Unfortunately they both sorely lack in protein content, so for a meal to be balanced, the protein needs to be made up through other parts of a dish. I'm slightly skeptical about how much protein the fungi in TFA produce.
I wouldn't say the texture resembles pulled pork though. Maybe visually if you squint a little.
The main challenge with unripe jackfruit is that it's difficult to cut and prepare without making a mess. There's a sort of extremely sticky glue that comes out of it. It will ruin your kitchen if you're unprepared. It's best to buy it at the market where it has been freshly cut and sliced for you.
I very much enjoyed Nasi Gudeg in Yogyakarta, Indonesia where it is also treated as a traditional ingredient rather than a meat replacement.
The food there is a very interesting mix of French, Chinese, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Indian and Malagasy cuisine. Pretty unique.
Balanced diets are important, but your digestion and satiety are almost certainly better served by varying what they're tasked with for individual meal.
It's also a good way to start of with veganism, because you don't need to instantly replace all of your old recepies.
- You like meat, but don’t want to eat it for religious reasons.
- You like meat, but don’t want to eat it for environmental/sustainability reasons (this is arguably a subset of the ‘ethical reasons’ one)
- You like meat, but it is too expensive (expect this one to get more common as water shortages and emissions reduction initiatives bite; it takes a _hell_ of a lot of water to produce a kilo of beef…)
- You like meat, but it is too high-risk (we keep having these run-ins with zoonotic diseases, you will note; what if cows are an ideal carrier for the next COVID? If we were in the habit of eating mustelids we’d probably already be having that conversation.)
I mean, there are _lots_ of potential reasons.
If I order a veg burger, and I can’t tell if it is meat or not, I might be getting meat. And tbh after decades of no meat, I’m not interested. All y’all can eat whatever you want, it’s just not for me.
Other vegetarians/vegans feel differently. It’s not always a logical thing, food is so primal that explanations only go so far.
Humans don't have that.
Forget about humans. Do you think a horse has problems maintaining muscle mass? We're opportunistic scavengers. We run on nearly anything.
As mentioned down-thread, gaining and maintaining muscle mass is not just for bodybuilders, it's incredibly important as we age to maintain quality of life. Sarcopenia as a result of disuse is one of the plagues of our modern times, and contributes to huge quality of life declines as we age.
It's ridiculously easy to get your recommended daily averages even as a vegetarian without thinking about it. Rice and beans? Complete amino acid profile. Same with bread and butter. But let's get into statistics and leave the anecdata behind us! Most Americans are consuming double their recommended protein intake, but half the fiber: https://www.deseret.com/2024/1/30/24055585/americans-eating-...
Aside from that, there is plenty of evidence that the RDA is woefully insufficient, e.g.:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9963165/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26960445/
That second article says in its summary: "Current evidence indicates intakes in the range of at least 1.2 to 1.6 g/(kg·day) of high-quality protein is a more ideal target for achieving optimal health outcomes in adults". That's slightly lower than Examine's figure of 1.2 to 1.6, but whatever. Even assuming the lower figure of 1.2, 56g would be sufficient for a 46.7kg man. I don't know many of them.
That's just after a 30 second search. I can't find the study right now, but if you lock people in a metabolic ward and only give them the RDA of protein, they lose muscle mass. It's not even sufficient for maintenance.
I'm not a bodybuilder, and I'm not "cutting", I'm just losing some weight and want to make sure that what I lose is fat, not muscle. Again, maintaining muscle is about much more than bodybuilding, maintaining basic strength is essential to living a pain- and restriction-free life. I'm more systematic than most because I know that makes it more effective, but wanting to lose weight is not a niche use case. I'm also trying to get my parents to eat more protein because they're older and there's plenty of evidence that their needs are higher, and it's very difficult for them as vegetarians (partly because they resist lifestyle change, admittedly).