It really shouldn't be called "meat". It should be called plant-based protein or meat-substitute. The definition of "meat" shouldn't change because you press some soy to look like a chicken leg.
To be honest, this sounds like the same controversy as people complaining about almond "milk". I just don't see a lot of evidence that people are regularly accidentally buying vegan food.
Meat has been used to refer to non-animal products for a long time, particularly around nuts. I don't think that the definition has changed as much as people are using a commonly understood term to refer to a category of food that's all used in similar situations and for similar purposes.
In my experience I think so, as I wrote on this thread.
I work with some inner city folk and yes, they are convinced it is meat, just really bad meat. As with almond milk, they think it is milk with almond added to it (even when I pull out the container from the fridge and show the ingredient list).
I don't really understand this. I've never seen a package of plant-based meat and found myself confused, much in the same way I've never seen a carton of oat milk and thought it contained dairy. What's the concern here?
I don’t know about the meat issue, but I’ve seen women in mother’s groups ask “what kind of milk” people were going to be giving their babies after they were done giving breast milk or formula. Some people seemed to genuinely think that something called almond milk is actually a type of milk in some meaningful sense just because of the name.
I’m fine with them having non-dairy beverages, but they aren’t “substitutes” nutritionally just because they have milk in the name. If your 1 year old is drinking almond milk (30cal and 1g protein per 8oz) instead of whole milk (150 cal and 8 gr protein per 8 oz), you need to adjust what you’re feeding, just like you would if you were giving any other drink.
The issue is some people seem to assume liquids that are labeled milks are actually like each other in some way that goes beyond flavor and texture.
Yes, the problem is not dairy vs. non-dairy, it is with feeding kids who have been weaned a vegetarian or vegan diet in general. For instance, the following is a recent study (July 2020):
Vegetarian and Vegan Weaning of the Infant: How Common and How Evidence-Based? A Population-Based Survey and Narrative Review
Background: Vegetarian and vegan weaning have increasing popularity among parents and families. However, if not correctly managed, they may lead to wrong feeding regimens, causing severe nutritional deficiencies requiring specific nutritional support or even the need for hospitalization. Aim: To assess the prevalence of vegetarian and vegan weaning among Italian families and to provide an up-to-date narrative review of supporting evidence. Materials and methods: We investigated 360 Italian families using a 40-item questionnaire. The narrative review was conducted searching scientific databases for articles reporting on vegetarian and vegan weaning. Results: 8.6% of mothers follow an alternative feeding regimen and 9.2% of infants were weaned according to a vegetarian or vegan diet. The breastfeeding duration was longer in vegetarian/vegan infants (15.8 vs. 9.7 months; p < 0.0001). Almost half of parents (45.2%) claim that their pediatrician was unable to provide sufficient information and adequate indications regarding unconventional weaning and 77.4% of parents reported the pediatrician’s resistance towards alternative weaning methods. Nine studies were suitable for the review process. The vast majority of authors agree on the fact that vegetarian and vegan weaning may cause severe nutritional deficiencies, whose detrimental effects are particularly significant in the early stages of life. Discussion and conclusion: Our results show that alternative weaning methods are followed by a significant number of families; in half of the cases, the family pediatrician was not perceived as an appropriate guide in this delicate process. To date, consistent findings to support both the safety and feasibility of alternative weaning methods are still lacking. Since the risk of nutritional deficiencies in the early stages of life is high, pediatricians have a pivotal role in guiding parents and advising them on the most appropriate and complete diet regimen during childhood. Efforts should be made to enhance nutritional understanding among pediatricians as an unsupervised vegetarian or vegan diet can cause severe nutritional deficiencies with possible detrimental long-term effects.
That's certainly an interpretation of that study. Here's another one.
> Almost half of parents (45.2%) claim that their pediatrician was unable to provide sufficient information and adequate indications regarding unconventional weaning and 77.4% of parents reported the pediatrician’s resistance towards alternative weaning methods.
> Our results show that alternative weaning methods are followed by a significant number of families; in half of the cases, the family pediatrician was not perceived as an appropriate guide in this delicate process.
In other words, nearly half of parents who try vegetarian weaning report that their pediatricians stop helping them or are unable to give them adequate/informed nutritional advice, and unsurprisingly, parents who no longer have adequate access to health resources and information struggle to raise healthy kids.
This isn't an argument against vegetarian weaning, it's an argument for educating pediatricians so they're not shrugging their shoulders when people ask them how to keep their kids healthy.
