UK supermarkets report a surge in vegan food sales while expanding ranges | Hacker News Reader

UK supermarkets report a surge in vegan food sales while expanding ranges

theguardian.com

By all means go vegan, but I do wish people would just learn to cook with vegetables, grains and pulses instead of supporting this new world of industrial, highly-processed fake-meat bullshit.

Not only do we know that highly-processed foods are not good for you, but also, no matter how much marketing puff you put behind your fake-meat, I bet anyone with half a taste bud will be able to tell the difference between "meat" and "not meat".

Rant over. ;-)

Valid points on eating more whole, unprocessed foods.

But shout out to some of the plant-based meats coming to market. My wife and I switched to a 99% vegan diet this year and I’m impressed with how good plant-based meat has gotten. I can hardly tell the difference between plant-based and real meat.

I guess it depends what sort of real meat dishes you used to generally eat. I suppose things that use ground meat (e.g. burgers and pies) can get away with it due to the sauces and stuff.

However there are many dishes I can think of that are pretty much untouchable by plant-based.

Starting with a quality roast chicken. To get anywhere near achieving the same taste and texture, I'd hate to think what sort of chemicals and processes would need to be used. It would almost certainly be healthier to eat the real chicken.

Liver is another one, especially when cooked the Italian way, thinly sliced with nowhere to hide apart from behind a few stewed onions.

Shanks and tails is another area.

Apologies to any vegans in the room. ;-)

'It would almost certainly be healthier to eat the real chicken.

Not for the chicken.

I agree, mostly plant based here but rarely rely on the "fake meats". The closest is seitan, which I make myself anyway.

It doesn’t matter if people can tell the difference in taste. They are different products competing for different customers. You might as well argue that shops should stop selling carrots because people can easily tell the difference to sausages.

And what’s with the rant about people learning to cook? It’s not like all non-vegans are cooking every single meal. Having more options also available for people who don’t eat meat is great and it doesn’t hurt you in any way. Why should vegans be forced to cook everything from scratch simply because they don’t eat meat?

I can safely say two of the new vegan Richmond sausages go exceedingly well in a red lentil Dal and roti for breakfast!

I don't think it's quite necessary to condemn people for putting a proverbial teaspoon of sugar in their morning coffee. Not everyone wants to eat healthily all the time. You're not taking a perfect body to the grave!

> Not only do we know that highly-processed foods are not good for you

Could you elaborate on what exactly "processed" means here? It seems like a very loosely defined concept. What specific changes or additions to raw ingredients are happening and how do these make the food less healthy?

Simply saying "processed food is bad" to me seems like a fallacious overgeneralization along the lines of "natural is good" or "chemicals are bad".

What "processed" means ?

It is what it says on the tin. Two examples:

1) The addition of preservatives, additives, emulsifiers and such like (the so-called "E" numbers)

2) Manipulating the product through a highly industrial process in such a way that makes it unrecognisable from its original form, so for example :

- In the meat eating world, reconstituted meat.

- In the fake-meat world. One example is fake chicken, which tends to use pea protein isolate. Pea protein isolate is created using a chemical-based highly-industrial process. Added to which the usual suspects such as MSG are also used in the fake-meat world in order to try to fake the taste.

What’s the definition of “processed” you’re using? Tofu and seitan aren’t raw products and have been used for centuries.

its abit unfair to me where cow milk costs $1 but soy milk costs $5. Lets hope with this growing trend soy milk also gets subsidized.

You don't need to subsidize cow milk, we don't in Australia and it's still $1/litre.

Cheap milk isn't great for the cows though.

Or the farmers. It’s not well enough known that dairy farming is a tough job and the mortality rate from suicide is far too high. Unfortunately I know more than one farmer who has succumbed.

Oat milk, perhaps. Let's try not to increase the pressure on soy production.

Also Milk from peas is pretty good. Our family loves it.

Wonder if it’s to do with corona virus. My sense of smell has changed again and it’s put me off beef, so this Christmas it’s vegetarian chilli and vegetarian tacos.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com