
Europe heroically defends itself against veggie burgers - prostoalex
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/06/29/europe-heroically-defends-itself-against-veggie-burgers
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Normal_gaussian
I've been a vegetarian for about six years now. I'm not a great cook; I'm not
into experimenting very often.

When I experiment in the kitchen the "veggie X" groups really mess with me. I
end up googling for ages to determine which ingredients are and aren't
suitable substitutes. Naming a "veggie" product something it is not is a
problem for me.

Outside ingredients, I avoid "veggie" ready meals. A rule of thumb for
vegetarian food - if they make a big deal about it being the vegetarian
version of X, then its terrible.

Do not mistake me, there is plenty of delicious vegetarian food. They just
aren't variants of meat-dishes, they are meals of their own.

Apart from vegetable lasagna; thats almost always a winner.

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notechback
While I too prefer dishes that are not "meat substitutes", I don't think the
veggie X are always bad. Sometimes I just want a burger and then one of the
newer vegan options is often good enough.

A rule of thumb I've stumbled across is to avoid anything that contains egg or
egg white - it's a cheap filler some companies put to call things "veggie"
while making no real change in the underlying suffering they create. But for
this conversation more significant: these taste always really foul to me.

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frostwhale
I am not a vegetarian but I grew up with two sisters who were, meaning i was
served fake meat a lot.

I agree it can be quite good! Spicy fake Italian sausages were a favorite I
remember. That being said, to the earlier point they're best when they're not
trying to exactly replicate meat flavor but just taste good. Spicy italian
sausage was good because it didn't try to taste too much like sausage and was
just spicy and italian haha.

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morceauxdebois
Did the Economist hire a new writer? The style in the article doesn't fit in
with the Economist

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_bxg1
Yeah, it's dripping with sass and sarcasm. Weird and gross.

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mc32
I completely agree with the bureaucrats for once.

Make up new names. Give them (pseudo) Greek names, Dilute trademark and
genericise whatever it takes, but don’t undermine the meaning of well defined
nouns for the sake of marketing on the coattails.

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woodandsteel
One of the basic features of language is that meanings of words change over
time, including a given term retaining is original meaning but adding another
one (did you think, for instance that all of the different meanings of the
word "scale" were invented at the same time?). That being the case, using
traditional meat terms for vegetable products that are similar to meat is
perfectly legitimate.

Nobody who buys a veggie burger mistakenly thinks they are made of meat. In
fact their knowledge they are not is usually a key reason they buy them

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mc32
What if things get flipped in 20 years and lots of synthetic meats and other
foodstuffs become the norm, would it be nice if the "natural" producers coopt
their names and nouns to help sell their goods? for example, let's presume
seitan is synthetic, it's well known for not being an animal product. But meat
producers want in in their market and market "Natural Seitan"

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woodandsteel
I would say the main question here is if consumers would be mislead into
thinking "Natural Seltan" had the same advantages over meat that artificial
seltan has. I don't think they would. In fact, I think they would find that
label confusing, and just stay away from it.

And let me add that if meat producers find sales under the traditional label
have dropped so low they need to adopt that new one, then they would have
already lost the war.

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notechback
Is this really a legislation or just one of many "own initiative" reports by
the parliament which are intended to move the Commission to make a proposal
but bear no legal value?

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ornornor
[https://outline.com/a8C6fJ](https://outline.com/a8C6fJ)

