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France bans veggie ′steaks,′ ′sausages′ to describe vegetarian products

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Re: France bans veggie ′steaks,′ ′sausages′ to describe vegetarian products

#201

Why do veg people want to advertise veg products with references to meat? I'd promote the unique or superior taste of my veg stuff, right? I don't want to eat meat in the first place, after all.

I love meat, but choose to abstain for ethical reasons. Ethical concerns - rather than strictly dietary or culinary ones - are common reasons for being vegan or vegetarian.

Did you not know that?

Re: France bans veggie ′steaks,′ ′sausages′ to describe vegetarian products

#202
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You hate the cruelty of farming animals for food, but you support the cruelty of farming vegetables for food Probably because they think one is worse than the other. I think flipping somebody off and hitting them in the face is both not very nice, but I think one of them is much more impolite. Moral judgements come in degrees. Is this novel information for you? That said, maybe they're also trying to minimise the imp…

Your parent comment apparently thinks farmed animals don’t eat plants too

Re: France bans veggie ′steaks,′ ′sausages′ to describe vegetarian products

#204

Do they have this problem in India? Seems like they have had a long history of multiple mainstream diets and even have standard symbols: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FSSAI_new_labels_for_veg_...

In India, we have this standardised from quite some time. As an Indian vegetarian, I can imagine that naming vegetarian things with non-vegetarian terms would actually be detrimental to the products sales. We already have a name "chaap" for similar things.

Re: France bans veggie ′steaks,′ ′sausages′ to describe vegetarian products

#205
post #13

It's getting ridiculous here in Sweden. Actual product names (they tend to use English, sometimes with intentional misspellings to get around regulations, I assume): "Vegan Grated Ch se" ( https://assets.icanet.se/t_product_large_2x_v1,f_auto/731024... ) "Roast Beaf - Plant-based cold cut" ( https://assets.icanet.se/t_product_large_2x_v1,f_auto/735003... ) "Parveggio - grated" ( https://assets.icanet.se/t_product_lar…

Is it not possible to put heart emojis in HN comments?

Emojis get stripped when you post the comment

Re: France bans veggie ′steaks,′ ′sausages′ to describe vegetarian products

#206
post #26

In the US, the dairy industry tried this and thankfully lost (in California): The Animal Legal Defense Fund represented Miyoko’s Kitchen in its challenge of unconstitutional restrictions placed on plant-based dairy products’ marketing and labeling Miyoko makes vegan cheese and brought the California Department of Food and Agriculture to court to challenge their ban on the term "cheese" to represent her products. She…

That would be completely fair, assuming the reverse is true as well. That is, being able to sell real cheese as "vegan cheese" to trick vegans into eating it. I was tricked into buying vegan sausages. They don't deserve protection either.

Something tagged "VEGAN Cheese" in big characters with "This cheese is from our beloved cow Vega, not actually ugly soy stuff but is good for you, and remind that you started this war, not us" in tiny characters at the foot would receive a priceless publicity and lots of love.

Re: France bans veggie ′steaks,′ ′sausages′ to describe vegetarian products

#207
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating metaphors with obfuscation. For example, coconut milk is named so simply because it's a white liquid. It's not trying to be a replacement for milk, or trying to confuse people, it's just a metaphor. But vegan milk, sausages, etc, are all meant to be as similar to the real things as possible so as to cause confusion.

Who the fuck is buying vegan meat and being like "oh I thought this was meat"? Do we seriously need to legislate that? There's no real victim here, it's just a bunch of people who are sour or feel threatened by meat alternatives. It's ridiculous.

I am veg and I recently accidentally bought and ate a real duck wrap because it looked (and tasted) almost identical to the vegan duck wrap.

However, I am just generally not very observant. I frequently buy sparkling water by accident.

Re: France bans veggie ′steaks,′ ′sausages′ to describe vegetarian products

#208
I like that we have rules that say if you call something 'butter' it actually has to have very specific ingredients. Germany has rules for 'beer'. There are also rules for naming regional sourced foods like 'champagne'. Lots of examples. If 'steak' and 'sausage' should only mean meat products, then this is consistent and not necessarily bad. Though it may be inconvenient, but its a nice challenge to the marketing creative teams. I'm sure they'll come up with some great ideas, constraints sometimes do that.

Re: France bans veggie ′steaks,′ ′sausages′ to describe vegetarian products

#209
post #26

In the US, the dairy industry tried this and thankfully lost (in California): The Animal Legal Defense Fund represented Miyoko’s Kitchen in its challenge of unconstitutional restrictions placed on plant-based dairy products’ marketing and labeling Miyoko makes vegan cheese and brought the California Department of Food and Agriculture to court to challenge their ban on the term "cheese" to represent her products. She…

That would be completely fair, assuming the reverse is true as well. That is, being able to sell real cheese as "vegan cheese" to trick vegans into eating it. I was tricked into buying vegan sausages. They don't deserve protection either.

> I was tricked into buying vegan sausages.

I don't even know how that is possible unless one is extremely unattentive. In my experience, vegan and vegetarian substitute products are universally located in the specialty section of the grocer and nearly universally advertise their plant-based status prominently.

These products cost more than the real thing, so why try to fool anyone into thinking they're real meat? The market that is willing to pay more will do so precisely because they aren't real meat so that's what you want to advertise.

Re: France bans veggie ′steaks,′ ′sausages′ to describe vegetarian products

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market wants both. Someone just transitioning from may be explicitly looking for a plant-based version of what they've been eating. Someone raised vegetarian or who hasn't eaten meat in a long time may repulsed by the thought of eating meat has no interest in names that remind them of eating animals.

What sucks is I think the clones are terrible introductions to vegetarian food compared to the real deals. Screw a fake chicken nugget and ketchup, give people a falafel ball and yogurt sauce. The best vegetarian food there is makes no attempt to be fake meat, it stands on its own.

I like fake meats though, because I liked real meat when I ate it and I'm nostalgic for the experience. I like eating 'brats' with my family at cookouts because it is part of the tradition, and chick'n nuggets are significantly less trouble to prepare than chunks of firm tofu.

Don't assume everyone is a vegetarian or vegan for the same reasons.

Also falafel is awesome and I wish there were more fast-food falafel joints in the world.

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