Why can't we just let delicious veggies be themselves?
Four years ago this week, I witnessed something truly horrifying. I was in Phuket, Thailand for the annual Taoist Vegetarian Festival and had spent several cringe-filled days observing men and women participate in scenes of ritualized piercings, mutilation, cutting, bloodletting and serious meat deprivation—all done without any anesthesia or even a single bite of fish, fowl, or mammal.
After days of witnessing this crimson spectacle on a completely meat-free stomach, something truly horrifying happened. From a block away I spotted a beautiful slab of fried pork belly hanging delicately from a hook above a noodle vendor’s boiling pot of soup. I approached the vendor with a huge smile that he immediately recognized as hope-filled and his visage went from welcoming to pity.
This was not pork belly. Those beautiful streaks of lean and fat and the rich brown hue of its perfectly crisp skin were just a clever illusion, a slight-of-ham, if you will. This vegetarian vendor was selling superb examples of a centuries old Chinese technique for making faux meat of every type imaginable—a horrifying situation for a meat-starved omnivore on his third day of an involuntary flesh fast (unsurprisingly, the fake pork belly tasted like salty lies and regret).
It’s worth remembering, as companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are asking us to pass the plate for the next faux meat revival, that Asian cooks have been using plant-based foods to mimic meat for hundreds of years. Stroll down the aisle of any well stocked Asian market today and you’ll find plant-based versions of bacon, fish, hamburger, sausage, shrimp, chicken and even duck.
Full disclosure: I really, really don’t like fake meats. I’m not talking about all of the delicious plant-based creations that have been used for centuries such as tofu, Indonesian tempeh, or modern vegetable patties that actually taste like vegetables—I like these ingredients because in the hands of skilled cooks they taste like what they are and don’t try to be something they’re not.
What I can’t stand are products like Tofurkey, pretenderloin, bluffalo wings, cheatloaf and the scores of other crimes against humanity that taste like neither meat nor veg. They may be somewhat visually appealing, but distract your attention away from any real food in the vicinity.
Now don’t start getting your gluten-free, free-range, hemp panties in a bunch. I have no problem with veganism per se and don’t really give a fiber packed poo about what another human eats. But I do have to wonder: unless you have serious dietary restrictions that limit your options, why not just eat vegetables? Or at least eat plant-based alternatives that aren’t processed to the point that it takes a chemist to decipher their ingredient list.
Scientists have spent years trying to find ways for us to eat meat without the conscience-prompting process of pumping 20,000 volts into its skull and thus far, Impossible Foods have been the most successful at transforming plants into something that resembles actual meat.
But keep in mind, these plant-based meat alternatives are “plant based” in the same way that the paper this article is printed on is “plant based” —it takes a lot of processing to turn those happy little plants into fake meat or newsprint.
The Impossible Burger, for example, has Lipitor popping levels of saturated fat, enough sodium to cure a ham, and shockingly few whole food ingredients on its 21 ingredient list. I’ll admit, it tastes pretty good, unlike the unnaturally squishy and bland Beyond Burger and certainly better than any previous attempt at faux meat. But it’s been engineered to taste good, not to lower your cholesterol.
But no matter how much money is spent on producing, marketing, and purchasing these faux meats, they are still processed plant matter masquerading as meat. Why not focus all those resources on letting plants and vegetables shine as themselves, rather than dressing them up like little carnivore whores, fulfilling the dirty meat fantasies of omnivorous humans living as vegetarian or vegan?
There are thousands of plants and vegetables that are delicious, nutritious, and almost unheard of by the average meat eater. Maybe, just maybe, if there were more options and better tasting dishes made from the overwhelming bounty of plants and vegetables we have at our disposal, more humans would simply eat more vegetables, eat less processed food and no one would ever again have to endure the horror of a fake pork belly.
Mike McJunkin is a native Chattanoogan who has traveled abroad extensively, trained chefs, and owned and operated restaurants. Join him on Facebook at facebook.com/SushiAndBiscuits