Vegan Food Shouldn't Be So Hard

[unspeakablehorror]

The only reason it's ever more difficult to eat vegan is due to the selective way that that food is stocked in grocery stores and what is presented in restaurants.

Most of it is relatively easy to veganize, certainly nothing that would be beyond the current abilities of stores and restaurants. And this would certainly not be preserving the 'just pay more for stuff with cheaper ingredients' nonsense or 'just put up with an extremely abbreviated range of choices' nonsense or the 'just remove the meat leaving a sad shell of a meal' nonsense or the 'serve something completely different and unrelated to the regular theme of the restaurant' nonsense that is so often employed for vegan food replacements.

Like the primary reason processed vegan food is often so comparatively expensive is that it doesn't have access to the economies of scale that nonvegan food does. If it did we'd be able to get huge blocks of vegan cheese for less than it costs to make dairy cheese. Likewise, there's no inherent reasons that there needs to be fewer types of vegan options available. In my vegan utopia, there will be as many options of vegan cheese as there is dairy cheese in our current meat dystopia. More options, even! Vegan green cheese with vegan green ham! Vegan bleu cheese and Star Wars style vegan blue cheese! And more!

Also, why is it so common to think that the vegan version of a dish is just the meat version with the meat removed? If I want a replacement for spaghetti and meatballs, I want a vegan substitute for the meatballs. You can't just say, "Oh, I veganized spaghetti and meatballs" and then just give me a plain spaghetti with marinara, no parmesan! Unacceptable! Vegan meatballs are cheap and no more difficult to produce than murder meatballs. Even making vegan parmesan at home is just a few ingredients, a food processor, and a few minutes of time away. Am I to believe restaurants cannot possibly handle this?

Also, if the theme of the restaurant is barbecue, why is the vegan dish a hummus platter? Am I to believe that barbecue soy curls or seitan or jackfruit or tofu are all somehow too hard for a restaurant?

Like the only reason any of this is ever comparatively harder for customers is because of an active, concerted effort by suppliers to suck up to the meat and animal products industries.

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

You might like veg_life.

>>The only reason it's ever more difficult to eat vegan is due to the selective way that that food is stocked in grocery stores and what is presented in restaurants.<<

Prevailingly true.

>>Most of it is relatively easy to veganize, certainly nothing that would be beyond the current abilities of stores and restaurants.<<

Often true. Unfortunately stores and restaurants no longer exist to meet people's needs, only to turn a profit. If they don't make as much as they want, they will close or shift their offerings, regardless of what people need. Offering vegan food cuts into the profits they could be making, except in areas with enough vegan or vegetarian customers to support that line of products. They simply don't care if people have edible-for-them-food. That's a problem.

>> 'just put up with an extremely abbreviated range of choices' <<

Think about the mainstream diet, then all the variations that have sprung up: allergy-friendly / top-8-free, halal, kosher, low-calorie, low-carb, low-fat, paleo, vegan, vegetarian, etc. That's a lot of spread. Another challenge is that some of the key vegan ingredients -- nuts, soybeans, artificial meat replacements, etc. -- are unacceptable to many people due to allergies or other aversions. Trying to come up with food that everyone can eat is surprisingly hard. Unless it's a specialty store or restaurant, those extra offerings cut into space for their main products.

On the flip side, however, offering NO alternatives means a lot of people won't go there, because someone(s) else in their group doesn't eat the standard diet. A good approach is to build up a selection of items that meet other needs, but also serve as sides or other add-ons for the main items. A restaurant can have vegan side dishes and salads that go with most food types, soup if they offer that, and ideally at least one vegan main dish. An advantage is that some of the dietary needs can be stacked, hence the HKV (halal-kosher-vegan) approach. A key point is not doing stuff that limits who can eat those items, so for instance, don't mix bacon in the stewed greens and don't automatically put meat on all the salads.

