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A rise in vegetarian options leads customers to embrace meat-free meals

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Re: A rise in vegetarian options leads customers to embrace meat-free meals

#241

Post by tom_mellior »

mamon wrote: post #234
tom_mellior wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be neat to look at credit card data and infer how much of the customer base is new The study did track people over time: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/09/24/1907207116 "Linking sales data to participants’ previous meal purchases revealed that the largest effects were found in the quartile of diners with the lowest prior levels of vegetarian meal selection." So the heaviest meat eaters as a group…

Probably it is just laziness: if the next closest place to go for lunch is few miles away and your office cafeteria goes vegetarian then you simply find few least bad vege options and stick with them.

Before the intervention there were three meat options. The intervention reduced this to two meat options. How in the world is this "going vegetarian", forcing you to eat the least bad non-meat options?

Re: A rise in vegetarian options leads customers to embrace meat-free meals

#242

Post by phonypc »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #28

I'm kind of a food snob. I don't eat burgers. They're horrible. I don't eat hotdogs. They're horrible. Reading this article tempts me to want to say "Newsflash: Tasty food sells!" but I'm sure that would be flagged to death as low content snark. Also, it's possibly stupid saying anything at all because people who eat stuff like burgers and hot dogs will get all mad when you give your honest opinion that it isn't exac…

Reading your comment tempts me to want to say "You're not wrong calling yourself a snob!" but I'm sure that would be flagged to death as low content snark. Also, it's possibly stupid saying anything at all because people who don't eat stuff like burgers and hot dogs will get all mad when you give your honest opinion that it isn't literal garbage.

haha whoops I hit the reply button anyway despite acknowledging that my post was low content and stupid ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: A rise in vegetarian options leads customers to embrace meat-free meals

#243

Post by distant_hat »

nefitty wrote: post #232
justsubmit wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What blocks you from even considering the option? Human biology, perhaps? After all, haven't we evolved over thousands of years to be omnivores? > It's a little strange to see a comment so boastful of a lack of intellectual curiosity on HN. In other words, according to you, people who aren't interested in being vegetarian lack intellectual curiosity. It's a little strange to see a comment so boastful of intellectua…

It's not necessarily the lack of interest, but instead the absolute choice to not consider it at all. In terms of biology plenty of humans thrive on vegan and vegetarian diets.

I know plenty of vegetarians and a few vegans. While vegetarians do relative okay especially if they eat eggs, the vegans are forever talking about supplements and are fatigued and look like 60 by the time they are in their 40s.

Re: A rise in vegetarian options leads customers to embrace meat-free meals

#244

Post by mark_l_watson »

I think it is more difficult to prepare good tasting vegetarian food, based on my experience also cooking with meat a couple of times a week.

In any case I am happy that more people are getting the chance to eat more food that they prefer.

I like to stay out of any organic food, vegetarian food, etc., food arguments. People should have the freedom to buy and eat the types of food they like.

I worry a little about keeping this freedom since the single political party in the USA the republicrats (also referred to as the Demopublicans) in servicing their main constituency (I am obviously talking about corporations), might try to curtail things like accurate packaging labels, etc. if that is what their corporate constituents want.

Re: A rise in vegetarian options leads customers to embrace meat-free meals

#245

Post by puranjay »

mandevil wrote: post #194
puranjay wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western cuisine seems to fundamentally misunderstand vegetables. Methinks it was partly the unavailability of spices, and partly the easy availability of meat. Meat is like a cheat code when you're cooking. A good cut of meat needs a little more than some salt and fat to taste good. With vegetables, you're forced to be more inventive. Take okra for instance. In India, its a favorite vegetable. Saute it with some Indi…

I've always thought it was wealth. Around the world, wealthy people tended to have fairly similar diets with lots of meat (even in Asian areas, with exceptions for Jains and others who had religious objections). It's poor regions and peoples who need spices to make food palatable. There was a cuisine lock-in around 1850-1950 where food culture solidified into a single thing [1], and if your region was poor when that…

I wonder what impact the British seafaring tradition had on their dietary habits. You can't have spices and flavorful food if you're going to spend months at sea.