----
It's also really important here to distinguish between vegan and vegetarian weaning. You're lumping them together when the paper doesn't. Its take is:
> Vegetarian weaning with appropriate guidance from family pediatricians or nutritional experts is possible and it should not be opposed.
> Vegan weaning should be discouraged because serious damages (slow growth, rickets, irreversible cognitive deficits, cerebral atrophy, and also death) have been demonstrated.
This is something that kind of annoys me when it comes up in these conversations. The health risks of veganism and vegetarianism are very different. Being vegan requires paying attention to your food intake, it requires doing some research, because the United States food system is not built around that concept. The risks aren't common knowledge and fewer foods are fortified to deal with problems that vegans face. But being vegetarian is comparatively much, much easier to do, and you're much less likely to make a mistake and end up with a deficiency if you go down that route. They really shouldn't be talked about as if they have the same levels of risk.
>> In other words, nearly half of parents who try vegetarian weaning report that their pediatricians stop helping them or are unable to give them adequate/informed nutritional advice, and unsurprisingly, parents who no longer have adequate access to health resources and information struggle to raise healthy kids.
I think your "other words" are deviating very significantly from the letter of the article and you're adding your own interpretation to what's actually written. As actually written, the article says that "the family pediatrician was not perceived as an appropriate guide" by the families Note the "perceived". This may be because the families have different ideas about a healthy diet than the pediatrician, for example "77.4% of parents reported the pediatrician's resistance towards alterantive weaning methods". Since those "alternative weaning methods" may include anything from a vegan weaning to feeding one's child beneficial moon rays (while simultaneously protecting her from the evil dark rays of death), I am inclined to believe that the problem is not that pediatricians are not adequately informed, but that parents are adhering to information from inadequate sources.
There are plenty of articles in the mainstream press by doctors who lament the fact that their patients will trust charlatans who sell them energy therapies and other such snake oil treatments, instead of the doctors themselves. Those doctors are usually specialists (for example, oncologists) but their patients still think the charlatans know best.
You have to be pretty selective in this article to look at one word, "perceived", and conclude that the issue here is that people aren't trusting their pediatricians. If the paper meant to say that that vegetarian weaning was a snake oil treatment, it would have said that a lot more directly.
Instead, it literally says: "Vegetarian weaning with appropriate guidance from family pediatricians or nutritional experts is possible and it should not be opposed."
If the paper meant to say that pediatricians were fully up-to-date on how to give advice, and the problem was that nobody was listening to them, then it would have said that a lot more directly. Instead, it literally says: "Efforts should be made to enhance nutritional understanding among pediatricians as an unsupervised vegetarian or vegan diet can cause severe nutritional deficiencies with possible detrimental long-term effects."
I don't think a full reading of the entire paper supports the conclusion that pediatricians are perfectly informed and that vegetarian weaning is a snake oil con. It supports the conclusion that research is underdeveloped and that many pediatricians are not qualified to guide parents through that process. It does discourage vegan weaning because it's difficult to do correctly, because it can go very wrong if not done correctly, because we're still getting research about the best ways to handle those diets, and because, again, pediatricians and health experts have not studied these diets enough to be confident giving advice about them. This is not necessarily the same thing as saying that vegan weaning is impossible to do well -- it's acknowledging that we live in a world where it hasn't been scientifically studied enough to know the potential downsides, and where guiding resources are extremely scarce.
I think you're projecting a conclusion onto this that the authors explicitly reject. A paper that was trying to warn about the troubling trend of parents rejecting their pediatricians' advice would not look like this. It would be talking about things like combating disinformation, it wouldn't be spending half the paper talking about the best B12/iron/etc vegetarian food sources.
But it never goes to topics like misinformation. Instead, it lays out nutritional advice, warns against unsupervised weaning and the risk of naively eliminating meat, and then ends by reinforcing again the need for proper professional guidance: "alternative weaning as a self-decision should be generally discouraged. Pediatricians should guide families strongly willing to follow a vegetarian/vegan regimen, providing all nutritional requirements."
That doesn't line up with the narrative you have about this paper. Nowhere does it say, "pediatricians should figure out how to convince families strongly willing to follow a vegetarian/vegan regimen that they're being scammed/deluded."
> There are plenty of articles in the mainstream press by doctors who lament the fact that their patients will trust charlatans who sell them energy therapies and other such snake oil treatments, instead of the doctors themselves.
