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Comment by markstos | Hacker News Reader

The US meat and dairy industry have asked for similar bans as well.

The problem is, consumers aren't actually confused.

Different names will used if need be and consumers will continue the trend of reducing their meat consumption for environmental, health, or ethical reasons.

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Honestly I think giving them new names would increase popularity. It lets the food stand on its own without the expectation of being an imitation.

Falafel, for example, is amazing and didn't need to be called "Chickpea Burgers" for people to like it.

The market wants both. Someone just transitioning from may be explicitly looking for a plant-based version of what they've been eating.

Someone raised vegetarian or who hasn't eaten meat in a long time may repulsed by the thought of eating meat has no interest in names that remind them of eating animals.

What sucks is I think the clones are terrible introductions to vegetarian food compared to the real deals. Screw a fake chicken nugget and ketchup, give people a falafel ball and yogurt sauce. The best vegetarian food there is makes no attempt to be fake meat, it stands on its own.

I like fake meats though, because I liked real meat when I ate it and I'm nostalgic for the experience. I like eating 'brats' with my family at cookouts because it is part of the tradition, and chick'n nuggets are significantly less trouble to prepare than chunks of firm tofu.

Don't assume everyone is a vegetarian or vegan for the same reasons.

Also falafel is awesome and I wish there were more fast-food falafel joints in the world.

I enjoy falafel, and I also enjoy Impossible sausage and grounds. The latter works nicely in spaghetti or stroganoff; the former does not. I like having a wide variety of options.

If you’re using chicken nuggets as the example you’re way off. Every vegetarian and vegan swears by Morning Star buffalo nuggets and the Gardein Ultimate Nuggets are better than chicken.

You’re right about a lot of veggie substitutes but nuggets are one of the cases where it is just as good.

Both of those are mostly wheat flour, gluten, seed oils and soy protein.. i’ll pass..

Yikes, where is that delicious chicken-beak-paste??

Come on. Nuggets are 99% the breading.

> Morning Star buffalo nuggets

Made from fresh buffalos I presume?

I mean that’s what I assumed when I first bought them. After I realized my terrible mistake I sent a strongly worded letter to the FDA demanding they be called bufallow nuggetz to alleviate any future confusion.

I mean they were right next to the mammoth bites and dodo eggs, how was I supposed to know?

Unlike the Dodo and Mammoth, Buffalo are not extinct. They are also still eaten.

Bison meat is amazing. Far superior to beef. Also all bison are free range because they are technically still wild animals.

I don't know, the latest generation of fake chicken nuggets are remarkably close to the real thing, and frankly I prefer them considering the horrible practices around industrial chicken farms.

Falafel, to me, is a very specific thing, and a chickpea burger may or may not resemble that thing.

It's nice to know what it's supposed to taste like, if it is intended to be as close as possible to an actual meat product.

> The problem is, consumers aren't actually confused.

Nonsense! I was tricked. They:

* make the products look like real sausages and cheese

* sell them in the same packages

* label them in large letters as the real thing

* write "vegan" in small letters

* put them next to the real things

It's all done to trick people.

I was going to suggest this is an over generalization but interestingly when searching for example images you seem to be right — every image I looked at had things like “vegan” or “soy” in much smaller letters than things like SAUSAGE or CREAM CHEESE.

I eat a mostly plant based diet and primarily recognize the options by brand so I never really noticed this. E.g., I know that Soy Station brand “cheese” is never real cheese despite anything else the label may say. Ditto something like Field Roast’s various “meats”.

At my local grocery store in Massachusetts, some fake meat products are now displayed in the meat section. The thing is though, they (Beyond, etc.) are sometimes more expensive than meat! In some contexts its considered the premium product, and its also there so people having a barbecue or something can provide an option for non-meat eaters. I don't believe at all that they're trying to trick anyone--its more than that. They're trying to position their products as a standard choice, not something from the "health food section."

Its so ironic because vegetarians I know gag when they walk by the meat and fish section and smell everything raw. Making them go there to get their protein seems a little cruel

Don't you have fridges with everything wrapped in plastic? I would expect the non-meat equivalents to be there alongside those that contain meat. It would be strange to have them at a butcher or a fishmonger counter, but most supermarkets have a fridge of pre-packaged processed meat products with varying quantities of meat and filler.

IIRC, Beyond Meat requires that their products be displayed in the meat case because their target customer is a meat-eater.

They don't require it, they request it. Frankly a terrible idea in my opinion because a lot of meat eaters, like GP here, have a persecution complex and this only feeds into that. My grocery store keeps it properly in the "meat substitute" section.

