There are already lots of tasty vegetarian recipes. But a lot of non-vegetarians are really, really attached to the idea that vegetarian diets are somehow incomplete or unsatisfying.
So if you want to reduce the environmental harm and improve animal welfare, you need to meet them halfway. That means fake-meat products. It's not optimal along a number of dimensions (it's more expensive and less healthy than meals designed to feature vegetables), but it's something people will buy.
I'd love it if these became "gateway" foods, allowing them to at least consider the many foods that have always been meatless. Indian cuisine in particular has fantastic meatless dishes; I'd love to see that take off.
Meantime, I'm all for harm reduction. Better than nothing.
I was thinking it would be cool to make a restaurant that only served animal products. Like you could use lactose for sugar, milk and cheese, eggs, meat. It would be interesting to see how balanced a meal you could create.
Why TF would you even care? No one’s going to make you eat a poor simulacrum of pork, and of someone else is willing to eat it, it frees up more real meat for you. You are not being harmed by other people’s food choices.
I don't like these prosthetic meat products which purport to taste like real meat, but go against millions of years of evolution which has programmed us to only like the real deal.
