Passive aggression?
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Exploitative, no but horrifying? In my book there certainly is. So many good ways to work with soy without pretending that it is something that it isnât.
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Soyâs basically flavorless on its own but endlessly useful. Buddhist monks have been flavoring and texturing soy and wheat gluten to make fake meat for hundreds of years. Soymilk is extremely popular; is it âhorrifyingâ because people use it instead of dairy milk? TVP is just soy protein, and can be flavored any way you like to cook with. Tell me some ways to use soy for cooking that donât involve flavoring it? And donât say âtofuâ, because thatâs nearly always used as a meat substitute on its own.
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I donât have the qualifications necessary to evaluate that but I certainly hope youâre right. XD
Do you ever have people over for a meal? Or go to someone elseâs house, say for a barbeque? Offer food to your kidsâ friends?
Itâs convenient to have interchangeable options when youâre not the only person at the table. That doesnât mean veg*ns only eat nuggets and patties. Theyâre just a couple of options in a much wider sea of possibilities.
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Oddly enough I happen to live in one of those countries with those Buddhist monks you mention. Just as an FYI, Iâm told by some that in fact, seitan/fu is not a fake meat at all despite the rumor of that origin. Soy and wheat gluten are just healthy and flexible ingredients.
The thing is I eat/cook mostly vegetable based meals with fish because there is no retail access to kosher meat here in Japan so its pretty rare that I get a chance to eat meat. Part of why I know some of those Buddhist monks is I trade recipes with them since they have all sorts of tasty non meat meals. If tofu or other soy is part of my meal its not a meat substitute any more than if I made something with chick peas, its a good source of protein. Donât get me wrong, when I have access to kosher meat Iâll eat it and enjoy it but since I donât I make tasty fun meals without it and donât pretend that there is meat involved.
Keeping kosher here in Japan certainly complicates situations like this, especially with the non Jewish relatives and their kids. When my wife and I cook for them we do fish with lots of different vegetable dishes which fortunately is acceptable here. Our relatives understand our religious dietary restrictions so they donât offer us things they know we donât eat.
Things get more implicated the further social distance the people are in terms of offering us food but when I cook for others I try to make sure the food is tasty enough to distract them from the meatless nature of the plate. I donât always succeed, but I try.
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I wonder whether there is a sub-branch of vegans who spare complex herbivorous animals because theyâre nice but who happily consume predators, since they show no similar mercy for their prey? A karmic vegan?
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Most of added genes are maladaptive from evolutionary purpose and will be either switched off over time if the strain goes wild or the strain attempting to go wild will get outcompeted with the others.
If the gene(s) added do not provide an advantage in competition in the environment, they wonât stay there long, whether the mechanism of removal involves the gene or the whole species. See e.g. the melanine expression in skin; in the northern areas where the added insects-resistance and other things didnât provide more benefit than the melanine synthesis cost, the White Race gradually emerged. Or the missing gene for biosynthesis of ascorbate; in the original environment there was enough fruit with ascorbate content that the gene going wrong did not have an evolutionary pressure against it, so the failures werenât filtered out of the population, and now we all carry this genetic inheritable disease - and it is not labeled as a disease only because everybody has it. (I want a cure and I want it now. If only to see the religionuts squirm in the arguments.)
Iâll second @Israel_Bâs comment here. Saying that Tofu is ânearly alwaysâ used as a meat substitute leaves out billions of people and recipes they regularly cook. Add to this the kitchens of any decently authentic Chinese, Japanese and other Asian restaurant in NYC and other cities, and that tacks on another healthy chunk of use cases. Youâll see âbeef and fermented bean curd,â âpork and tofu,â on the menu and all manner of meat and soy/wheat gluten combinations. The idea that tofu and other fermented soy or textured wheat products are somehow a less-than-meat meat, or substitute meat has led to a loooooot bad cooking, and a lot of bad press (figratively speaking). Tofurkey being most Americanâs association with tofu has put a bad and unfair label on it that is taking a long time to shake. Tofu isnât meat, and attempts to just slip it into what would otherwise be meat recipes sets people up for immediate and long term rejection of a huge slice of amazing ingredients.
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I actually love tofu. I cook with it all the time. I donât consider it a substitute for meat â I love it on its own. I love its smooth, simple flavor. Yesterday I made hiyayakko for lunch: cold tofu topped with seaweed and ponzu. So trust me that Iâm not dismissing tofu as just a âmeat substituteâ. My point was that soy is incredibly versatile and that tofu is used all over the world, both on its own and textured/flavored to stand in for meat. So the idea of thinking that fake bacon made from soy is somehow âhorrifyingâ, but a culinary tradition hundreds of years old of using soy as a savory, rich protein in dishes is great, makes zero sense.