I'm sure there are. It's just, this paper isn't one of them and shouldn't be lumped into that category. If you're writing about energy therapies, you don't spend half the paper describing how to do energy therapy well and how we need more resources to guide parents through energy therapy, because it's not a real thing that can be done well.
>> That doesn't line up with the narrative you have about this paper. Nowhere does it say, "pediatricians should figure out how to convince families strongly willing to follow a vegetarian/vegan regimen that they're being scammed/deluded."
> I am inclined to believe that the problem is not that pediatricians are not adequately informed, but that parents are adhering to information from inadequate sources.
I don't think the paper supports that conclusion. The paper doesn't suggest that vegetarian weaning is itself a problem or a scam, it suggests that we don't have the educational resources available to support people who are doing it.
Maybe I don't understand your argument. If vegetarian weaning isn't a problem, then what do you mean by:
> I am inclined to believe that the problem is not that pediatricians are not adequately informed, but that parents are adhering to information from inadequate sources.
The way I heard that was, "the problem is that parents aren't listening to pediatricians when they tell them less-common weaning methods are a bad idea." Did you mean something else?
I'm thinking about that in conjunction with your original statement, which to me sounds more directly like it's making that argument:
> Yes, the problem is not dairy vs. non-dairy, it is with feeding kids who have been weaned a vegetarian or vegan diet in general.
Is that statement not saying that vegetarian weaning is a problem?
But if we're arguing past each other, I apologize. I guess I'm not sure what your claim is. Do you mean that pediatricians are informed, and they are giving adequate advice about how to do successful vegetarian weaning, and they aren't hostile to the practice, but that parents are just ignoring it anyway and trying to do weaning on their own? But this paper still spends zero time trying to talk about how to convince the public to trust their pediatricians, so that also doesn't seem like it's the conclusion that the author is going for.
Again, apologies for misinterpreting you, but if that's not what you're trying to say then I'm missing what you are trying to say.
> This isn't an argument against vegetarian weaning, it's an argument for educating pediatricians so they're not shrugging their shoulders when people ask them how to keep their kids healthy.
No, it’s an argument that people should probably listen more to their pediatrician.
This study does not conclude that a vegetarian diet is unhealthy for weaned children -- in fact, it concludes the opposite, that vegetarian diets are fine for weaning if parents are properly guided through the process.
If pediatricians are not properly equipped to guide through that process, then yes, it is a problem with educating pediatricians.
Health professionals need to be educated about what a healthy vegetarian diet looks like for children, because they are going to meet vegetarians who (very reasonably) are not going to accept an answer of "this is totally possible to do well, but I don't personally know how to do it, so nobody should do it." I think it's reasonable for the public to expect that those people learn how to address the health issues that the people under their care are facing.
> I've never seen a carton of oat milk and thought it contained dairy
I have no issues with "<plant> milk" products and labeling them like that, but people do get confused about their nutritional profiles, thinking they're substitutes for milk. They're not, and they're chemically different enough that they're not good substitutes for cooking. About the only thing they're good substitutes for is liquid milk, though I hear oat milk foams up well for a cappuccino.
> but people do get confused about their nutritional profiles
By that logic, should 2% milk be allowed to be called milk? What about chocolate milk? Nutritional profiles can vary wildly between different brands and products, especially when we're talking about meat -- so where do you draw the line?
Look, you're raising an interesting point but this is not about meat vs. not meat (or "what kind of meat"). For instance, I was recently made aware that about 80% of the milk sold in Greek supermarkets (I'm Greek) is UHT ("long-life"). That goes for the milk displayed in refrigerated isles. OK? Supermarkets put UHT milk in the fridge - so people will think it's fresh. Most likely it's the dairy companies that direct them to do so. Some brands even put UHT milk in clear plastic bottles, like the ones used for fresh milk. Last time I checked there were maybe three brands of pasteurised (i.e. "fresh", not long-life) milk in the refrigerated isle in the three supermarkets I visit frequently.
And yet, I remember reading (and could perhaps dig up again with a bit of effort) a study claiming that Greeks don't like to drink UHT milk and prefer fresh milk. Well, perhaps that's what they think but in practice most of the milk on sale (and so, very likely, most of what is consumed) is UHT.
Note: "fresh milk" is not raw milk; "fresh" milk means milk that's been pasteurised, but not ultra-pasteurised, and that's been knocking about the dairy industry's plants and refrigerated trucks and the like for about a week. "Fresh" is a misnomer. Even if it wasn't, people don't seem capable of distinguishing it from UHT milk anyway.
