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Comment by seanwilson | Hacker News Reader

Just throwing this out there, but going plant-based doesn't mean you have to eat meat alternatives if you're against them for some reason.

Lots of stuff you eat right now is probably plant-based or easily convertible by substituting in regular vegetables e.g. curries, burritos, chilli, lasagne, pizza, sandwiches, pasta, stir fries, bean burgers, soups, stews, fries, cereals, cakes, breads etc.

Could you really not enjoy a pasta dish without meat (think tomatoes, mushrooms, olives, basil, garlic, capers)? Is it the taste of chicken you really enjoy in a chicken curry or is it more about the spices and the textures?

Ever notice you flavour almost every meat dish with lots of vegetable products and spices (e.g. people say chicken is tasteless without flavourings)? You can try the same flavourings on vegetables too without having to look for meat alternatives.

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Well put. More than enough clean protein is easily achievable by adding chickpeas, lentils, beans (there are so many beans also soy/tofu) as well as certain greens like spinach and wholegrains, too.

However these plant based alternatives are getting pretty damn good for when you want some comfort food or a classic bbq.

I recently switched to no meat lunch's. I've been using beans as a meat replacement for a lot of things. What I've found so surprising is how many variety's of beans there are. There's well over a dozen at just my local store. Before I did it I kinda assumed there was just like soy beans, black beans, maybe a few more.

This seems to be a particular issue that people have in -cough cough- some parts of the world where a meal without meat is inconceivable. This is certainly not the case in most of the world, not even most of the Western world. For example, I'm Greek and our local cuisine is about 80% plant-based, although of course supplemented with generous amounts of cheese and fish. We also don't tend to eat so much beef but prefer pork or sheep's meat instead and even our dairy products are mostly made with sheep and goat's milk.

Check out the joy a vegan finds in realising how many naturaly vegan dishes (i.e. dishes traditionally made without any animal products) can be found in Greek cuisine:

https://www.thenomadicvegan.com/the-nomadic-vegans-guide-to-...

I’ve got great news: Greece is full of delicious vegan food! You will find a huge selection of naturally vegan dishes in traditional Greek cuisine.

This can be partly attributed to the nature of Mediterranean cuisine in general, which generally emphasizes fresh fruits and vegetables and uses meat only sparingly.

In the case of Greece, though, there is an additional reason for all the veggie-friendly dishes: religion. The calendar of the Greek Orthodox Church contains more than 180 fasting days, including every Wednesday and Friday as well as longer periods lasting several weeks, like the weeks leading up to Christmas and Easter. And the diet followed on fasting days is, as it turns out, not far from a vegan diet.

So I guess it's revelatory for some people to realise that they "flavour almost every meat dish with lots of vegetable products and spices", but in much of the world that sounds like a really odd thing to say. Because, I mean, duh?

Edit: and if I sound a bit dismissive of your comment, I apologise but I'm a bit fed up with hearing how "we" should stop eating so much meat and "we" should adopt a plant-based diet, when that is exactly what I've had for all of my life, a plant-based diet. It seems to me that, as usual, some countries lead the trend for industrial farming and it's the populations of those countries that should change their ways. For myself, I'm not going to give up the meat I eat once or twice a week because some people across half a continent or half a world can't sit down to eat unless they're served a burger or a steak. You're the ones who have caused the mess we're in. You fix it. You know very well who you are.

> For myself, I'm not going to give up the meat I eat once or twice a week because some people across half a continent or half a world can't sit down to eat unless they're served a burger or a steak.

Hmm, meat consumption in Greece has went from 21kg to 72kg per person per year in the last 50 years. The USA is at 124kg, UK is 80kg, France is at 83kg and Spain is at 100kg. That's not a huge difference, and poorer countries want to catch up as they get richer:

https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production

True, meat consumption in Greece has increased in recent years (not least because of the incursion of USA-style fast food like McDonalds) however "As a global average, per capita meat consumption has increased approximately 20 kilograms since 1961" (from your link) so per capita meat consumption has increased in Greece because it has increased everywhere and Greece is still one of the least meat-consuming countries. Also, most meat production in Greece is sheep or goat and pigmeat (data from your link) and not the much more environmentally harmful beef production.

Also- Greece went from being one of the poorer European countries to being a relatively well-off country in those 50 years.

> Also- Greece went from being one of the poorer European countries to being a relatively well-off country in those 50 years.

The problem is, this is a global trend: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47057341

Who are we to tell e.g. India and China (about 3 billion people in total) to eat less meat as they grow richer?

