Impossible tastes as if you took low quality meat, pureed it, took all the fat out, made it into a patty, and then froze it. Sure, you could trick me into thinking its real meat, but not high quality meat.
And of course, this is completely different than creating a steak or something.
So here are our options:
1) Eat real meat and derive pleasure from it, but at the cost of having to make animals suffer, having to kill them and getting food that's quite energy intensive and destructive to the environment and destructive to the people having to work in that industry (factory farming)
2) Hunt and kill animals yourself or raise and kill them yourself - ensuring they (hopefully) had a good life (but still questionable from an ethics point of view whether it's right to kill an animal when you don't need to, to survive).
3) Eat fake meat that's close to the real thing, but no animals have to suffer or die. In the future it will be as good or better than the real thing [1]
4) Explore so many meat free recipes that can equally bring us pleasure and slowly change our habits and tastebuds that are better for the planet.
Option 2 is better than option 1 - but most people couldn't do it and also with option 2 we couldn't feed the world - so to me the future is based on option 3 and 4, i.e. plant based.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704
[1] When fake super meat is better than the real thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TpQl9V9yoA
Edit: typo
We aren't going to fix climate change (or any systemic problem) by tugging on the heart strings of a few people who might be influenced by an idea especially when it is at odds with one's material context.
When I say planet I meant the animals, people and our environment. The UN had a study a few years ago [0] - urging to reduce meat consumption or reduce it heavily - due to the impact on the environment.
For me personally it's more about the animals themselves. They are sentient beings and how can we justify creating hell on Earth for them and killing them just so we can derive some short lived taste pleasure in our mouth. Meat tastes great, but the cost is too high and it's irresponsible to continue feeding this pleasure (when we have so many better alternatives) after we've got all the evidence that it's destructive on so many levels.
> [...] rather than blaming producers who are actually in power
Our demand for animal flesh and animal products is causing this, so the consumer is in power. Our meat consumption is cultural, we've been growing up with it. How come for example we don't explain to our kids at a young age that the tasty bacon comes from Pepper the pig's sister and friends? How come we don't want to show them the realities of meat production... because we know it's literally a horror show.
Watch this kid realising herself what's on her plate. Don't tell me it's not heart breaking to watch this? [1] Kudos to the dad for not forcing her to continue to eat meat.
> [...] who might be influenced by an idea especially when it is at odds with one's material context.
I'm not quite following, can you clarify?
> I find the end of (4) an argument from other leftists who are vegan really really suspect.
I don't really follow this either - what is suspect and what's your definition of leftist? Here is the definition of veganism [2] - it's bascially trying to end cruelty towards other sentient beings - why would one not support this view?
[0] http://www.unep.fr/shared/publications/pdf/dtix1262xpa-prior...
[1] Irish girl doesn't want animals to be chopped up anymore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsaGeAz3TSM
[2] Definition of Veganism
Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.
edit: typos
In the end -- why not both? As an individual, over the course of your lifetime, if an American eats even 50% less meat than typical, they would produce a lot less pollution and a lot less suffering in the world. Meanwhile, they'd still be eating more meat than historically normal. Win-win-win?