Bottom line: people don't know what they're consuming. Like, they really have no idea. Myself I hadn't noticed all that but it was pointed out to me by a friend who is a dairy scientist. In fact, I'd been drinking a UHT milk and thinking "hey, that tastes kinda sweet". I even kinda liked it. I mean, there's nothing wrong with drinking UHT milk! Don't get me wrong- it's just as nutritious as "fresh" milk. Except, I had no idea. This is disturbing. It makes me wonder- what else am I missing? What else is sold to me as one kind of food but is really something else than what I expect?
Okay, but you're arguing for better labeling in general about food production, ingredients, and storage -- not that people shouldn't be able to use the word "meat" on a Morningstar package.
I mean, I would love if every product was clearly labeled whether it contained animal by-products, it would save me from having to read ingredients on everything. It's annoying to have to check to see whether a loaf of bread in the supermarket contains milk or not, or to have to search online whether some obscure ingredient is an animal gelatin. And additionally, yeah, there is a lot of confusion around buzzwords like "free-range" or "organic" which basically mean very little. You're right about that stuff.
But the words "milk" and "meat" are not part of the problem. It's fine if almond milk is in the milk isle and labeled as milk. Calling it almond milk-substitute would not have solved your problem with accidentally buying UHT milk, because "milk" itself is not a specific enough word to solve your problem on its own.
And to jump back to the original comment I was responding to -- "milk" is also not specific enough of a word to communicate what the nutritional profile is of the food you're consuming. Yes, there are concerns about people not knowing what is and isn't healthy and not being able to identify how food was produced and sourced. No, forcing plant-based substitutes to drop the words "milk" or "meat" won't fix that.
I agree about the world "milk", for example in Greece we call fig sap "fig milk". But calling nut paste or beans "meat" grates.
Anyway my ocncern is that most consumers are at the point where they don't understand the difference between animal milk and plant milk, or even animal meat and plant-based meat substitutes, because they're used to so much over-processed food that they don't recognise the tastes of ordinary foodstfufs anymore.
I find it more likely that 16 million Americans decided to take the piss when answering that particular question, perhaps offended that such an obviously dumb question would be asked of them with a straight face. I would be.
16 million Americans have, by definition of the scoring mechanism, IQ 70 or lower. I suspect the only reason the number thinking it’s from brown cows isn’t higher is all the people who don’t think milk comes from anywhere but the supermarket selling it.
I don't see that the OP said anything about there being any kind of confusion. I think you're responding to a different concern than the one they expressed.
In the EU, you can't sell a concoction of palm oil, whey protein, fillers, flavors and colorings as "cheese" - you need to label it as "breakfast spread" or something like that.
There are different words you are allowed to use for fruit-based drinks depending on how removed they are from actual fruit.
Why not apply similar standards to the ersatz meat?
Yes, as long as this isn't going down the route of "consumers will get confused" by terms like "oat milk".
People aren't that stupid and the arguments against using the word milk annoy me. I think it's a sign that people are changing their diet and the dairy industry is worried.
>> People aren't that stupid and the arguments against using the word milk annoy me. I think it's a sign that people are changing their diet and the dairy industry is worried.
Well, calling plant mince patties "burgers" annoys me and I'm not the dairy industry, nor affiliated with it.
Can we leave the annoyance aside and have a reasonable conversation about it? Here's my concern: it's perfectly reasonable to suggest that everyone should eat less meat than they eat (or rather, not everyone; just the people in cough, certain regions of the world where "meat" is synonymous with "food"; that is really not the case everywhere in the world). But in that case, let's promote plant-based cuisines, like Indian or Mediterrannean, with dishes that can be cooked at home with cheap and healthy ingredients and that do not rely on the production lines of the same large agribuisenesses that are responsible for destroying the environment with industrial farming (which includes mass-produced meat- and plant-based foods).
Yup, very true. Just recently German chocolate producer "RitterSport" made a new chocolate product but were disallowed to call it chocolate because it doesn't contain any sugar (they used some substitute), which according to the definition a chocolate product has to contain to be called chocolate.
Likewise, but the issue there is slightly different — if they had ruled that “burgers” had to contain meat, there would be a similar but stronger argument to force “hamburgers” to only refer to those made of ham.
Hamburgers are named after the place they were invented (the city of Hamburg), itself named after a big castle which in German is “Burg”.