Re: A rise in vegetarian options leads customers to embrace meat-free meals

#246

Post by myu701 »

jlmorton wrote: post #184
JackRabbitSlim wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to offer "bridge" foods that are vegetable versions of normal dishes doesn't help. It never is as good, at best it's "yeah...its OK." So you have only re-enforced the idea that vegetarian food will never be quiet as good as the "real thing". On the off chance it is exactly like the meat its pretending to be then all your saying is "See? All you have to do is spend more for exactly the same thing!" I might try…

Kind of a shor-term view, no? The Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat patties are significantly closer to a beef-life flavor than past patties, and they're improving at a quick pace. They may be more expensive now, but it's pretty likely that economies of scale will reduce the price of plant-based meat substitutes, while pretty unlikely that Tyson Foods is going to quickly find a cheaper way to raise a cow.

I rolled into Burger King and bought a normal whopper and a Impossible whopper for the express stated purpose of being able to say the thing I was pooh-poohing (meatless burger!? let's be serious, I said to myself) was something I had tried before.

Besides being slightly too burnt from the flame grilling of a high school kid, it tasted delicious. Quite comparable to the usual fast food burger in terms of taste, look, and texture. I would not recommend it as a steak replacement though. Could be hamburger helper if it retained its form when boiled.

I will opt for it again when available, admittedly I eat at BK approx. once a year.

Re: A rise in vegetarian options leads customers to embrace meat-free meals

#247

Post by benj111 »

lukeschlather wrote: post #240
benj111 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound like you're a vegetarian for an animal welfare reason though? If you've stopped eating meat for environmental/health reasons then there isn't really the contradiction. 'Salty Crispy protein bits' gets us the same thing as vegetarian bacon, without seemingly being morally objectionable to a demographic you're targeting.

I'm a vegetarian for a variety of reasons, but I don't understand why anyone would have a moral problem with making facsimiles of dead animals. (It's actually imprisoning and killing living creatures that I think most people have a moral problem with.)

Fair enough, I can think of a few situations where a facsimile can cause moral problems, sex I've mentioned, pedophilia, dressing up as a nazi/kkk.

Obviously that feeling isnt as wide spread as I thought though.

Re: A rise in vegetarian options leads customers to embrace meat-free meals

#248

Post by dhimes »

DanCarvajal wrote: post #25

I'm definitely part of this trend. My favorite carhop burger joint (Hire's Big H, SLC) makes their own veggie patty that to me is their best thing on their menu. It's really crafted to be a flavorful/textural experience without being "fake meat". I'm not even vegetarian and it's been my go to there for a while now. This was all before I had a grasp of the environmental impact of meat production.

Twenty years ago there was a restaurant in Bethesda that made its own veggie burger. To my taste, it was the best thing on the menu. And I only started experimenting with veggie/vegan/pescetarian cuisine a couple years ago (I go pescetarian a couple days a week).

Re: A rise in vegetarian options leads customers to embrace meat-free meals

#249

Post by StreamBright »

coldpie wrote: post #46
_Microft wrote: post #8

The dish mentioned sounds far better than what is usually served as vegetarian food at canteens and restaurants. Quite often they offer just a compilation of side-dishes to have something vegetarian on their menu. (Dumblings with red cabbage and - wait for it - gravy from roasting meat is a widespread menu offer for vegetarians in southern Germany. Not sure if it counts as vegetarian option though). Once people notic…

I travel to Europe about once a year and I've noticed they're far behind the US in terms of vegetarian options. In the US it's been easy to get a high quality, vegetarian meal at almost any restaurant for at least a decade (edit: at least in metro areas; perhaps rural areas are different, although I haven't noticed this personally). Meanwhile in Europe it's almost impossible to get anything resembling a full meal. Li…

This really depends on which particular part of US comparing against which particular part of the EU.

Examples:

- Louisville, Kentucky vs Berlin

- San Francisco, California vs Munich

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