Hi everyone, and welcome back to Eight Years In. Today we have a new addition to our questions for vegans series about vegan replacement foods. Now, I’ve already talked about this weird sense of judgment that exists with some members of the vegan community around these foods. If you’re interested, you can find that here. But today, we’re talking about things from the nonvegan standpoint. So let’s get started!
The question
So I hear this every once in a while from people who don’t know a lot of vegans personally, and I think it’s actually a very interesting question. They’ll say, “If vegans don’t want to eat animals products, then why do you make so many foods that look and taste like them and share the same names?”
For many vegans today, this might be a frustrating question, because they think the answer should be obvious, but for many of us who have been vegan for a long time, I think the answer is more clearly nuanced. This is because the vegan community and their perspective on vegan replacement foods as a whole has changed over the years. So when I hear nonvegans ask me questions like this, I have to admit, I get a little nostalgic.
The confusion
I personally think this confusion is more valid than a lot of vegans may give it credit for. You can make the case that you can’t “just pick out” the pieces of animals in a salad (or whatever) on the basis of disgust and then go on to make a conversation about how it’s the same if someone were eating their pet cat (ala Melanie Joy whose premise you can find explained in this YouTube video). And I’m on board with you, I get it. But then it makes sense to be confused that you are not also just as disgusted with food that looks, smells and tastes almost exactly the same. (Especially since vegan products are getting closer to their animal-derived counterparts by the day.)
So I want to clarify something. The ways in which the disgust manifests can be different for different vegans. In general, I would say vegans that experience disgust around animal products that people eat all tend to experience disgust around the concept of eating dead bodies. Many also experience that same disgust for animal excretions such as milk and eggs. For some, that disgust extends to the flavors and smells, for others it does not. Some people experience no disgust at all, and for others, it’s completely situational. You really don’t know unless you directly ask the person.
For me personally, I experience situational disgust towards the look, smell and/or taste of animal products. I sometimes have to do some mental prepwork in order to try some of the newer vegan options available today. Just to remind myself “Okay, this is going to look and taste like meat (etc). But I’m not eating the body of an animal. It’s okay.” Sometimes the meal is just too much like the animal product it’s mimicking, and I have to battle that emotional tangle. But not everybody experiences this in the first place.
Not all vegans eat fake meat
I want to point out that there are some vegans who choose to consume a whole foods, plant based diet. You won’t find these people chomping down Beyond burgers or Miyoko’s charcuterie boards. Some of them engage in this type of diet for health. And others do, in fact, do it out of avoidance (or disgust) for the foods that seem more like animal products.
This is a viable way to do veganism, if you’re so inclined. It also tends to be cheaper in general, because vegan junk food can get pretty pricey. Although there are ways to make it more expensive. (I’m thinking about all organic produce, with extra avocado and a bunch of macadamia nuts, etc.)
I also want to point out that this whole foods plant based diet was the norm in the vegan community. Back in the days before our vegan replacement products got to be as good as they are. They were expensive back then too, but they weren’t realistic stand-ins for their animal-derived inspirations. (Nor were most of them very good, if I’m being honest with you.) And back then, these foods were looked at as “transition foods”. I’m putting that in quotations because that is what they were called by most people in the community at the time.
Many, dare I say most people in the vegan community in those days would talk about the disgust factor. And how these vegan nuggets and burgers were for the beginning of your veganism. They were considered tools that you would use. Things that you knew how to eat until you could figure out what a vegan meal looked like.
The shift
However, in recent years, I think that we’ve been witnessing a beautiful thing. You see, a lot of times people will tell vegans “Oh, I could never go vegan. I’d miss cheese too much” or burgers or whatever. And I think over the years, more and more vegans listened to that and went “Well maybe if we made better vegan cheese” (or burgers, or whatever) “then more people would go vegan”. And so they did.
