The wife made me watch a show last night where they made "hamburgers" out of beets and some other things, and it actually looked like a raw burger, and fried close to what a real burger would look like. After this I turned and looked at my wife and said "Why do vegans/vegetarians make things that look like meat and eat them, why not just eat meat. I don't take my steak and make it look like a piece of corn on the cobb." She did not look amused, and had no answer, so I ask here, we must have a few among us who surely know why?
It probably has to do with the hysterical environmentalists. Remember back in the 60's or 70's where the world was going to run out of food? Well, If you eat meat there is about a 10 to 1 ratio of what the cow eats in food energy to what you would get out of the meat in food energy. So if we went one step down on the food chart to eat grains and things like that we would have 10 times the food energy available for people to eat. But, the reports of the world going hungry were not true back then and they are not true today. Modern technology has provided us with the ability to produce more food without using more land, and so we don't have to worry about the world starving, in fact, we have more to worry about with overeating than with starvation.
Today the times where people are starving, it is usually from government intervention and mostly intentional.
I think it's odd how vegetarians think eating meat is bad, but then they try to replicate it. IMO, that's like saying sex is evil when you have a blow-up doll in the closet.
I fell for it, I am a butcher, and obviously eat meat. The girlfriend was a vegetarian for 25 years (and 6 months into our relationship- we are at nearly 2 years now and she eats meat again ((no, I didn't coerce her!))).
My favorite local burger joint (Burgatory) decided to offer what is called the "impossible burger" at the onset of our relationship. A veggie burger that is pink on the inside and it "bleeds" like meat. But has none. I was intrigued. And we both tried it. It was surprisingly good! I had succumbed to her diet from the getgo to accommodate our dinners together, and often ate vegetarian meals as I could prepare my favorites with alternatives (I love Shepard's pie, so I made it for her with portobello mushrooms in place of meat, for example.)
As a meat lover, I can knock most, but not all of it. I hate tofu and hate beans. I would die without meat. But vegetarians have come a long way with their creativity. Don't be afraid to try something new!
