On ‘Plant-Based’

I share some of the concerns of the author, but I think she's failing to "never ascribe to malice ..." -- in this case "when there are a myriad of other, less malicious reasons that are probably the cause."

I suspect the biggest reason companies are choosing "plant-based" (and including "vegan" somewhere less prominent, or maybe not at all) is because they want their products to appeal to both vegans and non-vegans. In fact, they may be making products that don't appeal at all to vegans despite being vegan, but would appeal to non-vegans.

First -- non-vegans -- if I see "Vegan" on something, I won't buy it unless it would only ever come that way (or would typically come that way, like a salad). If it's a "Vegan Burger", I'm assuming it's a piece of minced paper mixed with soy/plant oils and packed with enough herbs "used for grilling" to make it taste like "burnt grilled something" attempting to hide the fact that it tastes nothing like beef. If it's cheese, I assume it won't melt. It'll kind-of melt, then it'll start to harden, brown, and catch fire. If it's chicken, it's probably not vegan, but vegetarian (which are actually very good), but if it's vegan, it'll be ... wrong ... I don't know how to describe it.

I was Lacto Ovo Vegetarian for a year (for health, not puppies). I tried every single vegetarian pretend-to-be-meat product that Whole Foods and Kroger sold (in 2005). Amazingly, I found a brand of sausage that almost passed if you squinted at it just so. The vegetarian (non-vegan, I think) Morningstar Farms "plant-based" chicken was better than the frozen "real" chicken equivalents a few doors over. Everything else was inedible if it was trying to be meat. I like Black Bean burgers and Portabello Mushroom burgers, but you have to season/prepare them as that kind of product. When they tried to turn it into "something beef like", it was a disaster.

Fast forward to today where we have burgers that are "plant-based" that have the right texture, taste and even bleed. I don't know if my set is skewed or if this is normal but every Vegan I know (out of about 6) is vegan for their own moral, not health, reasons. Not one of them liked the meat-substitute products that I liked. They think eating animals is disgusting and it makes the flavor/texture gross to them. I'd imagine a plant-based burger that bleeds would have a similar impact.

So marketing to vegans with "Vegan" prominently on the label (and any required certification/testing/other necessities to ensure you don't get a class-action by accident) and there's a good chance your actual market avoids the product right along with the vegans who don't want it (unless it stops you from eating meat, you can have that crutch. :P).

    > I used to hate the phrase “plant-based” because I thought it was a cute way of avoiding saying vegetarian or vegan, as well as all the cultural baggage that comes with those identifiers (and I do believe some cultural baggage here can be a mark of honor).

And there's the last little nugget. To those that "Vegan" doesn't mean "Soy Pretending to be Meat and So Not Pulling it Off", it elicits images of judgemental people being vocal (in passive-aggressive ways) about the smell of the rare, juicy, Ribeye on the plate in front of me.

"Plant-based" might be "Vegan except LARD" or might be "Vegan except some ingredient with an unpronounceable name that is an animal byproduct" (gelatin/glue). It probably means the latter in most cases and that's fine for the people they're marketing to.

Also, many commercial crops require to be pollinated by domestic bees that are forced to breed, shipped around and then worked to death. It's principally impossible to have a nutritionally complete vegan diet without forced pollination, but fodder crops do not exploit bees. As a result, human food crops kill five times as many bees as all livestock slaughter combined and directly support honey production (taking excess honey is necessary for colony health). Vegans should also call around and make sure that their seasonally changing food exporters don't rely on insects, terriers, sheep, ducks or organic fertilizers.

Meat is cheap where I live and about 10% of the population doesn’t eat it. It’s actually 13% according to surveys, but let’s say 10% to be safe.

I could also hunt or spearfish like I used to. Meat is easy to get. There’s no need for it though.

Meat is amazing if you’re starving because it contains a lot of stuff a hungry person needs. Kale is not going to do the same things for you. However, it’s unlikely anyone on here is starving. Meat has rapidly diminishing returns as you stop starving and have a more stable diet of plants. Eventually eating meat becomes harmful, but eating plants does not.

Veganism = reduce animal suffering as much as possible.

Why do you think it's extreme not wanting to cause animal death and suffering?

On the other hand you could also argue that veganism attracts people who want to move away from the extremes of the animal and dairy industry, which contributes massively to our carbon footprint and biosphere destruction on top of causing unnecessary animal suffering.