I also believe that some people started from a nonvegan place as well. They wanted to cut animal products out of their diet but they didn’t want to have to give up all their favorite foods. So they got serious about creating some alternatives that they would actually want to eat. Which also became a big contribution to the vegan scene today.
And thirdly, I do think capitalism plays a big role in the changes we’ve been seeing as well. It works on the same principles of veganism, in a way. Because we’re talking about supply and demand. With the rise in veganism, we’ve seen demand for animal products going down slightly. However, we’ve also seen the demand for plant-based products go up and believe me when I tell you that the competition for being the best vegan replacement food is fierce. Companies have seen that if they make a vegan version of something, they’ll get more money. Restaurants have realized that having a vegan meal on the menu means that whole families with one vegan can now eat there. Otherwise, they’d have to take their business somewhere else. It’s making a dent. And that means more vegan foods everywhere.
Sharing a vegan meal
And speaking of groups with mixed dietary restrictions, I want to talk about the importance of these vegan replacement foods in terms of having a social life. Because many vegans cite incidences of losing their social life after going vegan. They stop getting invited to stuff because almost everything involves food. People don’t know what to feed them and often enough, they don’t want to eat their “weird vegan food”.
The truth is that if I’m going to Thanksgiving with my meat-eating family, they’re a lot more likely to be willing to try my tater tot hotdish with a gravy sauce and Field Roast sausages than something like a lentil loaf or a stuffed squash. Why? Because it looks, tastes, and smells familiar. I even remember my grandma asking me, “Are you sure this is vegan?” And that question made me smile. Because I know the subtext of the question was “It’s so good, I didn’t know vegan food could be this delicious and familiar.” I told her “Yes, I’m sure. I made it.”
It feels good to be able to give and share delicious food with the ones you love, and if that means eating some vegan replacement foods here and there so we can all sit down together and enjoy a meal, to me, that’s worth it. I’ll admit, I would like it if my family would give more of a chance to the magic of a really good nut roast someday. But they’re eating vegan food with me. That’s awesome.
Vegan replacements for vegans
But it’s not just about people who are trying to convince meat eaters that vegan food can be good. Honestly, sometimes vegans just want some of their comfort food that they used to have before going vegan. (Read more about vegan cravings here.) And because of these things, now we can do that.
Just like you who like your chicken nuggets and pizza, us vegans do too. We did before going vegan, and many of us still get the occasional urge for what we used to love. (For some, it is more than occasional, and that is valid and okay too.)
I think the easiest way of putting it is this: “I didn’t go vegan because I disliked the taste of ribs. I went vegan because I care about the animals who end up on the plate.” I liked meat a lot before going vegan. And cheese. Eggs too, actually–I went through a phase where I had scrambled eggs with cheese for breakfast every day. And for a lot of vegans, they might not get a sense of disgust around eating animal bodies or secretions, they just feel it is wrong for them to do so.
For these people, vegan replacement foods are awesome. Like a lot of the foods they’re trying to mimic, they may not be the healthiest, but they care good for the soul. Basically, their enjoyment of a good vegan burger is exactly the same as your enjoyment of a good nonvegan burger: it just tastes real good.
The conclusion
And that’s all she wrote on vegan replacement foods. Vegans (and other people) like them because they taste good. And if they choose to eat a vegan burger instead of one made from a cow, it means that they like the taste enough to not need a cow to be killed for their burger. That’s a win for everyone, the cow included.
There’s no need to be confused. It’s actually quite simple. And you should be happy about it, too. Because of these sorts of products, if you ever decide you want to try your hand at being vegan, you won’t have to give up the foods you love in order to do it. But even if you don’t, they certainly give vegans and meat eaters a place to meet in the middle for joyful meals filled with conversation, acceptance and beautiful flavors.
As always, thank you for reading my thoughts. If you want to read more vegan related content, remember to subscribe to the blog. And if you want more answers to questions that people ask vegans, check out this post where I have a whole list of them. Have an awesome day!