Also there are many meals in which we enjoy the form as much as the material (i.e. they're fun to eat or nice to look at) -- burgers, hotdogs, meatballs, and the choice is to either give it up completely or ... eat the floppy disk.
We've spent several thousand years optimizing our cultural history to tell ourselves that well-prepared and cooked meat dishes are the peak of cuisine. To just throw that away and start over would require ignoring practically everything we believe about food. It could be done, but it would be difficult.
It's very likely that there's even a genetic component - we've evolved to enjoy eating cooked meat. I wouldn't be at all surprised that we really do, at a provable scientific genetic level, prefer it to vegetables.
People just like meat. If we can enjoy the experience without the moral and environmental side effects that's not a bad thing.
And then progress happened and even people of modest means could afford that.
And then the wealthy differentiated themselves by not eating meat.
And pretty soon the unwashed masses are going to be able to do that too.
So the techies and the doctors and the lawyers are going to have to find a different way to differentiate themselves.
Given the amazing variety, quality, and price of foods available in the developed, globalized world, I cannot fathom why anyone would want to eat grass anymore.
Maybe gut bacteria are mind controlling people to eat it, to their benefit at our expense. I've certainly noticed the craving effect, almost universally regardless of food, for the things I eat. Going from meat to vegan was challenging, but I'm better for it.
If you want to be a champion of the environment and ignore culture, there is likely food that exist where you live that people don't want to eat. Invasive and overpopulated species. In order for something to be invasive or overpopulated it is likely not something that people eat in your culture.
Where I live, cyprinidae fish exist in massive overpopulation to varying degree in most fresh water lakes. They grow large in numbers from as a result from farms creating water pollution, and since our culture do not have cyprinidae fish as part of any diet, the economical incentives to fish them is only from bio gas and animal feed. That is simply not enough, and so the problem has only continue to worsen. My culture loves fish and have fish as a central figure at many occasions, but not cyprinidae so we hunt other species to extinction.
An other culture crash is seaweed, an excellent protein that doesn't use land or create pollution. Just like with plant meat there are plant fish alternatives that is constructed using seaweed. They are sadly not very popular. We could also just be eating the seaweed as it is, but people don't know how to cook it or how it fit in their recopies and lives.
Being innovative with food culture is not so much about production as it is about changing people minds. Artificial meat tries to solve this by keeping the culture as is.
But overall the "slighly chewy umami-flavored protein-rich chunks" however you call them are very useful in cooking, as they increase variety of flavors and textures in dishes.