Hopefully one day we'll get to actually replicating the taste properly. Or growing meat synthetically. I'm happy to move to either.
Hopefully one day we'll get to actually replicating the taste properly. Or growing meat synthetically. I'm happy to move to either.
It doesn't always even come down to technology either, you just have to know some of the methods. Prepare a jackfruit the right way and it becomes delicious seasoned shredded chicken. Textured vegetable protein can become seasoned ground beef just as easily. Yeah, the flavoring plays a big role in those cases (which it often does for meat-replacements, to be fair), but it does in many situations with meat preparation too e.g. adding cumin to make taco meat, marinading your meats, slathering them in BBQ sauce, etc.
Telling people to change won't work. But at the same time, people in my position(available to influence flavours of a region), should do our part in not restricting ourselves to animal products.
This I have seen happen over the past 10 years, the amount of reduced meat or no meat items on my menus has increased, as well as doing more to use sustainable products.
On a side note about these types of foods: don't look at the bottom of the restaurant chains to see the future trends. They will only cater to the safe bets(huge cheap steaks and battery style farming practices), due to their low margins.
It took me a long time to get to a position where - as the head chef - I could experiment with a large portion of my menu being more land friendly(which for me is reduced meat based portions, higher quality locally sourced ingredients and more renewable products).