It's a crazy product designed for a society with weird eating habits.
They're not trying to cook the best vegetable dishes. They're not trying to cook dishes that use less meat. They're not trying to expand your palettes and reintroducing liver, sweetbreads or other weird cuts.
All these "green" products convince you to not do the most important things: REDUCE and REUSE.
There is a place for these meat substitutes but should they be eaten all of the time; no. Education around veggies is the key for solving the meat production issues.
I call it "beyond beyond meat."
Expand your research a little bit. Fake meat has been very popular in buddhism countries for very long time, often to entice people to switching to non animal food.
https://www.foodandwine.com/cooking-techniques/plant-based-m...
To compensate for her homesickness, Ng decided to sell her own line of vegetarian imitation meats, and partnered with manufacturers in Taiwan to develop and import many of the dishes that she grew up with. In 1994, she opened up May Wah Vegetarian Market in New York City's Chinatown, and stocked it full with packets of imitation steak, spare ribs, shrimp, mutton, and grilled eel—all made some sort of combination of soy, seaweed, wheat gluten, or mushrooms.
It didn't land well. "Unfortunately it was not a good beginning for us. People were hesitant about trying these products," Lily says. "They wanted to stick to tofu and beans, and it was very hard for us to get people to try it. We ended up giving a lot of stuff away.
You can get the Chinese fake meat as snacks from your local Asian supermarket. I have Weilong brand fish tofu and barbeque gluten right now. These are meaty, but no where near as convincing as impossible meat. My fish tofu and barbeque gluten snacks have a fish cake like texture and are full of MSG. They appear to be vegan though.
We’re pointing to a culture that is used to a wide range of flavours and textures every day. They don’t needed that much convincing to try a not meat product, but it’s also easier to fake certain meat products. (Their existing fake meats are way cheaper than impossible meat though.)
But Impossible meat wasn’t designed for the Chinese. Or even Asians in general.
It's supposed to be a gateway product that will eventually entice hardcore meat eaters to first try fake meat and then maybe dare to try a non-fake meat vegan product.
The best vegan products aren't "meat thing but vegan", they're all just gateway stuff.
The best vegan food is stuff you couldn't do with meat at all. Just look at Indian or Thai/Vietnamese cuisine. The protein doesn't really matter, 99% of the taste is in the sauce.
I agree, but I don't think it's a gateway. They want to replace all those beef burgers with Impossible meat burgers. However things like Impossible meat, while very impressive, cost more than the real thing and don't taste right. It's the uncanny valley of meat.
The best vegan food is stuff you couldn't do with meat at all. Just look at Indian or Thai/Vietnamese cuisine.
That's my point. There's plenty of good meat free or meat reduced food. But we're not running campaigns to encourage less meat consumption or promoting the cuisines of other cultures. Instead they created a company to make and sell hyper realistic fake meat. If you were really concerned about your meat consumption and it's impact on the environment, you'd just eat less meat. It's 100% actionable without these companies and tastes better.
99% of the important bits of a dish don't come from making something meat-like but cooking something that isn't bland and uninteresting. And you don't need fake meat to work around that.
I like vegetables too, obviously, but sometimes I just want a burger.