Vegan faux fish burger (Non-vegan viewpoint)

[Mr Gus]

What bugs me is that there is so much fantastic vegetarian food around, especially that from some Asian countries where a vegetarian diet is more common than here, perhaps. I don't much like meat or fish, we rarely eat either, but that's almost wholly down to preferring the taste of a lot of the vegetarian foods that my MiL has prepared. It seems to me that, rather than produce poor imitations of meat or fish, the food companies could do worse than just look at the wonderful range of vegetarian foods from other parts of the world. Perhaps the greatest challenge is doing as my MiL has done, and produce a repertoire of only very mildly spiced vegetarian food. I'm not a fan of hot and spicy food at all, and it does seem that there is lot of spices used in a fair bit of vegetarian cooking from Asia.

But that doesn't break the Burger buyers convenience & familial, thougtless & frequent mouth stuffing habits you have to get them past though.. ((as repeatedly stated))

[Oldgreybeard]

But that doesn't break the Burger buyers convenience & familial, thougtless & frequent mouth stuffing habits you have to get them past though.. ((as repeatedly stated))

The counter to that is that we've previously completely changed the shape of "fast food", just by adopting new and novel (at the time) foods from other countries. For example, foods like donor kebab were unknown when I was growing up, burgers were only just starting to become available at US influenced outlets like Wimpy, and yet both those fast foods took off big time. To a lesser extent the same has happened with other fast foods. The days of the only takeaway foods being fish and chips, or a lunchtime cheese sandwich, are long since gone.

All it takes is for something new to come along and take over. Not hard to see something like traditional Thai street food becoming a hit, and a lot of it is veggie. Much the same for fast foods from other places, like China, Korea, Vietnam or India.

[Mr Gus]

Nope, whilst you have folk looking at size of the meat as the main, not the complementing addition to the main (eg a slice of meat with ramen noodles & 500ml of soup& veg you dont see it.

"biggest burger wins" grab scoff & go (oft without tasting much) of a mainstream burger is where it needs to hit, because thats where millions of consumers are walking off many burger places in many towns & petrol stations where mc d's proliferate, & "heavy user" idiots are buying 3+ times per week, connected tempted & bombarded by the 1000's of outlets, the inevitable "app" connectivity daily deals, weekly deals, cheap food fr feedback dupes, & more ..& thats just from 1 chain.

So yeah, logic says this market & its easy to produce in a mould disc of "food" is a viable market to go for as it can be slapped easily within a cheap roll of pseudo bread / chorley wood processed / other ..to gain a foothold in something that sells millions every day & is "the norm"

In america you likely see someone buy a burger meal every working day.
in Canada it s more likely to be a coffee at a drive thru (timmy's)

You are aware of McDonald's "every 4 miles" type statement of intent? (pretty much done a decade back in the uk since 1990's motorways expansion plans now exploited by all & sundry)

[Oldgreybeard]

In america you likely see someone buy a burger meal every working day.
in Canada it s more likely to be a coffee at a drive thru (timmy's)

What I remember from my time working in Canada was that it was doughnuts that were the main junk food. Every single day at work boxes of doughnuts from Tim Hortons would be stacked up by the coffee machine.

[Mr Gus]

Yup, & now thats happening here, another fast food "option" being tapped by pepsi (sub brand of a big investment group)

I preferred a clam chowder & a multi grain toasted bagel myself, they dont do that over here at timmy's.

Double Double, eh?

[AE-NMidlands]

seeing as this is our most recent food thread I thought I'd post here...

I noted Farmer Harry (v good video, by the way) commented on the ludicrous claim that beef or mutton has an inherently bad carbon footprint. The way he explains it is that even if ruminants do generate methane, it has only come from the plants they have just eaten... which only got their carbon out of the atmosphere while they were growing up to the point that they were eaten!

The problem is that obviously there are lots of farming systems which undermine that, such as feedlot farming (or "barley beef") which rely on big tractors, fields of maize and other grains and loads of fossil fuels and energy-rich fertilisers to feed animals kept in sheds.

I suppose the secret is to eat little and well, but the average UK supermarket consumer will never be able to find out which system a piece of meat comes from.

There is definitely a trend whereby vociferous interest groups are so sure of their position that they want to force it on everyone else by any means possible, as Malcolm Kendrick (https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2018/12/1 ... our-times/) found out:

I wrote the book “Doctoring Data” to try and shine some light on the methods used to distort and manipulate data. I try, as best as I can, to follow the scientific method. That includes discussion and debate, to test ones ideas in the furnace of sustained attacks.

However, if you try to do this, the forces of darkness come after you, and they come hard. Especially if ever dare to suggest that animal fats, saturated fats, are not in the least harmful. At which point you waken the vegan beast, and this beast is not the least interested in science, or the scientific method, or discussion or debate.