>>Likewise, there's no inherent reasons that there needs to be fewer types of vegan options available. In my vegan utopia, there will be as many options of vegan cheese as there is dairy cheese in our current meat dystopia. <<

Some things, vegan doesn't do as well; other things it does better. While it might be possible to figure out ways of making terrific versions, it often takes a long time. I'm hippiespawn. I watched it take 50 years to figure out how to make really good vegan / vegetarian eatballs, eatloaves, and shamburgers that:
* taste good
* can be cooked similarly to the original version
* and don't fall apart.
For decades, it was "pick 2." But eventually there got to be great options that spanned all three.

Maybe 50 years from now, there will be a large range of vegan cheeses. That would be cool. It's worth pursuing, but cheese is fiddly to begin with. It might or might not work. *ponder* Or it might take coaxing the cheesemaking microbes to evolve into what can make interesting new vegan cheeses.

>>Also, why is it so common to think that the vegan version of a dish is just the meat version with the meat removed?<<

Many people have never seen a vegetarian or vegan cuisine, like Indian or Japanese where so many folks have that as a religion restriction that it's just everywhere. They may not realize that the originally-vegan main dishes have plant proteins like beans and rice or the chickpeas in chana masala. I doubt there's much coverage of vegan or vegetarian cuisine in a standard culinary course, at least in America.

Another reason is that many vegan recipes are developed backwards. They start with an omnivore recipe, remove the offending ingredients, then try to patch around the gaps. This sometimes works, other times not, but you aren't going to get spectacular vegan food that way.

A better approach is to list the permissible ingredients, then develop recipes using those. Start with the premise, "We want a feast-worthy vegan roastlike dish," look at your plant ingredients, and you get ... stuffed roasted butternut squash.

>>Also, if the theme of the restaurant is barbecue, why is the vegan dish a hummus platter? Am I to believe that barbecue soy curls or seitan or jackfruit or tofu are all somehow too hard for a restaurant?<<

Because very often, it's all they can think of. Most people don't know jackfruit even exists; tofu is more widely known, but seitan not so much. Forget about sea bacon. And if you put soy on the barbecue, then nobody with a soy allergy can eat there.

What they don't stop to think about is all the produce that is commonly barbecued alongside meat: peaches, pineapple slices, squash, skewers of onions and peppers and tomatoes, etc. Many of those go great with barbecue. You have to know a little more to think of things like barbecued mushrooms or cauliflower steaks as mains. Ideally, you want things that omnivores will also eat, to avoid spoilage. The real limiting factor here is the barbecue grill itself. To avoid cross-contamination requires a separate grill that is not right next to the ones for meat. It's the same problem with halal and kosher. They may not have room for that without removing some other fixture.

>>Like the only reason any of this is ever comparatively harder for customers is because of an active, concerted effort by suppliers to suck up to the meat and animal products industries.<<

And the customers. In America and many other places, people want meat and often lots of it. There's no point putting items on a menu if not enough people buy them.

Look at an Indian restaurant and its menu. Do you see a lot of from-India Indians eating? Then there's usually a big vegetarian / vegan section, because ayurveda says to put all six rasas (flavors) on the table every meal, which tends to use a lot of plant foods. They can support that big veg section.

I know of one vegetarian restaurant that's been around for decades. It's on a college campus and has a customer base of bohemians. But most of the vegetarian restaurants from the 1960s-70s died out in the 1980s, as their customer base drifted away. I don't think I've seen an all-vegan restaurant.

The best way I've found to attract omnivores to vegan or vegetarian food is to make it fragrant and delicious. Though it's worth noting that some south Asian cuisine goes for carving fruits and vegetables into magnificient edible displays.

It would be nice to have wider options, but Diet for a Small Planet is over 50 years old now, and people just ... didn't go for it. Building up more of a support base would be challenging, but it's worth encouraging.

Re: Thoughts

[unspeakablehorror]

"Think about the mainstream diet, then all the variations that have sprung up: allergy-friendly / top-8-free, halal, kosher, low-calorie, low-carb, low-fat, paleo, vegan, vegetarian, etc."

Sprung up? This implies that things like allergies, halal, kosher, or vegetarian food didn't exist before the mainstream diet and implies a false equivalence between vegan and vegetarian diets and things like low carb or paleo, the former of which are motivated by ethical concerns about the treatment of animals and and the latter of which are motivated by a desire to lose weight and are full of psuedoscience.

