Sarah
Do Vegetarians Eat Animal Crackers?
Look in the grocery store freezer section, and you’ll find any number of faux meat products: Boca burgers, fakin’ bacon, chicken’ nuggets, and more. Most are made of soy, and they are designed to have a similar texture, color, and appearance to the meat they are mimicking. These products can be easily substituted into meat-based meals and recipes. For many people unfamiliar with a vegetarian diet, these are the kinds of vegetarian foods that first come to mind. A diet of substitutions is an unobtrusive way to follow a vegetarian diet in an omnivore-based society. Countless plant-based protein sources exist. A vegetarian diet can look very different from a conventional diet, with “strange” foods like tofu and teff grains. These foods aren’t created for people trying to avoid meat. They are simply food. But as food scientists get cleverer, and vegetarianism evolves, the line blurs between what is a meat substitute, and what is a stand-alone food. Tofu has been a staple in China for over 2,000 years. It never had to be associated with an animal, until products like tofurky emerged. The humble chickpea was cultivated in the Middle East 7,500 years ago, well before anyone thought to mix it into a chick’n salad (Philologos). A diet of substitutions is ultimately an ineffective way to create change, but the difference between a “food substitute” and “real food” is blurry or non-existent.
Substitution is an oversimplified way of creating change, and it does not result in much change at all. Switching out real chicken for fake chicken does not require drastic changes to a person’s diet or lifestyle, and it doesn’t solve the broader problems of environmental sustainability or animal welfare. This is similar to the way industrial organic farms operate. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan says that industrial organic farms don’t look any different from conventional farms. As Pollan writes, “In many respects the same factory model is at work in both fields, but for every chemical input used in the farm’s conventional fields, a more benign organic input has been substituted in the organic ones” (159). The result is a large-scale farming operation dubbed “big organic.” This type of farming does not necessarily use less fossil fuel, or maintain better soil health than conventional farming methods. The food fits the current definition of “organic” because it is produced without pesticides, but it has lost the original, complex meaning of the term rooted in the 1960s, which had to do with a cooperative society and interconnectedness.
Similarly, a vegetarian diet of substitutions ends up compromising many of the ideas behind the diet. There are three main reasons people chose a vegetarian diet: for health, for the environment, and for the animals. The problem with processed meat substitutes, is that they don’t adhere to the values associated with any of these reasons. Meat substitutes are not very healthy. They are of