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Food: Vegetarianism
Carni-Food   (+14, -6)  [vote for, against]
Fake vegetables made from meat products

The opposite of vegi-dogs, tofu-turkey, etc., for those carnivores that wish to feel like they're consuming vegetables.

Examples:

- Fake broccoli made from hamburger meat.

- Tomato juice made from beef gravy.

- Soy beans made from chunks of chicken.

Any one have names for these yummies?

Think of the BBQ potential!
-- eagle, May 11 2000

Beer Cow http://www.beercow.com/home.html
If this is the bull, I'm not certain. [reensure, May 11 2000]

Soy's Downsides http://thyroid.abou...downsides/index.htm
"Soy products increase the risk of thyroid disease. And this danger is particularly great for infants on soy formula" <From one of the articles> [StarChaser, May 11 2000, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Meat Fruit http://www.eatmedai...dieval-feast-video/
About the medieval technique of making meat look like fruit. [jutta, Aug 15 2009]

Arby’s Developed a Carrot Made Out of Meat https://www.foodand.../arbys-meat-carrots
[Voice, Feb 29 2020]

'Tastes Like Chicken!' brand vegetables. :-)
-- dontthink, May 11 2000


Fake Quorn made from Chicken
-- hippo, May 11 2000


I like that - it's kinda the reverse of the current chicken that tastes like corn.
-- eagle, May 11 2000


Sorry - explanation: "Quorn" is the product name for a soya-based goo textured to appear slightly like meat, and sold in the UK.
-- hippo, May 24 2000


My apologies -- I've never had the, um, pleasure.
-- eagle, May 24 2000


You could put handy information on the back of the package, too, such as:

The increased chance of illness caused by bacteria, esp. if the faux-veggies are undercooked.

Statistics explaining how it takes 200 times as much water and an order of magnitude more food matter to produce the same amount of nutritients in meat (or faux veggie) form instead of vegetables.

A list of antibiotics and hormones the slaughtered animals were fed, as well as a percentage estimate of the increase in antibiotic-resistant infections that has been attributed this practice.

Pictures of the slaughterhouse.

Graphs illustrating the many-times higher concentrations of pesticides in carnivores as opposed to veggies.

Might need a bigger box.
-- johan, May 25 2000


Gee, that makes me angry.
-- centauri, May 25 2000


As a form of apology to "johan" from the author of this idea, I have to say that I'm an "almost" vegetarian myself. The idea came from observing the strange-but-true industry that has grown around making fake meat products to make vegetarianism more appealing to meat eaters -- it was _not_ intended to be a "let's kill some more helpless critters" concept.

I'm reminded of a joke (Steven Wright??):

"I'm a vegetarian -- not because I love animals, but because I hate vegetables!"

Also:

"If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?"
-- eagle, May 25 2000


eagle: Sorry if my annotation seemed overly harsh. The SW joke definitely applies to me: i hated vegetables when i stopped eating meat in 1986. Fake meat is pretty damn weird (i won't even go into the taste), and my intent is not to "quash" ideas that are making fun of it. However, ethical and environmental issues like those i mentioned helped create the fake-meat market & products. But yeah, i probably do just need to chill out a bit. Most of Halfbakery's contributors don't seem particulary interested in discussing ethics.
-- johan, May 26 2000


Well, not in the context of a blatantly satirical idea, anyway. You might as well scold the "Steering Wheel Spike" idea for being unsafe.

FWIW, I've been a vegetarian for some years and find the whole idea of fake meat rather silly, but there's a restaurant near me that serves a faux duck that is to die for. It doesn't really taste much like duck (insofar as I remember what duck tastes like), but somehow they managed, while aiming for duck, to produce something much better. So as long as the tinkering involved in the search for fake meat can produce results like that, I'm all in favor of it.

By extension, I'm in favor of fake vegetables for the same reason. Imagine a process that can make beef into something like tofu but tastier. Now imagine taking that process and applying it to tofu.