To be fair, Beyond Meat does have prominent "Plant Based" text on its packaging: https://brand-directions.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/New_...

> * put them next to the real things

Firstly, plant-based products are real things.

Secondly, I think a supermarket here in Denmark explained it best: They put the same type of meat-based and plant-based together because that's where customers expect them to be, it's simply easier for the products to be found.

Dumb semantic game with the world "real". When they are pretending to be non-vegan/meat based products the word "real" means the original they are copying.

>Secondly, I think a supermarket here in Denmark explained it best: They put the same type of meat-based and plant-based together because that's where customers expect them to be, it's simply easier for the products to be found.

This is well and good but I think the parent comment brings up a good point in that the distinguishing characteristic of the product is being minimized in the packaging - this is deceptive, right? You'd instead think that you'd want the distinguishing element to be boldly labeled, so minimizing it does make it seem at least like comfort with the idea of people mistakenly purchasing the product.

It depends on the brand.

For instance, as someone else noted in this thread, Impossible has clear labeling. [1]

An example of the opposite might be Just Mayo, which is not, in fact, just mayo. In 2015 the FDA sent it a warning letter [2], and it had to adjust its packaging to make it clear that it was a plant-based product, although the name remains.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31941934

[1] https://qz.com/576679/the-fda-decides-that-vegan-just-mayo-i...

Especially when you consider that the profit margins on real meat and cheese are pretty tight, while the profit margins on flavoured soy are huge.

I wonder how cheap flavored soy will be in a world where there isnt a meat industry producing cheap bonemeal and bloodmeal fertilizer

How significant is it as a source of commercial fertilizer? A rounding error, from what I can tell. An article on the situation in Germany gives it the potential to replace 5% of phosphate, if all of the bonemeal was used, and currently, barely any of it is used that way.

https://idw-online.de/de/news642547

It isn't. Not to mention that 80% of the soybeans are used to feed livestock anyway[0]. This is a bullshit argument, as most tend to be when it comes to this topic.

[0] https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/food_practice/susta...

But when we're all vegetarian, where will the bullshit come from?

What is a real sausage? >80% pork? >50% pork? <80% pork? >20 beef?

There's loads of different amounts of meat in sausages. Does it have to have a certain amopunt from an animal to be real?

You are just describing food marketing — It's all designed to entice you.

They do this with eye drops, too. If you're not careful, you'll get homeopathic eye drops which are just water. And it's hard to see tiny print when your eyes are sore and they sell them in the pharmacy, next to real medicine.

I'm still not sure what "apis" is, but I hesitate to put anything related to bees in my eyes, given that this is a common allergen and I'm allergic to enough things already. One can only hope they dilute it out properly, or it might be worse than useless.

APIs are how computers talk to each other.

Not APIs, but apis, allegedly some bee extract.

Yeah, not something I want in my eyes.

As long as they don't dilute it so much that it becomes a fatal toxic dose!

No harsh chemicals! Just purified water, borate buffer, silver sulfate, sodium nitrate... Wait, what? Are we sure this is homeopathic?

Did you take it back or did you try it?

I think vegan products deserve some kind of tobacco like warning label. Let's say 60% standardised "NOT MEAT COULD HARM YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN".

I’ve also been confused. I went to what I thought was a health food restaurant and ordered iirc a chicken sandwich. Received gardein which if you’ve had it is like a 1990s tier veggie burger aka not good. The cheese on it was also fake american cheese which itself was never cheese to begin with, but they still called it cheese despite it being nothing like cheese in taste or texture and only vaguely in color. At least let me know what I’m getting into instead of playing cute and having this game with the menu.

I've tried a lot of vegan alternative foods because I like trying new things (unfortunately for vegans, I also love meat) and I've never had a vegan cheese substitute that was worth purchasing, ever.

I've found it's taken ages for the various makers to come around to the fact that you have to compete on taste, otherwise none of this is worth buying.

There's finally a few (e.g, Violife) who have started to get close. Kite Hill's almond ricotta is probably 1:1 for me and I eat it when I find it on sale.

I think if you're after "luxury" cheese (the kind you might enjoy with a bottle of wine) it's harder, but for day to day cheese you throw on a sandwich/tacos/whatever it's passable.

(My two cents, of course - everyone tastes different, and you should eat real cheese if that's what you want)

the overwhelming majority of cheese I eat is old cheddar or mozzarella, and I haven't seen a vegan cheese does a simulation of either worth talking about. Cooking them is even worse, while cooking cheddar or mozza is great.

It's just not the same.

