Despite everything anyone says it appears that mother nature has done something right seaweed that tastes like BACON when fried. http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-find-seaweed-that-tastes-like-bacon-but-is-better-for-you-than-kale I know my past couple of posts have been about bacon but what can i say you can't go wrong with bacon. presumably Mother Nature saw the obscenity that is and decided to fight back.
The only thing that mother nature made taste like bacon was pigs. Everything else involved some sort of scientist.
I'm a bad one to defend this (vegi for over 20 years, and more than 3/4 my life) and I can tell the 2 apart from smell alone, or more precisely something associated with smell, quorn smells like bacon, however it doesn't leave me feeling like I'm going to throw up as a result (my theory is its the smell of frying cholestrol that I react to) most of the rest of family are meat eaters, and they like it, but say the texture is wrong, however use it in dishes such as minestrone, or spinach pie they cant tell the difference (little brother is also vegi for last 3 years or so)
I'll admit I tried Quorn ONCE. I bite into a piece of non meat chicken and lost a tooth never again. (okay the tooth was loose before hand but its the principle of the thing.
One thing that always bugs me about stuff like the quorn bacon and 'chicken style' gubbinz [apart from the stuff being stomach-churningly inedible...] - if you've made a concious decision not to eat meat, why would you then try and recreate the very thing you've elected not to eat?
Then surely these things would try and replicate the flavour rather than [or as well as] the shape and texture... Whilst i'm not a veggie, I've seen way too many veggie dishes ruined by someone throwing that styrofoam pretend-chicken or similar into it... I just don't get why the stuff exists...
Eating meat seems to be a key factor in our evolution. Perhaps veggies need to play a trick on the more primordial parts of their brain in order to up hold their principles. I dunno, that's just a lazy theory after some beers.
I think the point is that we evolved to be omnivores out of need for our survival. We couldn't sustain ourselves on vegetables, and our ancestors were probably not the keenest farmers. So we hunted and we didn't care about the animals because they were our prey, like the zebra is the lion's. Vegetarians can only survive now because of our easy lives, with such access to any foods we like without having to do much to earn it. I think the bottom line here is that meat is damn tasty, and vegetarians replicate the taste. I'm still unsure why they'd want it to look like meat, unless you was forced to be vegetarian for health reasons. Why couldn't they just make it look like tofu and taste like chicken/Steak/Bacon?
I'm not sure if it was out of necessity, rather that eating meat allowed us to become more successful as a species. From what I have read, eating meat allowed us to develop our current level of intelligence. It tends to be a more dense energy source which allowed our brains rather than our guts to develop. (which is funny because it seems to have gone the other way these days ) I think you are right though, relatively affluent society's allow vegans and vegetarians to make the choices that they do. How many vegetarians are there in countries where famine is a fairly likely candidate?
for me, cant say I use it to be like meat, its just an ingredient to be used. the benefit for making it like meat however is it makes it easy to substitute into recipes I'd also add, if you're not eating meat for ethical/environmental/health reasons doesn't preclude liking it. (could also add economical there given the true cost of meat being subsidised) personally I went vegetarian over 20 years ago, when the alternative was soy only, so there was an ok sausage mix and that was about it, so for me its never been about replacing meat, merely something to use to create dishes. the quorn bacon as an example is an ideal base for a number of dishes, but I dont really like it on its own, and as I've said real bacon makes me feel ill, so its not a replacement for me
i'm not sure i'd try this, but i'll manage the compromise of eating some bacon while remembering that seaweed exists. I make loads of bacon flavoured things too; it's amazing what you can fry in a pan of bacon grease.