By the way, Iâll never forget when my mom announced that sheâd just read about a new miracle food called tofu that could take on any flavor itâs cooked with and taste just like meat. She did a stir-fry with a block of cold silken tofu, and it was like eating jello cooked with canned La Choy vegetables. So yeah, weâve come a long way, but thereâs still a long way to go.
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BECAUSE IT DOESNâT INVOLVE THE SLAUGHTER OF AN ANIMAL.
Why donât the cops come and arrest me when I kerb-stomp someone in GTA? So confusing!
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Theyâre not vegans, because theyâre ok with killing animals for their food. Mostly theyâre fishetarians. (That was a problem I had when I lived on the East Coast - the default assumptions about ânot eating meatâ were Lenten meals and kosher parve, both of which still include fish.)
There are some people who object, especially to things like veggie bacon that tried to get all the color stripe right or fake veggie ribs, but most vegans are concerned about not harming animals, not about thoughtcrime or asceticism.
Veggie burgers have been a wonderful addition to the vegetarian travelersâ diet, because lots of places that donât really know how to make a vegetarian meal still know how to take a round flat thing out of the freezer, grill it, and put it on a bun with some lettuce and pickles. Some veggie sausage is pretty good, though almost no veggie hot dogs are as good as meat hot dogs, and meat hot dogs are a really lousy version of meat. Veggie ribs are their own punishment.
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Yes, perhaps it was designed by a biohacker to simulate a message board troll?
But before
Which is it?
I think his point is you are needlessly limiting yourself if you keep trying to make direct meat analogs. Though not a vegan, I personally love vegan food. A friend of mine who was an excellent cook went vegan a few years back (mostly for health reasons). At first, he went from being an excellent cook to sucking something epic. He made unsatisfying salads and entree meat analogs. Then, after a few months of torturing his poor girlfriend (who went vegan with him), it finally clicked. He realized that vegan food doesnât and probably shouldnât try and be a meat analog. He realized that soy and satien, while able to be stuffed into a meat shape, are their own ingredient that you are doing a disservice to if you treat them like a shitty meat knock off. He went from sucking at cooking vegan food to making every meal a culinary treat. Once he abandoned the need to mimic meat recipes, the world really opened up for him. I love eating over at their house now, even though I am personally not a vegan. The food is simply good, hearty, and is a really nice pallet change from what I normally eat.
Iâm not saying that veggie burgers and soy nuggets need to be tossed from the grocery store. I am just suggesting that vegan food futilely trying to mimic meat is the lowest and least satisfying way to eat vegan. You have mastered vegan cooking when what you make stands on its own and doesnât make any attempt to be something it isnât. It is a different medium. In the same way you can probably mimic a picture made with charcoal by using water colors, you are squandering your tools if that is what you do.
So yeah, meat analogs are fine. They probably help people get their toes wet. The highest art culinary art though comes from people who toss convention to the wind and work vegan food into something that is its own.
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Anyone who eats fish and claims to be a v-anything is seriously mistaken about the definition of words and should be mocked as such.
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You live in Japan, where tofu and soy everything has been part of the cooking toolkit for a long, long time. In the west its use as a familiar and commonly-used cooking ingredient is something like 10 or 20 years. Many people use it as a meat substitute or add it to meat as a cheap/healthy way of adding more protein to a meal. Both of you are right and none of the discussion is going anywhere.
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In terms of taste, we should be able to make any type of cheese that you can make from cowâs milk. That includes adding different bacterial cultures, heating or not heating the cheese, using rennet or acid to coagulate, soft cheeses vs hard cheeses, and aged cheeses with various types of rinds. Once we have the hard science part out of the way, we plan to collaborate with a cheese maker that can apply all their art and craft to make a great tasting cheese.
Iâm the one who added the bit about the $2 going to âresearch into ethics, legal and societal issuesâ. Iâd say that if someone wants to specify the specific topic their $2 should be spent on, weâll do our best to satisfy that request. Figuring whether or not this cheese would be kosher is definitely an interesting issue. Any suggestions on how to pursue this? Almost all the worldâs cheese is already made with microbially produced chymosin (rennet), so I would assume our cheese would have the same classification. Hm⌠for the Jewish diabetics out there: is your insulin kosher? Also microbially produced.
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Actually, the Real Vegan Cheese project has gotten tons of support from the vegan community so far. Guess they just have a higher fraction of rational, scientifically minded individuals. 
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