I mean, the United States has, to be fair, developed a food culture that emphasizes using a lot of meat, especially over the past century or so. It's not surprising that people from an area that eats so much meat, who go vegan, are going to want to look for ways to still make dishes familiar to them
Yep. It's all about helping people transition. So much of American food culture is centered around burgers, steak, BBQ, etc. It's really hard to just drop all of that on a dime, even if you want to. These products help people with that mental itch.
Not just the meat, there is cheese and milk involved in a lot of it as well.
If its any indication into other factors, every time I try to make butter chicken it ends up tasting like a British persons home made curry recipe so there's that. Jokes aside as someone who likes cooking, a lot of traditional recipes, of any culture are simply much more labor intensive than slapping a bean patty on a pan then furnishing it. I'd wager the pace of a lot of western lifestyles, the choice gets weighted quickly.
To be fair, a patty sandwich of any type (be it hamburgers, chicken sandwich, beans, or any kind of imitation meat) is going to be similarly labor intensive and time consuming if one had to make the patty and bread oneself rather than being able to just buy them. I'm sure traditional recipes for most cultures can be made similarly convenient if probably somewhat different from their original form, if demand exists for them to be premade and sold that way. There's a specialty grocery store very close to my home that specializes in Indian food, tho also has some international foods from other places too, and it's freezer section has all sorts of Indian dishes done up as tv dinners, or premade frozen samosas of various flavors one just has to fry in a pan for a few minutes, among other things.
I get that it's a meme, but what's the problem? I'm vegetarian/flirt with veganism; it's purely for moral/ethical/environmental reasons.
Indian food is delicious. An Impossible burger on a pretzel bun dripping with grilled onions, avocado, vegan aioli and mustard with a side of steak fries? That's also delicious, in my opinion.
Meat is delicious, and that's not at all incompatible with my reasoning for being vegetarian.
I'm vegetarian. Western food is so focused on meat that people often have no idea how to make a meal that doesn't contain it. My mother once asked me how to make a vegetarian version of Chicken Parmesan. So keep the tomato sauce, cheese, and spices, but swap out the chicken with pasta. Congrats you've made vegetarian Chicken Parmesan. I like to call it Spaghetti.
A lot of Indian cooking is vegetarian, not vegan. Ghee is very often used.
And paneer.
Vegans are great, especially with garlic in a nice butter sauce.
Edit: also you're literally made out of chemicals.
I love both, I'm not sure I know any real person who thinks this is a competition
Think this post confuses veganism and vegetarianism. Also it's chemicals all the way down. Those spices? Made of chemicals.
Those alternative burgers are actually pretty tasty but also very heavy because they are imitating beef. For American fare I'd generally prefer a sandwich with deli style meats made out of tofu or seitan, or a bean burger.
Most vegans in the US do not eat food that mimics meat.
Most Western butt holes cannot handle Indian food that well. The couple times I went to Indian weddings, I was clamoring for anything that would not burn my butthole. The good combined with the ridiculous amount of alcohol made the toilets cry.
Both are good but fake meat is the Pinnacle of processed foods
also people think vegan food is unhealthy but will eat carcasses raised in their own shit
My only problem with Indian food. Whenever I try a restaurants it's shit. But when my coworkers would bring in a feast on Diwali, it was my favorite time of year.
I can't find any restaurants that taste even similar to their home cooked meals.
Yeah, the same goes for Korean food. I think a lot of it has to do with the quality of produce. In the west produce is often picked before it's ripe because we have to ship it hundreds of miles. They also tend to change the spices and sweetness to accommodate western pallets.
Americans eat like shit anyway lol, they won't notice
Let's not forget the Mediterranean cuisine either. Falafel. Hummus. Baba Ganouj, Dolmas... crap I've made myself hungry now.
I'm vegan for a while now and live in Europe. In the past, vegan options were creative and often good and now it's this fake meat all over. I wish I lived closer to India then to America
You really don't want to live in a country close to India.
I was speaking metaphorically but I guess you are right when taken literally
Welcome to the culture wars. How am I supposed to demonstrate my sigmoid male prowess to fertile young females, if I'm eating a plate of seasoned vegetable mush?
Whereas if it appears to be a juicy slab of meat, I can maintain the veneer of my fragile masculinity. And who knows, maybe one of those cute progressive females will open her legs to me if I appear to care about animals.
and they're both delicious, nothing wrong here except animal exploitation
Not a vegan, but a vegetarian. This is why I love Indian food. When food is made from the beginning to not include meat products, it doesn’t feel like it’s ‘missing’ anything.
I don't eat a lot of meat, but after hearing arguments like these from vegetarians and vegans, I gave up on not eating meat.
Too expensive to eat vegan and I got really fucking tired of being called fucking stupid for buying meat free alternatives. It's not worth the effort in the end.
vegan food isn't expensive. artificial meat replacements are expensive, because you're paying someone to chemically torture plants until they vaguely remind you of animals. lentils, beans, and other awesome-tasting protein sources are dirt cheap. vegan-first dishes are great and really cheap.