And before anyone suggests one could also argue that “they’re only allowed to be called hamburgers if they’re from Hamburg and otherwise are just sparkling fried meat patties”, I apologise for spoiling the obvious joke by having looked up the EU rules for when something can be protected with a geographical designation (feta cheese, champagne, etc.) and discovered none of that sort of thing would apply.
I'm not sure I'd consider regulatory capture and artificial barriers to entry by existing industries to be a good outcome, which is what this is; they rules aren't implemented to protect customers.
I agree. Why call something that is not meat "meat"? It seems that the only valid arguments is that the term is used as a marketing strategy to confuse consumers or appeal to their subconscious.
It's because it's meant as a meat substitute. As far as I'm concerned it's very much conscious, if you want to make the veggie version of, say, a chicken dish you'll buy "veggie chicken" which is meant to have similar characteristics (usually in terms of flavor, appearance and consistence, not necessarily nutritional).
It's hard for me not to dismiss these concerns are pure pearl clutching (or is it concern trolling? I'm not up to date on my internet debate lingo). If people really don't pay attention to the meat products they buy and they end up with veggie meat by mistake, there's a very good chance that they would've very easily ended up with some crappy ultra-processed low quality "technically meat" product instead. They might actually be better off with the plant option, quality-wise.
Are we even that there yet, seems like wide marketing died off after innovation in the space churned out one ground beef patty mcnugget meat product after another.
I don't mind deceptive labelling if for mass appeal. I do want meat substitutes that actually behave and taste like meat in more than ground form. It's not viable substitute for vast majority of cuisine from around the world, that's before even getting into delicacies like offal.
Meat == food, not just flesh. This is a very old definition for the word. It's also still used to describe the bits of nuts that we eat ("coconut meat").
meat, n.
1. a. Food in general; anything used as nourishment for men or animals; usually, solid food, in contradistinction to drink. Now arch. and dial. green meat: grass or green vegetables used for food or fodder (see green a. 4). See also hard meat, horsemeat, whitemeat. meal of meat, meal's meat: see meal n. 2 1e.
a900: tr. Bæda's Hist. v. iv. (Schipper) 568 “He eode on his hus & þær mete [v.r. mæte] þyᵹede.”
c975: Rushw. Gosp. Luke xii. 23 “Sawel mara is ðonne mett.”
a1050: Liber Scintill. xlvii. (1889) 153 “Nys rice godes meta & drinc.”
c1200: Ormin 3213 “Hiss drinnch wass waterr aȝȝ occ aȝȝ, Hiss mete wilde rotess.”
a1240: Lofsong in Cott. Hom. 205 “Ich habbe i-suneged ine mete and ine drunche.”
a1300: Cursor M. 898 “Mold sal be þi mete for nede.”
c1380: Wyclif Wks. (1880) 206 “Alas, þat so gret cost & bisynesse is sette abouten þe roten body, þat is wormes mete.”
c1440: Pol. Rel. & L. Poems (1903) 185 “Thy mete shall be mylk, honye, & wyne.”
1477: Norton Ord. Alch. v. in Ashm. (1652) 76 “Without Liquor no Meate is good.”
1578: Lyte Dodoens ii. xlvi. 205 “These kindes of lillies are neither used in meate nor medicine.”
1623: Cockeram ii, “Meate of the Gods, Ambrosia, Manna.”
meat, n.
e. The edible part of fruits, nuts, eggs, etc.: the pulp, kernel, yolk and white, etc. in contradistinction to the rind, peel, or shell. ?Now only U.S. exc. in proverbial phrase (see quot. 1592). Also, the animal substance of a shell-fish.
c1420: Pallad. on Husb. iii. 708 “A stanry pere is seyd to chaunge his mete In esy lond ygraffed yf he be.”
1530: Palsgr. 245/1 “Meate of any frute, le bon.”
a1562: G. Cavendish Wolsey (1893) 30 “A very fayer orrynge wherof the mete or substaunce within was taken owt.”
1592: Shakes. Rom. & Jul. iii. i. 25 “Thy head is as full of quarrels, as an egge is full of meat.”
1613: Purchas Pilgrimage (1614) 506 “Of the meat of the Nut dried, they make oyle.”
1679: J. Skeat Art Cookery 30 “First take all the meat out of the lobster.”
1766: Museum Rust. I. lxxxiii. 370 “Low or swampy grounds don't answer well for potatoes,..the meat being generally scabby, close, wet and heavy.”
1802: Paley Nat. Theol. xx. (1819) 313 note, “The meat of a plum.”