It has one aim, and that is to silence anyone, anywhere, who dares to question the vegan philosophy. Aided and abetted by the Seventh Day Adventist church. Below is a short list, non-exhaustive list, of those who have suffered their wrath:

Prof Tim Noakes – South Africa
Dr Maryanne Demasi – Australia
Dr Gary Fettke – Australia
Professor John Yudkin – UK
Dr Aseem Malhotra – UK
Dr Uffe Ravnskov – Sweden
Dr Andreas Eenfeldt – Sweden
Dr Zoe Harcombe – UK
Dr Robert Atkins – US
Nina Teicholz – US
Gary Taubes – US
Dr. Anna Dahlqvist – Sweden

Several of these doctors have been dragged in front of the medical authorities, usually by dieticians, who claim that patients are being damaged. So far, they have all won their cases – often after prolonged and expensive legal hearings. Luckily, the courts recognise logic when they see it.

Uffe Ravnskov has his book, the Cholesterol Myths, questioning the cholesterol hypothesis burned, live on air. All of the brave souls on this list have been accused of ‘killing thousands’ at one time or another. Maryanne Demasi lost her job with the Australian Broadcasting Company.

Now, it seems, the attacks have moved into a different area, such as a determined effort to remove everyone from Wikipedia. When the vegans find someone they don’t like, they work tirelessly to extinguish them from the record. They call them kooks and quacks – but they never ever reveal who they [themselves?] truly are. They exist in the shadows.

[Oldgreybeard]

I suppose the secret is to eat little and well, but the average UK supermarket consumer will never be able to find out which system a piece of meat comes from.

Interestingly, I bought some meat the other day and the label states:

M&S is the only retailer who can trace all our beef back to every farm and animal. Always British.

Quite impressed, as we don't often buy supermarket food, we mostly use the local farm shop (where traceability is obvious). Does make the point that traceability is far from being widespread, as you say.

On the topic of what I would call "vegan terrorism", I've suffered at the hands of these vegan bastards very personally, had our old house targeted, more than once, and had to put up with the police standing there doing nothing whilst they indulged their right to protest, by blocking us in and throwing red paint over my drive and gate.

Not just a one-off mistake on their part, either, the vegan nutters did this repeatedly, for no good reason that I ever understood. No point trying to argue that they were targeting the wrong person, they don't listen and never accept when they've got something wrong and the police only stepped in to stop me trying to explain that they were targeting the wrong people, claiming that I was inciting them by trying to talk with them

I came close to being arrested for trying to get them off my drive on one occasion, the police only intervened when I started my car and made it clear that I intended to drive through the vegan nutters if they didn't get out of the way. Ended up with the police confiscating my car keys, whilst the vegan nutters were allowed to continue their terrorism unimpeded for a few more hours. Needless to say I don't have any time for them at all now.

[AE-NMidlands]

I suppose the secret is to eat little and well, but the average UK supermarket consumer will never be able to find out which system a piece of meat comes from.

Interestingly, I bought some meat the other day and the label states:

M&S is the only retailer who can trace all our beef back to every farm and animal. Always British.

Quite impressed, as we don't often buy supermarket food, we mostly use the local farm shop (where traceability is obvious). Does make the point that traceability is far from being widespread, as you say.

What they claim will certainly be true, but the trouble is that you still don't know what the production system is. (Actually I didn't mention traceability, but I think it is universal in the UK now, since BSE.) I bet M&S meat is barley beef, if it was exclusively grass-fed they would be trumpeting that fact. (It would also probably cost twice as much!)

We occasionally go to a farm shop (butchery only) who only sell their own meat, it is the best we have ever tasted and not even expensive, but it is quite a long drive by our standards so we don't get there very often. We haven't seen the farm so I don't know their system either, but I shall have to look on an aerial view now...
A

[Oldgreybeard]

We're lucky, there's a brilliant farm shop a few miles away (just across the border in Wiltshire: https://www.anstypyo.co.uk/farm-shop/) that not only sells their own produce, but also that from a few other local farms and producers. No more expensive overall than the supermarket, plus the quality is just massively better.

[AE-NMidlands]

I noted Farmer Harry (v good video, by the way) commented on the ludicrous claim that beef or mutton has an inherently bad carbon footprint. The way he explains it is that even if ruminants do generate methane, it has only come from the plants they have just eaten... which only got their carbon out of the atmosphere while they were growing up to the point that they were eaten!

Correction...
A friend points out that although the carbon just goes round, in fact the ruminants are turning CO₂ into methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas, factor 28 times CO₂! (Although I found "estimated atmospheric half-life is about 9 years, compared with CO2's 100 years")
A