Well, I wouldn't. But eating more meat doesn't have to mean intensive farming.

Or perhaps it's more complex than what it looks and the reason why Greeks, Indians, Chinese, etc eat more meat as they become more affluent is because their affluence attracts mass industries like industrial farming. In which case it's not a genuine consumer demand to eat more meat but just an effect of there being more of it available and at a cheap price.

Agree with almost all of this - if you buy well-grown fresh vegetables, they're delicious all by themselves if you take time to learn how to cook them - but the same is true of something like chicken. If you get chicken where the chickens are well cared-for, well-fed and not pumped full of hormones it does actually taste delicious by itself.

It reminds me of a food eureka moment a couple of decades ago when I was round for dinner with the family a friend who's a farmer. They served boiled potatoes that they'd dug up earlier that day and I suddenly remembered that potatoes could actually taste of something other than the oil / butter / salt that you cook them in or flavour them with.

Edit: I presume part of the reason for "plant-based alternatives to meat" is that it's much more difficult to commoditise simple vegetables. I can think of plenty of plant-based alternatives to meat and they're... plants. Potatoes, carrots, aubergines, courgettes, cavolo nero, broccoli...

> If you get chicken where the chickens are well cared-for, well-fed and not pumped full of hormones it does actually taste delicious by itself.

Yes, I was more thinking about when people get chicken nuggets or fast food burgers. The meat is probably only adding some texture and most of the taste is from the spices, so why does it need to have meat?

I feel people demand meat on principle instead of really thinking about why they're eating something. Most of the time they're not eating meat for health reasons either, despite the usual arguments coming up like B12 and protein that can't be backed up.

Agreed.

However, I do see a place for meat substitutes as an option for "veggie curious" consumers who want to move away from meat consumption. If you're used to grilling hamburgers with the family every Saturday afternoon, meat substitutes provide a 1-for-1 option that requires no more thought that grabbing a different package at the grocer.

The switch to actual vegetables (or even tofu) takes a bit more thought. Tofu isn't usually tasty on it's own (but is fantastic when cooked with other flavors). And for somebody reared on beef and pork, learning to cook vegetables as the main ingredient takes time and new recipes.

As a decided carnivore I definitely agree: With some dishes, the chicken/beef/pork sometimes just doesn't add that much. Not in texture and not in taste. In that case, why include it in the first place? I guess because of old habits.

I'm going to try to avoid including meat where it doesn't really add anything.

> With some dishes, the chicken/beef/pork sometimes just doesn't add that much. Not in texture and not in taste.

If you experiment, you might find you actually miss the texture if you swap it with a different texture (like a burger with a bread-like texture probably isn't going to be great even if it had the same taste). So sometimes the plant-based alternative is really trying to replicate a texture that's pleasing for that dish (like something that tears, or is gooey, or spongey), or maybe something that absorbs the sauce a certain way etc.

It's common to hear people say "why do vegans give up meat but want to eat meat?" - sometimes it's just about finding a replacement that has some properties that are similar, like the texture.

I'm skeptical of plant-based burger alternatives. I'll wait until there's synth beef.

I was thinking about stuff like curries, pasta sauces, etc. I routinely use lots of chicken and beef for stuff like that, but I think it's mostly out of habit.

It's so hard to make make sauces with e.g. chicken or beef strips cooked just right so that they're juicy/delicious/salted just right - I still fail most of the time after doing it like 100+ times.

Using fattier cuts is easy, but I wanted to master making a juicy/properly-seasoned dish from lean proteine. I don't think I can, as a hobby cook.

> I'm skeptical of plant-based burger alternatives. I'll wait until there's synth beef.

> I was thinking about stuff like curries, pasta sauces, etc. I routinely use lots of chicken and beef for stuff like that, but I think it's mostly out of habit.

If you mean you'd prefer something where you know what all the ingredients are, try soy mince (it's just shredded soy, which has a texture like ground beef that absorbs flavours) and wheat-gluten/seitan (it's just regular flour with everything washed away but the gluten - has a chicken like texture with more protein than steak).

> It's so hard to make make sauces with e.g. chicken or beef strips cooked just right so that they're juicy/delicious/salted just right - I still fail most of the time after doing it like 100+ times.

Seitan is challenging like that but it's fun trying.

Chicken is only flavourless if it is cooked to death. I seared two chicken breast in the tiniest amount of butter, then turned down the heat and ended up with some very nice chicken breasts.

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