Why shouldn’t it be called meat?
In other words, you’ve already lost this battle, and you’ve lost it in many languages and countries at once.
Whatever world you wish to preserve in which, for whatever reasons of comfort you insist that plant-based meat isn’t meat, no longer exists.
I have one question: why do people trying to eat only vegetables (is « vegetables » still ok?) insist so much to call that « plant-based » food « meat »?
That don’t. They just read what’s on the label and call it that. It’s preservationists who see a war here: everyone else has moved on.
If you’re into vegetables, as-in you’re against meat, you just eat vegetables and you don’t eat meat anymore. You don’t need that to be called « plant-based meat ».
Only the people who are actually so nostalgic of the good meat they had want something called « plant-based meat ».
Who are the « preservationists » there?
a: FOOD especially : solid food as distinguished from drink
b: the edible part of something as distinguished from its covering (such as a husk or shell)
Wiki: The word meat comes from the Old English word mete, which referred to food in general. The term is related to mad in Danish, mat in Swedish and Norwegian, and matur in Icelandic and Faroese, which also mean 'food'. The word mete also exists in Old Frisian (and to a lesser extent, modern West Frisian) to denote important food, differentiating it from swiets (sweets) and dierfied (animal feed).
If you want a burger, go eat a freaking slaughtered cow patty burger, don't be all fancy with that highly process crap.
I mean, we really are there?
If you make a barbecue party, do you discuss the new meaning of « meat » by the « I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about website »?
It's how the language works and I'm not sure why would anyone be against using the broader definition when it's useful.
I don't see anyone complaining about coconut milk and peanut butter.
For instance, I'm Greek and in the Greek language bread is synonymous with "food". A few expressions in Greek characteristic of this synonymity of bread with food are: "δεν έχουμε ψωμί να φάμε" - "we have no bread to eat", meaning "we shall go hungry"; "βγάζω το ψωμί μου", "deriving one's bread", meaning "making a living" (analogous to "bring the bacon home"); and of course "πάτερ ημών ο εν τοις ουρανοίς δωσ' ημίν σήμερον τον άρτον ημών τον επιούσιον", or "our father who art in heaven give us our daily bread".
This is one reason why debates like the ones in this HN thread frustrate me. Yes, some people should definitely eat less meat. Much less meat! But that's by far not everyone in the world and some people have been eating very reasonable amounts, very sustainable amounts of meat (and very sustainable kinds of meat) for many generations. Of course those are the same people whose national cuisines are already teeming with vegetarian and vegan dishes, except of course those are simply called "food" in the local languages. I find it an affront, having grown up in such a culture, to hear that I have to reduce my meat consumption even further or switch to repulsive-sounding "plant-based meat alternatives" because some people half a world over can't sit down to eat without a big fat beef stake in front of them.
Bottom line: we haven't all fucked up the planet to the same degree. We shouldn't all have to change our way of life and the way we eat to the same degree.