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Comment by Normal_gaussian | Hacker News Reader

I've been a vegetarian for about six years now. I'm not a great cook; I'm not into experimenting very often.

When I experiment in the kitchen the "veggie X" groups really mess with me. I end up googling for ages to determine which ingredients are and aren't suitable substitutes. Naming a "veggie" product something it is not is a problem for me.

Outside ingredients, I avoid "veggie" ready meals. A rule of thumb for vegetarian food - if they make a big deal about it being the vegetarian version of X, then its terrible.

Do not mistake me, there is plenty of delicious vegetarian food. They just aren't variants of meat-dishes, they are meals of their own.

Apart from vegetable lasagna; thats almost always a winner.

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While I too prefer dishes that are not "meat substitutes", I don't think the veggie X are always bad. Sometimes I just want a burger and then one of the newer vegan options is often good enough.

A rule of thumb I've stumbled across is to avoid anything that contains egg or egg white - it's a cheap filler some companies put to call things "veggie" while making no real change in the underlying suffering they create. But for this conversation more significant: these taste always really foul to me.

I am not a vegetarian but I grew up with two sisters who were, meaning i was served fake meat a lot.

I agree it can be quite good! Spicy fake Italian sausages were a favorite I remember. That being said, to the earlier point they're best when they're not trying to exactly replicate meat flavor but just taste good. Spicy italian sausage was good because it didn't try to taste too much like sausage and was just spicy and italian haha.

Hmm? Vegetarian has nothing to do with suffering. Vegan does.

I do have to admit though that some of the vegetarian "cold cuts" (I hope google translate hasn't failed me here), are really, really good!

It's terribly processed stuff, but as far as I remember the taste of meat, it comes quite close.

Not all of them are created equal though, and I can only see myself eating a specific brand, but they are very enjoyable.

Animal meat cold cuts are "terribly processed" too. It's the nature of the product. (Whatever that means. "Terribly processed" is a slur for "cooked". Any recipe you follow is "processing".)

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