One more thing: Veggie burgers, for the most part, are not fake meat. It's just that patties are a convenient shape for anything that's been ground up into a mushy paste, be it animal or vegetable.
-- baf, May 26 2000


johan: There are many discussions that bring up interesting ethical questions, and a serious annotation to a satirical idea still has value.
-- eagle, May 26 2000


There's a vegetarian chinese restaurant here in Victoria, BC called the "Lotus Pond." They not only have vegetarian egg-rolls, etc., but they've also managed to create vegetarian fried pork. It looks and tastes just like stir-fried pork. Amazing.
-- eagle, May 26 2000


I have eaten (and eat) quite a bit of "faux meat" type food, as well. Various veggie burgers, and lots of Chinese food that's designed to look and taste (and have the "mouth feel") of meat. Some does a disturbing job of mimicing meat, but i haven't eaten any meat in almost 14 years, so i'm really not a good judge. I don't really find the Steering Wheel Spike satire similar to this idea. The message of the spike seems to be "People will drive more safely if they know they could die in even a minor accident." This is very relevant satire for the U.S. which has seen a dramtic increase in heavy SUVs on the road. (Because these SUVs and their passengers typically suffer less damage than the other vehicle they hit, if the other vehicle is significantly lighter, which it often is. So, SUV drivers have less incentive to drive safely, and could use a spike.) I concede i am probably reading too much into people's comments. However, the thing that "bugged me" about this idea was apparent message of "Let's take an ethically and environmentally inferior source of nutrients and spend even more time and energy to make it look like the superior source of nutients." If it's satire, what is it satirizing? It seems more like it was just a sort of "what if" idea. And yeah, that probably means i'm still over-reacting.
-- johan, May 26 2000


why make something to look and taste like something else? what is it we are trying to hide? If I wanted broccoli, I would ask for broccoli. Sounds like one of moms tricks to get me to eat something I have tryed and don't like. So what? you like meat, but don't want to admit it to yourself?
-- scotty1969, May 29 2000


I'm not a vegitarian, or a carnivore. I am what evolution made me. An Omnivore (despite my name)
-- Haemavore, Sep 20 2000


Damn, I was hoping the idea was just a mispelling of Carny-Food, like food that people who work for Carnivals would eat. Like smoked sausage, elephant eats, cotton candy, etc. Damn, damn, damn...
-- dgeiser13, Sep 20 2000


RE: reensure May 11 ann. May 29...FYI, the corn fed to cattle and their barnyard brethren is 'feed corn'. It is relatively inexpensive in comparison to the sweet corn which we humans consume. I hopped to the link beercow. com and give it a 7.3. If someone could just modify Okra...
-- thumbwax, Sep 21 2000


Hmm, some countries only have "feed corn" and feed it to people and animals. As to one food immitating another, the food we are getting is increasingly fake anyway - hence the explosion in health problems, obesity, etc. Time to chuck out the preservatives, plastic-soy sausages, irradiated brocholli, and GM foods. Now where was that fast-food burger?....
-- jetckalz, Sep 21 2000


Wait a minute. Nobody's getting obese because of "preservatives, plastic-soy sausages, irradiated brocholli, and GM foods". People are obese because they eat high-calorie foods and don't exercise very much; it has nothing to do with "fake food".
-- egnor, Sep 22 2000


Like certain soy foods, these would probably be a little nasty. There's something very disturbing about a substance that is very very close in appearance and fairly close in taste to a familiar food without quite getting it right. Fortunately, if you go off meat then the soy versions cease to bother you much, and you find yourself (you and I are exactly alike, remember) doubting the size of the difference until you (and what were you thinking here?) feed soy back-bacon to meat-eaters and destroy much painstakingly acquired trust among friends and family.

Things like Tofu and Tempeh are much nicer, generally, than soybeans tortured into the shapes of hamburgers. However, in the matter of hot dogs, interestingly, vegetarian versions have drawn nearly level with the (allegedly) meat versions.

I will naturally continue to update this space as soy-lab scientists continue to pile breakthrough on breakthrough.
-- Monkfish, Oct 30 2000


You go ahead and chomp on soybeans...New evidence is showing that they cause problems with the thyroid. I'll stick to food, thanks...
-- StarChaser, Oct 30 2000


Ever consider writing for Saturday Night Live?
-- Sparki, Aug 10 2001


I have considered writing comedy, actually.

Thank you for boosting my ego.
-- eagle, Jan 26 2002


why don't they call vegetarians "herbivores" ? seems a waste of etymology to have to make up an entirely new word.
-- FlyingToaster, Aug 18 2009


Because on the whole we're not. We eat dairy and eggs. Those of us who only eat plants, and i used to be one, are also not herbivores because it's not our natural diet (whatever that means), which would probably be something like mainly plant products with insects, fish and small amounts of meat.
-- nineteenthly, Nov 27 2012


That bitter-sweet moment when you have a eureka idea that's already been, not only Halfbaked, but baked. Literally.

Needs a new name though. I might suggest "Beyond Vegetables".
-- doctorremulac3, Nov 24 2022



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