For a long time, all vegan cheese was bad. Some was horrible. But recently there some that made from primarily from nuts and beans that are quite good.

For a mozzarella, I recommend Miyoko's https://miyokos.com/collections/vegan-mozz

Reading "How Not to Die" gives pause on the long term health impacts of eating dairy based on evidence from nutrition studies.

Eh, Mozzarella is a tough one. I'd agree there's little options there yet, but I don't use that often enough to know if there's anything new (the wife also prefers getting a ball of fresh mozzarella sometimes, so I don't bother with alternatives there).

Cheddar though... I'd have to disagree. To each their own though!

> The cheese on it was also fake american cheese which itself was never cheese to begin with,

That’s not true. American cheese is built on cheese but adds butter and cream and sodium citrate to it as an emulsification. The product is a sort of cheese based product of varying quality of rather poor (common) to essential (any good hamburger).

So maybe it’s not cheese on it’s own, but it is a product of cheese and the core ingredients are (should be!) dairy.

Copying from an earlier comment of mine, "American cheese" or "processed cheese" is often (but not always) a blend of materials none of which begins life as cheese:

> Typical formulation for Analogue Pizza Cheese, from Fundamentals of Cheese Science:

  Ingredient               Level added (g/100g Blend)
  Casein and caseinates    23.00 
  Vegetable oil            25.00   
  startch                  2.00    
  Emulsifying salts        2.00    
  Flavour                  2.00    
  Flavour enhancer         2.00    
  Acid regulator           0.40
  Color                    0.04
  Preservative             0.10
  Water                    38.50
  Condensate^              7.00

^ Upon cooking the blend to about 85°C using direct steam injection, condensate equivalent to about 7.0 g is absorbed by the blend.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27169697

The list above is for "analogue pizza cheese" but that's just the most common use of this kind of "cheese": as pizza topping.

So, in a way, "vegan cheese" is not the worst kind of thing in the market that's labelled as "cheese" while not even close to the real thing.

Btw, many people who are not vegan or vegetarian eat this stuff and think it's cheese. I mean because it's on pizza. And it kiind of melts, right? What else do you expect to find sort of melting on top of pizza? Cheese!

So, yeah, 100%, you can totally and absolutely fool consumers by emulating the look, taste and feel of a real foodstuff. But usually that's because those consumers are so used to eating fake stuff anyway that they have forgotten what the real thing tastes like... if they ever even tasted it.

I make American cheese all the time. 90% of the ingredients are cheddar cheese. Lots of good burger joints do this too. But yes, there’s very bad versions as you’ve described.

The main idea is to take a mild cheddar and tame it further while changing its texture and to make it melt nicely. This is why any other cheese on a hamburger is inferior.

Cheddar should already melt nicely. Maybe we're talking about different cheeses called "cheddar"? I've never had American cheddar, maybe it's different than the English kind?

Here watch this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oRZsiXtvQDI

Depends what you classify as confused. I'm a consumer for both meat and plant based replacements. Sometimes it takes slightly longer to verify which one is which when they're next to each other in the shop. It's not a big issue, I don't think I'd actually ever buy the wrong one, just mildly annoying.

Although some are on the extreme side. If you put this next to actual bacon and I'm in a rush with a kid, I could imagine not noticing https://postimg.cc/BLc8qQLW

> The problem is, consumers aren't actually confused.

I don't know -- seems like a lot of people don't think of sheep when they see the word "fleece". Why should it be any different with food?

For that matter I know what chicken tastes like, but I don't get that product when I go to the grocery and get something labeled "chicken".

I have twice been tricked and bought "chikn" or similar. One time the product I bought I was incredibly disgusting, the other time it was alright and edible.

I found that when I ordered McDonaldn's chicken nuggets that there were actually 38 ingredients, 13 can be derived from corn. http://www.viewzone.com/mcnuggets.html

> Different names will used if need be and consumers will continue the trend of reducing their meat consumption for environmental, health, or ethical reasons.

Consumers are not reducing their meat consumption. Instead meat consumption is increasing:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-production-tonnes?ta...

> As a global average, per capita meat consumption has increased approximately 20 kilograms since 1961; the average person consumed around 43 kilograms of meat in 2014. This increase in per capita meat trends means total meat production has been growing at a much faster than the rate of population growth.

As is production:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-production-tonnes?ta...

Worldwide.

You are right. I was thinking of the decline in dairy consumption in the US, which has been decreasing. Per-capita cow's milk consumption has been decreasing for 70 years here:

https://ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/102447/err-300_sum...

Meat consumption in the US in fact growing at an alarming rate: https://sentientmedia.org/meat-consumption-in-the-us

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