Anyway, my post was only about increasing the availability of vegan food, not about somehow making every food accomodate every need or preference. The latter is not possible.

"Another challenge is that some of the key vegan ingredients -- nuts, soybeans, artificial meat replacements, etc. -- are unacceptable to many people due to allergies or other aversions."

Four of the nine most common allergens are to non-vegan foods: dairy, eggs, shellfish and fish. Dairy and eggs are in a lot of baked goods (entirely unnecessarily, as there are many, many vegan alternatives). Allergies is not what prevents people from eating vegan. As in all situations involving allergies, accomodating people with allergies with vegan food requires avoiding any of that person's specific allergens. But vegan food poses no special challenges for accomodating people with food allergies. There is no major allergen that requires people to not consume vegan food. People who are allergic to soy, for example, can consume any of the many, many other high-protein vegan foods available, such as lentils, pinto beans, rice, corn, pea protein, seitan, and much, much more.

"Some things, vegan doesn't do as well; other things it does better."

Actually, in my experience, vegan food does nearly everything well, and many things *better* than non-vegan food. I will never have to eat vegan meat with gristle in it. My vegan fish does not have a hundred tiny little bones in it. My vegan shrimp do not have an inedible shell or a poop-vein that needs to be removed before eating.

"I'm hippiespawn. I watched it take 50 years to figure out how to make really good vegan / vegetarian eatballs, eatloaves, and shamburgers"

I'm sorry to say, but hippies were not on the cutting edge of vegan food development. China and India beat them by millenia. Later you even mention Indian restaurants but still don't acknowledge this temporal disconnect.

At any rate, people producing recipes in their homes is hardly the same as grocery stores or restaurants producing them. The latter has considerably more resources! And that's what I was trying to say.

Anyway, even if the intent is to make a homemade vegan meal, there's no need to limit oneself to hippie recipes. With the advent of the internet, an enormous number of vegan recipes can be found for almost anything imaginable.

"Maybe 50 years from now, there will be a large range of vegan cheeses."

There already is. I've bought a number of different kinds, as well as made a number of delicious kinds of vegan cheese at home. Availability and knowlege is what needs to be increased, not so much existence.

" And if you put soy on the barbecue, then nobody with a soy allergy can eat there."

This assumes that restaurants in general care about allergies, when even places that are marketed as allergen friendly can be subject to deadly negligence that they will try to evade responsibility for such as in this case: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/disney-allergy-death-1.7127892

And this is an issue that should also be addressed. But again, not what this
post is about, and not a problem that is unique to or especially exacerbated by veganism specifically.

"And the customers. In America and many other places, people want meat and often lots of it. There's no point putting items on a menu if not enough people buy them."

Not really. A large percentage of customer demand exists because of ads. People want what they are advertised. People want meat and animal products because those are often what are advertised to them. I don't advocate solving that problem by merely changing those ads to vegan food, because I think the way ads are employed in our society is very dishonest, but I do think if the only change was people started seeing ads of delicious vegan food all the time they'd largely start eating that instead.

"I don't think I've seen an all-vegan restaurant."

I've been to quite a few vegan-only restaurants, including to some outside this country. I'm sorry to hear there aren't any in your area, but again, that is why I was complaining about restaurants in the first place. This is obviously not a 'this is impossible' problem, but rather a 'this is being actively obstructed' problem.


"The best way I've found to attract omnivores to vegan or vegetarian food is to make it fragrant and delicious."

Well, it's not my goal to merely attract omnivores to vegan food, it's my goal to get more people to be vegan. That includes people who may be unable to eat a strictly vegan diet, but who could certainly adopt a more compassionate outlook and behavior to the rest of the animal kingdom.

"It would be nice to have wider options, but Diet for a Small Planet is over 50 years old now, and people just ... didn't go for it."

I've never read this book in my life, and it sounds more like a book for environmentalism than a book for veganism. Adopting veganism would greatly help environmentalism, but it's not the same thing. In any event, reception to this one book does not entail anything about the adoption of veganism or even environmentalism (which it is presumably more geared towards).

"Building up more of a support base would be challenging, but it's worth encouraging."

It is challenging, but in my view it is work that must be done, and I need to do my part.