It’s Not All About You, Omnivores!

April 22, 2008


Photo by pshutterbug

Is veganizing meat recipes really the best way to honor the plethora of meat-free choices available to us?
or
Why would you want to vegetarianize a recipe that was meant to have meat in it? What’s the point of that? Wouldn’t it be much more effective to emphasize delicious vegan recipes?

This is asked regularly in the comments of food blogs that discuss mock meats, seitan/ gluten, or tofu. It really offends me and here’s why:

As someone who has been almost a life-long vegetarian, I welcome new and interesting vegan foods of any sort. I don’t consider veganizing recipes to be anything other than providing me with more food choices.

I’ve never had veal so when I eat something prepared to taste like veal, it’s a real treat, a new experience for me. I’ve never had beef jerky, so when I finally tried some vegan jerky last year, even though I didn’t really like it, I was very excited to get to try something new. When I see fake meats and cheeses it’s like finding a new fruit or vegetable. It’s an adventure for me.

More to the point: It’s not all about you, omnivores! The only way anyone could ask the above, quoted question seriously is if they take meat as the default and they marginalize veg*n foods. To a vegan, the above is not a valid question.

For someone like me, veganizing a recipe isn’t about trying to make something taste like meat; it’s about trying to make something new.

—
This post was inspired by the comments here about Hezbollah Tofu and the blog post here that I found via VOC.

Side note: I was looking for an image for this post and I Google image searched the word “othered” to get inspired. On page ten of the search results was a Hezbolla flag.

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Food, veganism 

« Anti-Racist Vegan Activism Part 3
Deconstructing Meat Propaganda »

Comments

1 Responses to “It’s Not All About You, Omnivores!”

  1. glt on April 23rd, 2008 3:44 am

    I think a lot of veganized foods suffer from being super-low-calorie or low-fat. If manufacturers weren’t so preoccupied with the dieters’ market, maybe it wouldn’t occur to people to disparage faux animal foods. If I’m in the US, I buy soy ice cream from the store, and it is okay; I prefer the fruit flavors because they’re like sherbet. I could probably get better in the US if I went traveling and tried lots of different vegan restaurants. But in Japan, when I manage to get soy ice cream it is much richer and more delicious and probably a lot higher in fat and calories. The exact same goes for fake hamburgers. As a vegan living in Japan, I really, really miss Earth Balance Spread, and it would be nice to have some soy cheese now and then, but some of the faux-meat-and-dairy vegan convenience food I can get here is way richer and better than similar things I’ve had in the US.

    I actually hardly ever ate fake meat when I was young. My mother cooked, and except for the basically hamburger-like format of the (totally awesome) lentil-and-veggie burgers she made, there wasn’t much attempt to replicate meat foods. Then I went to college and discovered tofu (and finally gave up dairy), and now I eat a lot of tofu and gluten-meat, which is convenient and delicious. But I can still relate to people who say the meat-like appearance grosses them out (some of them can be disturbingly realistic to my mind, but then again, grossing yourself out can be fun and vegan food is rarely gross otherwise) and that it’s a bad thing to condition yourself to like foods that look identical to meat foods (seeing actual meat dishes sometimes makes me hungry for the vegan equivalent now and this can be frustrating if it’s not easily attainable).

2 Trackbacks to “It’s Not All About You, Omnivores!”

  1. Deconstructing Meat Propaganda : Elaine Vigneault on April 23rd, 2008 6:08 pm

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  2. Weekly Digest: April 25, 2008 : Elaine Vigneault on April 25th, 2008 4:32 pm

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