The only thing you really shouldn't do is mix real meat and fake meat. A natural thing to do is order two burgers, and compare them. Whatever you eat first will taste fine, whatever you eat second is extremely gross.
My comparison method so far was the Whopper.
Ever had a deep-fried cheese-stuffed portobello? Mama mia...
I've been a vegetarian for well over two decades. Growing up I was always completely grossed out by the concept of meat, so I almost never ate it before I went vegetarian, and didn't AT ALL enjoy it when I did eat it. For many years I didn't want anything "meaty." It was still obvious why people would want meat analogues, even if I wasn't one of them. I don't believe that these "I don't get it" comments are in good faith.
Around 5 years ago I started dabbling in fake meat. Turns out enough time had passed that I got over the icky-ness of a "meaty" product. Now I really enjoy a large variety of fake meats even though there's ALSO a large variety of vegetarian dishes I enjoy.
Interestingly, only people who recommended me these still ate meat, never vegetarians. The thing is that there are many alternatives (falafel, all kinds of different cheese, beans, etc) that are delicious but not trying to replicate meat taste, and they are all great. I don't get the point of eating fake meats, just eat veggies, learn to cook, and enjoy.
I'm convinced that the push for these plant-based meat products are purely economical: if you can make a good enough vegan ground beef, bacon, cheese, it will be hard to copy so you can make a ton of money with that.
Recommending people to eat beans, carrots and zucchini? That's just good old vegetables sale, so you can't hype up your VC-backed company to billion dollars of estimated value with a handful of real consumers.
Some people have a near religious connection with their burgers & nuggets. I'm not so naive as to believe this isn't in some way motivated by "winning" the fake meat market like McDonald's more or less "won" fast food, but by getting omnivores to remember that they aren't carnivores, and getting them to just cut down their meat intake a little bit will do wonders for the sustainability of our planet and help move away from factory farming animals. That's enough for me.
If this stuff acts as the gateway drug to actual carrots and zucchini? Even better...
And not a one of them is available at a common fast food joint, but I can get an Impossible Whopper anywhere there is a Burger King, which is a lot of places. This is enormously convenient for me when I have to go on a road trip.
> I don't get the point of eating fake meats, just eat veggies, learn to cook, and enjoy
Cooking is a time investment and many of these dishes are pretty heavy on the time investment.
How about this: I'll eat what I want and you eat what you want, ok?
Why not fill tofu with the same spices and deep fry that? To my palate that would be strictly better. Or alternatively like a hashbrown sandwich with indian spices in the hash brown seems like it would create the same result without leaving you with a mouthful of sand. Of course, I'm about as white man as you get so...
The issue in the West is that we have fairly limited time and experience in preparing good vegetable dishes. Most are traditionally quite bland and off putting (for me, at least). Don't get me wrong some are quite good but usually as sides and very rarely can I visit some random person or resturaunt and expect a decently prepared vegetable dish compared to a meat dish.
In contrast, when I eat at Indian resturaunts, it's not uncommon that I prefer some vegetarian dishes over ithers. I don't even feel "cheated" like I often do with poorly made vegetarian dishes because the food is usually quite satisfying and flavorful.
Seems to be the common thread that I hear when I talk to people who are vegetarian. I myself am omni but prefer the vegetable based burgers. To your point though the vegetarian 'natural' nutty flavor is for the most part a learned palette through exposure.
Most of actually vegetarian food I tried tasted fine. It did not tasted like meat, but I don't even understand why I should want it to taste like a meat. It tasted like its own thing and it was made from actual fresh vegetables plus cheese, nuts and what not. I like eating meat, when I want meat I eat that. I do not need vegetarian meat that tries to pretend to be meat.
Even sunflower oil gets a bad rap bc it's assoc w proc foods but it's fine just don't get it too hot or overconsume:
https://www.webmd.com/diet/sunflower-oil-good-for-you
Coconut oil's sat fat is highly contested and mixed. Very hard to untangle its effects but it seems to be nonlinear: A little seems okay.
Which to me is the downside of a lot of the "replacement" foods. Industrial, processed food, that is pretty far away from whole foods. I'd prefer to just eat whole foods instead, vegetarian or not.
Really not convinced at all.