1900: Boston Even. Transcr. 29 Mar. 7/3 “Force through a meat chopper with one-half pound nut-meats, using English walnut meats, pecan-nut meats.”
I guess that explains “mince pies” in the UK. For non-Brits: they are a traditional Christmas sweet pastry the size and shape of a cupcake, filled with “mincemeat”, which is meat-free and not to be confused with “minced meat”.
Yep. That goes to show what I've said often in comments here: "meat" means food in certain parts of the world. That is to say English speaking parts of the world.
For instance, I'm Greek and in the Greek language bread is synonymous with "food". A few expressions in Greek characteristic of this synonymity of bread with food are: "δεν έχουμε ψωμί να φάμε" - "we have no bread to eat", meaning "we shall go hungry"; "βγάζω το ψωμί μου", "deriving one's bread", meaning "making a living" (analogous to "bring the bacon home"); and of course "πάτερ ημών ο εν τοις ουρανοίς δωσ' ημίν σήμερον τον άρτον ημών τον επιούσιον", or "our father who art in heaven give us our daily bread".
This is one reason why debates like the ones in this HN thread frustrate me. Yes, some people should definitely eat less meat. Much less meat! But that's by far not everyone in the world and some people have been eating very reasonable amounts, very sustainable amounts of meat (and very sustainable kinds of meat) for many generations. Of course those are the same people whose national cuisines are already teeming with vegetarian and vegan dishes, except of course those are simply called "food" in the local languages. I find it an affront, having grown up in such a culture, to hear that I have to reduce my meat consumption even further or switch to repulsive-sounding "plant-based meat alternatives" because some people half a world over can't sit down to eat without a big fat beef stake in front of them.
Bottom line: we haven't all fucked up the planet to the same degree. We shouldn't all have to change our way of life and the way we eat to the same degree.
Do I really have to find another source that somehow « counter » your post and give a « definition » of what meat is or how it is generally employed for?
I mean, we really are there?
If you make a barbecue party, do you discuss the new meaning of « meat » by the « I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about website »?
The modern definition of meat meaning animal flash evolved from the old more broad definition. And now it's evolving again to again include plant based meats.
It's how the language works and I'm not sure why would anyone be against using the broader definition when it's useful.
I don't see anyone complaining about coconut milk and peanut butter.
Funny enough, this is the original definition. You are the one using the new "fancy" definitions.
Wiki:
The word meat comes from the Old English word mete, which referred to food in general. The term is related to mad in Danish, mat in Swedish and Norwegian, and matur in Icelandic and Faroese, which also mean 'food'. The word mete also exists in Old Frisian (and to a lesser extent, modern West Frisian) to denote important food, differentiating it from swiets (sweets) and dierfied (animal feed).
This is at best dishonest, if you really referred to that definition, you would use "meat", not "imitation meat"/"fake meat"/"plant based meat". Everything in the marketing of that stuff is made to mimic meat-as-in-animal-muscle meat.
If you want a burger, go eat a freaking slaughtered cow patty burger, don't be all fancy with that highly process crap.
You really don't have to defend your masculinity to me.
I promise that I, or anyone else, won't think anything less of you if you'll replace steak with quinoa burger from time to time. It will be good for you and the environment!
Sure it is. It’s right there on the label. Things are called what they are called not because they have properties which match a platonic ideal and those properties are inextricably linked with the phonetic and orthographic representations of a language. No, things are called what they are called because lots of people make those sounds or write those symbols and associate it with that thing, which people receive as information and then use themselves.
In other words, you’ve already lost this battle, and you’ve lost it in many languages and countries at once.
Whatever world you wish to preserve in which, for whatever reasons of comfort you insist that plant-based meat isn’t meat, no longer exists.
By the amount of words I’m sure I’ve lost indeed. In « many many » languages and countries, everywhere around the world, and particularly in our very small new extremism world.
I have one question: why do people trying to eat only vegetables (is « vegetables » still ok?) insist so much to call that « plant-based » food « meat »?
> I have one question: why do people trying to eat only vegetables (is « vegetables » still ok?) insist so much to call that « plant-based » food « meat »?
That don’t. They just read what’s on the label and call it that. It’s preservationists who see a war here: everyone else has moved on.
If you’re into vegetables, as-in you’re against meat, you just eat vegetables and you don’t eat meat anymore. You don’t need that to be called « plant-based meat ».
Only the people who are actually so nostalgic of the good meat they had want something called « plant-based meat ».
