthy, but I like them. If I'm tired, got home late or just want to I might have a vegan pizza or some veggie sausages for a low effort meal I can put in the oven with only a plate and cutlery to wash up. I'll use canned mock duck (much better nutritional content than this veggie chicken example) or pre-prepared tofu with a packet of ramen noodles and frozen veg. It's a reasonably healthy quick meal.

Not every meal is a nutritionally perfect home cooked meal, and that's true for most veggies and meat eaters.

@Wanderingowl absolutely this. I'm amazed at how poor an understanding of nutrition many people have.

I am in a group for people with a particular health condition and my heart alway sinks when I see a post on how they're going to try and vegan diet. Then a few months later there's the inevitable low B12/iron posts.

They do promote this stuff as a health food. YANBU

My vegetarian husband will sometimes eat this kind of thing.

He doesn't eat meat for ethical reasons but still remembers the taste fondly and meat substitutes fulfill that for him.