Why Do Vegan Substitutes Look Like Meat?

One of the things that keep cropping up whenever vegan food crops up in social media, is why does it always resemble meat? Or “faux meat” as I call it.

It doesn’t.

As a vegetarian of over 30 years (and thus aligned with vegans; even if I’m not a “good vegan”), I very rarely eat faux meat; and when I do it’s out of curiosity. Not to see how closely they resemble meat, but to see if they were a viable choice.

V* (meaning vegetarian and vegan) food doesn’t need a meat substitute. There’s plenty of fine choices out there that don’t miss the rotting corpses a bit.

So where does this belief come from? There’s three possible reasons why faux meat choices exist :-

1. New v*s miss certain meat dishes and seek faux meat to fill the gap in their diet. Fair enough.
2. Meat eaters who for one reason or another seek to swap out meat for a meat-free alternative. Fair enough.
3. Companies who market these products as being what v*s actually want. Whether they’re right or not kind of depends on how large groups 1&2 are.