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[side_show]

I just bought some MoMo's vegetarian drumettes - their shaped exactly  like chicken wing drums, but they - of course - have no bone.  A rubbery boneless drum.  It bounced when I threw it on a plate.  

Why is it that tofu makers focus so much on making their products look just like meat?  It's just creepy!

[AlohaDawg]

You have hit the NAIL on the head! What drives me CRAZY and, coincidentally also keeps me from ever eating things like tempeh, seitan and even Tofu is this insistence on the marketers that they are "meat substitutes". Nothing feels or tastes like MEAT except meat - these are "meat alternatives" and would probably get a TON more sales in the meat-eating sector (which would be good for them and force more product development, which would be good for everyone) if they could figure out how to market those substances to those of us who do eat meat but know, deep in our congested hearts, that we should eat less of it.

[CortJstr]

My fiancee is a pescoterian and is always complaining about this stuff. She'll eat Morning Star burgers because they don't try to taste like hamburgers, they're just in convenient patty form. The lunch meat really creeps me out. Especially when I go to the trendier markets (Whole Foods, etc) and they have whole cases in the freezer section of "meat"

I don't mind tofu if my soup and stuff just don't try to pretend it used to have a central nervous system.

[side_show]

Exactly - if you want to eat healthy natural things - which I think is mostly the point - nothing seems more unnatural  and unhealthy than a soy product colored and shaped to look like something else.  While the veggie drumettes turned out to be tasty I chopped them up into bits so I didn't have to look at their weird fakeness while I ate

[CortJstr]

As if the chicken nuggets shaped into drumettes are any less creepy.

Plus we chicken people also have our creepy "meat" in the form of lightening bolts, starts, and occasionally cartoon characters thanks to the good people at Tyson and Weaver.

[V-Adore]

I will confess to liking Boca Burgers, which are perhaps the most transparently trying-to-be-meat soyburger thing on the market, but still, I see the point. I think there's a world of difference between making your soy thing patty-shaped (which, after all, is an extremely convenient general shape for food -- good for sandwiches and such) and making it into fake ribs, fake chicken drummies, fake sides of beef, etc. Patty and nugget form is reasonable, but making it directly fake a meat shape is really sort of silly and distracting.

In summary, if they can't make it taste like meat (which they generally can't and generally shouldn't), it shouldn't be made to look like meat.

[doomglobe]

No one forces you to buy tofurkey and soy cheese. I dont know of any store where these products have replaced actual tofu in its unadulterated form.

I agree with you guys that tofu should not be trying to be meat, but I have encountered two forms of success in this department. Tofu hot dogs taste good, if not exactly like regular hotdogs, close, and I had this tofu giraffe with seaweed skin from an asian food store that was friggin awesome and tasted just like some kind of lake giraffe

Seriously, though, tofu has so much potential in its pure form. A block of tofu can give way to hundreds of different meals, all inevitably healthy, and a few that are unhealthy.

[Carlos del Vaca]

Vegetarian Canadain bacon.  Worst thing ever.

[CortJstr]

No one forces you to buy tofurkey and soy cheese. I dont know of any store where these products have replaced actual tofu in its unadulterated form.

But their existence fools normal people. Like my parents/grandma who had never encountered a vegetarian before my fiancee. So they thought the whole point was that she wanted to be fooled and eat stuff that tasted like meat but wasn't. Kind of like non-alcoholic beer.

Vegetarian Canadain bacon.  Worst thing ever.

Just reading that left an aftertaste in my mouth that I can only assume is not unlike licking a monkey's ass

[side_show]

I agree with you guys that tofu should not be trying to be meat, but I have encountered two forms of success in this department. Tofu hot dogs taste good, if not exactly like regular hotdogs, close, and I had this tofu giraffe with seaweed skin from an asian food store that was friggin awesome and tasted just like some kind of lake giraffe

Actually I find a lot of the fake-meat from China town is very delicious - there's a type of "salted-vege-chicken" that is very very tasty that I often buy.  The first time I ate it I spit it out and had to re-read the packaging to be certain it wasn't chicken.  I've seen the fake giraffe there too and considered trying it.  

Still seems so weird when I eat that stuff - it kind of becomes even more strange when the product is so much like meat that I have to re-read the package just to be sure it's actually vegetarian.  I think I have a dangerous desire to feel satisfied in my self-denial of meaty goodness, and when I eat the fake stuff I tend to feel like I'm cheating in some way.  But my main issue it that there is something sort of creepy about the fact that thru processing soy can be made took look and taste like anything.

[jough]

I was dating a vegetarian girl a few years back (never ever ever again - I need a girl who's a meat eater - a girl who just likes nothing better than to have a nice big piece of meat in her mouth) and we went to a chinese restaurant and in being the open minded guy that I sometimes pretend to be I ate vegetarian with her and tried the "Vegetarian Sweet and Sour Pork."

Vegetarian pork.  Yuuuum!

Anyway, I figured the sauce would help me to forget that the "meat" was an unholy alliance between wheat gluten (most fake meat in chinese food isn't tofu, which is soy protein, but wheat gluten - which is pretty much just 100% starch, and not so great for you) and artificial flavours.  With the chemicals they add, it's probably healthier to eat meat.

So, I tried it.  And it wasn't bad.  But it was comical how you could see market research at work, trying to find something that had as close of a texture to meat as they could find.

As for flavour, puh-lease.  Not even close.

[slink]

Every time I visit my mate and his family (who are all vegetarians) I desperately try to avoid the fake meat. As an avid meat eater, and someone who refuses even fake real meat, fake meat is just nasty.
The texture is always truly scary and the flavour, well, what flavour? It's utterly bizarre.
Fortunately I've never dated a vegetarian. I like to cook too much and I wouldn't know what to once I'd done the few things I ever eat without meat in.

[side_show]

Don't worry boys if you date a vegetarian you can always bond over a fresh bowl of dildos.

[jay-ell]

Fortunately I've never dated a vegetarian. I like to cook too much...

Actually, I've started cooking vegetarian once a week just to stretch my cooking skills.  I avoid all forms of fake meat (including regular, unadulterated tofu) because I think it defeats the purpose of vegetarian cooking.  I mean, you're supposed to be eating vegetables, not fooling yourself into thinking you're eating something meatlike.  It's hard to find something hearty enough to satisfy meat lovers, though -- though I've found that juicy mushrooms often do the trick.  

It's the same with so-called "egg substitutes."  If I can't eat eggs, I'll learn to cook without eggs.  If I get a lactose-intolerant pet otter, I will learn to cook without dairy.  Sure, it's a little harder and takes a little more thought, but that's part of the challenge of cooking.  

Then again, I'm practicing for the next big Food Network show, which I expect will be some combination of Iron Chef and Door Knock Dinners, so I might be a little off my rocker here.

[wombat]

Tofu's not fake meat!  Tofu is a wonderful thing all its own and there are many rich culinary traditions that use it in delicious ways.  Please reconsider!