What dangers of meat? Vegetables have as much nitrate as meat: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7777773 And salt is not as bad as it is made out to be: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt The reasons not to eat meat is a personal choice, not a health-conscious one.
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Whenever I try a facsimile food like Vegan Hot Dogs and get an experience like that, I think to myself āThis is what the Vegan who made this thing thinks Hot Dogs taste like, no wonder they became Vegan.ā
It drives me crazy that Vegetarian and Vegan are far too often warnings for āflavorless and without texture.ā A good example was a Tofu Italian Sausage clone I tried not too long ago. Not a single flavor to be found in the whole thing (other than sadness) and it had the texture of river slime wrapped up in a bit of rubber can opener. Last time I checked, Italian Seasoning was Vegan. You can put it in there guys.
If I ever went the Vegan route itās clear I would have to do all of my own cooking from scratch, because the pre-made stuff you can buy is almost uniformly terrible or at least disappointing.
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Indeed! As a vegan I have never really bought the whole health-reason some people say they abstain animal products for. I think itās a poor reason that is not founded on anything substantial. Also I think it detracts from the perceived legitimacy of the moral reasons for not hurting animals.
Synesthesia: Why wouldnāt we try to replicate tastes and textures we enjoy in food? Iām not a vegan because I donāt like the taste of meat or egg, but because I find the whole industry totally incompatible with my ethical system.
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Hence the ālapsedā part. I still donāt generally eat either beef or pork, but only as a matter of taste. I was never fully vegetarian anyway, and couldnāt go vegan, because the two things I couldnāt give up were cheese and fish.
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Thatās level 5. Get your Simpson references right.
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I understand that, but plenty of time it actually does feel like a disguise. There is definetly something weird going on there.
I used to think it was strange that vegetarians+ would still eat products flavored to taste like meat, but now that Iām married to a vegetarian I know that these things donāt taste like meat. They taste like whatever is in them, just like the meat equivalent. Have you tried to get tofu, tempeh, or gluten shaped like a hot dog/burger/ground beef? Itās hard!
But a dirty secret is that even people who give up on food still live in a world where the vast majority of recipes and cooking equipment available are based on meat-based products, so they end up somewhat stuck. Vegetarians+ donāt hate food, they just realize that they live in a world where they can choose not to harm animals. Vegetarians+ who are not smarmy about it are pretty open about the fact that they only have this choice thanks to living a relatively comfortable western lifestyle (and really smart vegetarians+ will point out that India has plenty of poor vegetarians).
However, itās also true that thereās a lot of different tastes. Iāve bought regular italian sausage that was bland and boring, steaks that lacked flavor, chicken that ended up dry. And Iāve bought sausage that had a LOT of spice, meat that was really flavorful, and so on. Even from the same grocery store! Some people do become meat-averse because of the flavor, and some people would prefer things to not be that spicy or bold. Not all processed meat products are the same, and itās the same for processed non-meat products.
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what kills me is that VEGETABLES ARE DELICIOUS!!!
you could brush a carrot with olive oil and sprinkle it with salt, pepper, and garlic, grill it and then stick it in a bun and you would have an amazing flavor/ texture in your mouth, why bother with all this processed garbage?
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Or this:
Not bad at all. Although I cheated a bit and used some dried beef for seasoning. (Itās from Austria, like ham, but beef thatās been cured by drying it. They call it āHenkeleā.)
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Being a person who keeps revising his recipe for vegan andouille sausage, this has sent me down a rabbit hole of sorts. Vital wheat gluten is an excellent binding agent that I use (not to mention protein rich), but after some digging inspired from this article, soy protein isolates seem to be used as a primary ingredient where I would conversely be using beans (turned to paste) and nutritional yeast. When reading about Soy Protein from wikipedia, it turns out soy protein has the properties of an emulsifier. Apparently mustard can also be used as an emulsifier, but I imagine ordinary powdered mustard would create too strong of a flavor if used in large quantities even if a little of the flavor was desired. If you were to extract the emulsifier, you could probably make the taste milder. Further searching has lead me to āWhite Mustard Seed Extractā, or Sinalbin, which apparently is almost entirely made in mainland Chinaā¦ Itād be fun to try out, but Iām not one to use anything for āfoodā if I can only get it from thereā¦
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So if one has turkey in it, rather than pig ears, knuckles, assholes and other disposables, is that not a hot dog either?
And since weāre on the name of the thing, why not say that even the ārealā ones arenāt hot dogs either because they donāt have any dog meat in them?
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Great writing.
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As a vegetarian, hot dogs are the only meat substitute that I do consume occasionally (not counting things like felafel burgers which arenāt set up to taste like meat and are delicious).
Hot dogs in New Zealand are generally pretty awful and full of chemicals and soy anyway so the hotdog brand I buy
http://www.sanitarium.co.nz/products/vegetarian/vegie-delights-chilled/hot-dogs
replicates the taste of my childhood closely.
Really theyāre just a vehicle for mustard and tomato sauce.
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Yet, significantly less disgusting than what theyād be shoving in their mouths if they were eating regular hot dogs. Grosseroo.
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I donāt think eating meat makes someone stupid. But the kinds of rhetoricals meat-eaters tend to ask about vegetarians and vegans always make me re-evaluate that beliefā¦
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A veggie dog or burger isnāt disguising itself as meat, as neither of those form factors are inherent to meat. Unless you are so sheltered you actually think patties and sausages fall fully formed out of cows and pigs. Why is it so outlandish to grind up beans and vegetables and form them into a patty or extrude them into a cylinder, but totally 100% normal to submit meat to the same exact process?
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āIf I ever went the Vegan route itās clear I would have to do all of my own cooking from scratch, because the pre-made stuff you can buy is almost uniformly terrible or at least disappointing.ā
Thatās true of non-vegan cooking, too, though. Unless for some reason you think frozen microwaved meals and processed foods containing meat are especially appetizing, and not āuniformly terrible or at least disappointing.ā Cooking for yourself is often the cheaper, tastier, and healthier option.
If you ever want to try a flavorful, pre-made vegan sausage, Iād suggest the ones by Field Roast. Theyāre somewhat expensive, but they are pretty adventurous with the spices and ingredients (thereās an apple sage sausage thatās amazing, and evocative of funky apple-chicken sausages I used to eat back in the day).
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I am glad food eating contests are not such a thing in the UK
though they are creeping in.
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Part of the problem is that the vegan crowd overlaps with the `healthfulā food crowd. Thus, it makes some marketing sense to make vegan products also low sodium and low fat, which unfortunately exacerbates the flavor problems with vegan food. For the worst example Iāve experienced, Soy Boy ravioli had a passable ricotta-ish texture, but absolutely no flavor at all. Blech.
In terms of mainstream flavor and texture acceptability, Morningstar is probably the best overall. Theyāre definitely an industrial non-hippie company strictly in it for the money, so they take the opposite approach: add fat, salt, and non-animal synthetic flavorings; anything to broaden appeal and make a buck. (Not all Morningstar stuff is vegan, but a lot of it is.)
And if you really want a vegan `mealā full of salt, fat, and artificial flavorings, thereās always Top Ramen Oriental flavor. 
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many processed meats can be categorized as āartā as far as im concerned
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