Why Eating Meat-Shaped Vegetarian Food Is Like Having Sex with a Blow-up Doll

I found this through Soul Veggie. Based on the title, I thought it would just be a rant against mock meats, but it’s actually an interesting and well-researched article. I particularly liked its take on growing up vegetarian:

As the Analogue Epoch rolls into its second generation, more and more babies are being born into meatless households. They grow up never having tasted the stuff, their memory banks lacking all trace of that particular bloody crunch, those opalescent beads of fat, those glistening tubules, those hot fluids that feel almost alive. They do not share with nearly their entire species, dating back into prehistory, those happy-birthday hamburgers and Mom’s meatloaf and fresh-fish cookouts coded to condition us to crave and cherish flesh. These creatures of a true new age know not the dinner-table surgery that entails shearing skin and fat from flesh and flesh from bone and shell, the rib-holding hand rendered lustrously, shirt-spoilingly greasy.

--Tagged under: Vegan Food--

--Tagged under: Self-Denial--

Vegan Habits I Haven’t Lost

Putting tahini on everything.

Cooking.

Eating lots of vegetables.

Putting nori seaweed on everything.

Eating fruit mixed with almond butter for breakfast (or dessert).

Not drinking while I eat. This was specifically a macrobiotic habit, but I’m as strict about it as I ever was, even though I’ve read it makes no difference. And in fact, drinking while you eat might actually be good because it helps you get full faster.

Eating lots of nuts.

Waiting at least half an hour after eating my main meal to eat fruit. Another macrobiotic thing that I haven’t let go.

Putting nutritional yeast on everything (though this one has tapered off along with flax seeds, miso, umeboshi paste and spirulina).

Drinking white tea.

I lost my taste for kombucha for a while, but eventually it came back. I don’t drink it by the gallon the way I used to, though.

Eating raw vegan desserts. This one is more theoretical because I don’t have access to them lately, but aside from fruit, raw vegan desserts are the only desserts I’ll eat.

Using apple cider vinegar on salads and sometimes doing shots of it.

Eating lots of young coconuts.

Using Bragg Liquid Aminos instead of soy sauce.

Not showering every day.

But using Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap when I do shower.

--Tagged under: Vegan Food--

--Tagged under: When I Was Vegan--

Vegan Barf House

“Barf House is a new Vegetarian & Vegan B&B. Drying facilities available for coats & boots.”

--Tagged under: Vegan Food--

Meatless Mondays to Backfire in Baltimore

Baltimore public schools have instituted “Meatless Mondays,” apparently to cut costs and “give children more options.” This would seem to be a victory of sorts for the veggie movement, but based on the stomach-churning food shots in this CNN report, the long-term effect of this policy will likely be to transform these poor kids into carnivores for life.

On the Monday that CNN stormed Baltimore’s most hallowed halls, the compulsory school attending waifs were attempting to subsist on plates of corn with sides of bread. Or plates of green beans with bowls of “veggie chili” (white rice with some black beans sprinkled on top). As if schools weren’t already enough like prisons!

I suspect that most of these kids will come to dread Mondays, and will grow up even more inoculated to the vegan message than the rest of us brainwashed fast food eating tools of the meat industry. Good luck trying to educate these kids about all the wonderful variety that a vegan lifestyle has to offer.

If the Meatless Monday concept spreads as a thinly-disguised attempt for schools to cut costs by taking the meat out and replacing it with nothing (under the guise of health and sustainability), it will simply reinforce the stereotype that vegetarian food is tantamount to deprivation. Vegans should be condemning Baltimore for making them look bad. Instead, vegans are honoring them.

Even I am hurting the vegan movement less than Baltimore is. Why isn’t PETA honoring me?

--Tagged under: Vegan Food--

Vegan Quote of the Day

misssakura: One time I went to this vegan party, and this person brought in jelly with pineapple. Nice right? WRONG. It was just agar agar…with bits of fruit in it. Unfortunately I got given a huge slice of it, and it was so awful that I put the plate on the floor and luckily one of the children stepped in it.

--Tagged under: Vegan Quotes--

--Tagged under: Vegan Food--

Vegans React: Morningstar Farms De-veganizes Burger Crumbles

laur b: So Morningstar Farms, the company that was claiming last year to be cutting down on using eggs, has now added them to a formerly vegan product which I know many of us really enjoy — the burger crumbles.

KissMeKate: I can only imagine the anarchy that would have ensued if this had been the riblets.

undersarah: Oh man. I feel the need to go on a hunt to hurry and buy the vegan ones that are left. But then again, I’m kind of pissed and more sales for the company would be lame with them pulling this.

algae: This is like Boca switching up their chik’n patties on me. Some stores carry the vegan ones and some carry non-vegan ones. Gah!!

underSARAH: wait wait wait wait wait wait. Are some Boca Chikns not vegan!?

Camillus: I went shopping yesterday and noticed a stack of both varieties [of Burger Crumbles]. I decided to purchase the rest of the vegan ones, and after that I am boycotting the rest of their products. I am also telling them as such in an e-mail, and if I get motivated enough, a written letter.

--Tagged under: Vegan Quotes--

--Tagged under: Vegan Food--

Vegan.com: "Vegan News Doesn't Get Any Huger Than This"

One vegan cheese revolution doth tread upon another’s heel, so fast they follow. But while Daiya made vegan news with its texture, which some say seems like real cheese, it’s still expensive and weird and not likely to win any converts.

As Vegan.com reports (that giant subject up there is the link), this new fake cheese by Agribusiness giant Cargill, called “Lygomme™ACH Optimum Functional System,” not only has the texture down, it’s actually cheaper than real cheese.

How do they do it? They didn’t find it by lowering a bucket into a Lygomme™ACH Optimum Functional System well, that’s for sure. It is “a combination of three starches, a galactomannan and a gelling carrageenan.” If that sounds disgusting, overly industrial and arbitrary, you need to pull your mouth off that cow udder and join the future. From the company’s press release:

Each component has been carefully selected by Cargill’s expert team to play a specific role: allow and stabilize the emulsion, bring sufficient viscosity during processing, absorb the water phase, avoid oiling out and syneresis, create a strong network in order to allow the finished cheese product to be shreadable/sliceable, and have a remelting profile.

Well, I don’t think vegans are very picky about their remelting profiles. The real excitement here is that a major corporation has bothered to develop and mass-produce a vegan cheese that could theoretically, through cost-effectiveness, put a dent in the dairy industry while tricking some omnivores into accidentally eating something vegan. Though the sufficient viscosity is certainly a bonus.

--Tagged under: Vegan Food--

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