May 01, 2019

Meat Shaped Vegetarian Food


Hello, and welcome back to my blog. It’s been a few years, and honestly I thought I was gonna finish it with my last post about why I don’t talk to my sister – it seemed like a good place to stop, and furthermore an old nemesis from years past had caught up with me and was trolling me about it, so I thought I’d stop.

But I’m back! And this time I’m vegetarian. And that’s what this post is about.

Firstly, one criticism often laid at vegetarians, is that we are always harping on about it. That may be true, but no one is forcing you to read this, so if you don’t like it, fuck off and read something else.

People Saying You Shouldn’t Eat Meat-Shaped Food That Isn’t Meat.

Well. This gets my goat. Gets my goat? Did you read about PETA trying to change common sayings that contain animals, for example ‘flogging a dead horse’ to ‘feeding a fed horse’? They really did/are. Read about it here. I digress. Why would anyone want meat-shaped food that isn’t meat? Well isn’t it fucking obvious? You’ve eaten certain foods, in certain ways, with certain textures, all your life. Food isn’t all about ousting hunger, it’s also about other things – health, satisfaction, enjoyment and so on. If a person particularly enjoyed bacon sandwiches before becoming meat-free, they may particularly enjoy the same thing but meat-free afterwards. I kinda get it with say, a steak. But a burger? Meat eaters saying ‘you shouldn’t eat meat shaped food!!’ What shape do you mean? That well known meat shape, round?

This isn’t the problem with meat eating though. The problem is the macho-ness associated with it. ‘Men’ thinking they are somewhere between Bear Grylls and Fred Flintstone, because they recently consumed a bacon butty. ‘It’s man food!’ they say. Get over yourselves.  I’m not up on recent animal-related politics, but if PETA and whatnot aren’t focusing on the associations between misplaced masculinity and meat-eating, they should be, rather than being concerned about the above sayings (which, I have to say, I don’t entirely disagree with – there’s no harm in changing the sayings. Anyone who went to school when and where I did, will remember ‘eenie meenie minie mo, catch a n*gger by the toe’, which has now changed, thankfully to ‘catch a tiger by the toe’. It looks like we’ll have to change that again too though.)

Anyway.

Plus ça change.

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