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Scientists who develop vegan alternatives don’t have to be vegan themselves. Lol.
One of the best (by taste) and most successful industrial manufactures in Germany for meat alternatives is "Rügenwalder Mühle", a quite big traditional family owned meat corp. And they are doing their job this good, because alot of the food technicians responsible for the products could rely on the knowledge of the long time working butchers in company. Like getting the texture and seasong right or reducing the ingredients to make the product more "natural".
So yeah, its a thing, imho. If you want to develop something meat like for industrial production, its helpfull to know a thing or two about industrial meat production.
It is possible that they work with what they do not to make vegan meat, but to reduce the amount of horrible lives lived by live cattle.
Or they are doing it to make money.
I'll take what I can get.
From trying a lot of vegan meat alternatives my assumption was they have no fucking idea what they are doing.
The time making fake meat would be better spent promoting vegan dishes that aren't pretending to be something else, because those are fantastic.
Agreed. Got a huge amount of Indian and Asian cuisine that happens to be vegan, either incidentally or for religious reasons, and it's all absolutely delicious; but no, 'vegan food' means deep-fried highly processed dinosaur shapes and cheese with a distinct aftertaste of sewage.
I feel bad for vegetarians. If pubs and restaurants have one meat-free item on the menu then it's going to be vegan, and if it's going to be vegan then it's going to be some awful faux food where the main plant source is chemical plant. Vegetarian meals that celebrate the quality and freshness of the vegetables are the equal of any meat meal, but you're not having those.
I love the Field Roast veggie sausages. I don’t feel like they’re trying and failing to imitate meat, but rather that they’re trying to make something tasty that hits the form factor and general savoriness of meat. And they do that well, imo
Yeah, the sausage format is one of the better approaches because it is a form factor that already has a wide variety of textures and from the packaging it doesn't look like they are trying to imitate specific meat flavors or textures. Can't remember if I have tried that brand before, but I have had green plant based sausages and they were good as their own kind of thing. Like how sweet potato fries are the same shape as regular potato fries but you would never confuse the two.
There's one brand of spicy soy chorizo that straight up tastes like the Goya chorizos I grew up with. They even got the color down, chorizo is supposed to be bright red. Sadly I don't remember what the brand is
I'm not particularly fond of the field and roast brand sausages in particular because the texture seems too gummy for my taste, but yeah, my general experience has been that the more processed a meat is and the more it relies on being infused with spices or served with something else, the better the replacement works. Like, replacing a burger works great, replacing a steak is virtually a non starter. For something like ground and spiced taco meat, I actually started preferring the alternatives well before I stopped eating meat just because tvp doesn't have gristle the way ground beef does.
I love vegetarian goose though. It doesn't taste like goose at all but it still delicious.
I strongly dislike goose because it is so damn greasy, would probably prefer whatever vegetarian goose is unless they used Olestra in pursuit of authenticity.
Yes, but have you tried Beyond? It's delicious. Now if we can just get get vegan cheese up to par...
Vegan cheese done with coconut oil is pretty decent, way better that the wet sponge texture that beyond has.
I have tried Beyond and found it bland and tasteless. The texture was ok.
Why is trying to pretend to be cheese worth the time when stuff like guacamole, white bean dip, hummus, corn dip, etc. exist?
Sometimes they probably have long forgotten how meat tastes and feels like, judging from some of the products.
Honestly they should just make something that tastes good
Alternative: instead of trying to imitate meat with questionable high-processed foods and chemicals, how about cooking a real vegan or vegetarian meal? There are so many delicious, simple, and more healthy alternatives.
There are people who eat both. I'm not a big meat eater and prefer the veggie versions of things, but will eat the occasional meat (mainly chicken and sausage).
I don't think a lot of meat alternatives are trying to perfectly replicate their meat counterpart but rather work as an alternative in dishes. Tempeh bacon for instance will never match the taste or texture of real bacon, but tempeh is delicious on its own so I will never complain about smoked tempeh. It's easier to imitate processed meat like sausage or nuggets.
Though I will say I used to get a lemongrass seitan "chicken" from a pho place that was better than any real chicken I've ever had
Can't they hire other people to do the taste testing?
Or they don't even have to be vegan in order to develop the products. People making medicines don't need to be sick.
There is a surprising amount of debate over that in vegan circles. Beyond Meat taste test their burgers against cow burgers to compare the flavour and some vegans will say you can't consider those burgers vegan while others would say it's a very small amount of animal consumption to allow for a vegan burger that might help convert more people and so the benefit outweights the harm massively. I'm vegan and I don't really know what side to lean towards, but there's debate over everything from honey to almonds, and debate on whether it's acceptable to order vegan food from non-vegan restaurants, just as examples.
That's hilarious. What if someone who gets their calories from eating meat cooks up a vegan meal? That meal couldn't have been made without killing an animal.
That's a fair point. I suppose like any movement there's a wide spectrum of people and one end of the spectrum would be those who are as strict as that. I don't think it's very productive to be that strict though, certainly where I live and with the health conditions I have it would be impossible to live life so strictly compared to someone in top health living in a major city.
I'd advocate for long-term harm reduction, myself.
While obviously it would be better for the cow to have been able to live a full life, but in (I think) 15 years or so that cow would be dead either way.
Something that can be helping new cows regularly, like a Beyond Burger that can appeal to those that would otherwise just pick a normal burger, I basically consider it to be harm-neutral after the lifespan of the animals they're using for those taste tests is up.
Honestly, this is the trolley problem. On the main lane, we have a bunch of cows about to be run over by our "Meat Industry" trolley. Pull the lever to redirect the trolley and butcher some cows for beyond burger development. I would pull the lever, but it's not a clear moral win.
It feels like perfect is not just the enemy of good enough, it's slaughtering its family and salting its crops.
By that logic all oxygen consuming animals are climate change monsters.
They make it harder than it needs to be.
You can develop vegan meat alternatives without being a vegan.
I'm fairly certain most of the big name alternative meat products on the market were developed by capitalists and not vegans.
"I prefer to do both"
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The old traditional ones like satan or such likely not. The modern corpo ones I doubt the flavor analysts specifically eat more meat than normal but they likely did a fair amount of side by sides.
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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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