Blogger Buzz: Blogger integrates with Amazon Associates

Blogger Buzz: Blogger integrates with Amazon Associates

It's not meat, but the more it looks and tastes and feels like meat, the more eating it is like having sex with rubber blow-up dolls: Both are the simulacra of primal adventures for which we are born and built. For very different reasons, in each case we choose the version without flesh and blood. One skill that sets apart our species from all others is counter feature: We excel at fashioning imitations, simulations, analogues. Whatever we don't or can't — or tell ourselves that we don't or can't — possess, we make a fake to replicate. We are so good at this as to have changed the very meaning of reality. So just as sex with blow-up dolls — and, to be all-inclusive, latex rods — is sex, and sounds and feels and looks (just squint) like sex, fake meat is real. It's real fake meat. When we quit eating animals, why keep eating what looks/tastes/feels like animals? What is it that we still yearn for from meat, about meat, in fake meat? Lifetimes of barbecues and baseball games and beach parties and holidays have programmed our nostrils to flare at the sweet-salt smell of seared fat before our consciences kick into gear and holler No. When bacon curls, our salivary glands perk up unbidden, just like being publicly aroused in middle school. When we choose fakes, what battles rage inside our bodies and our heads?What of sex with live partners is absent when we have it with lifelike replicas? Let's see: Emotions. Microbes. A response. What of eating animals is missing when we eat Tofu Pups? Gristle. Guilt over farms and slaughter. Fear of cancer, heart disease, global ruin. It is a testament to human genius and human chicanery that we make fakes to fool parts of ourselves. Some we adopt in secrecy and shame and desperation: sex dolls, say, or Rolex knockoffs. Others, such as fake meat, we embrace for reasons ethical, medical, psychological, political and philosophical. Eating fake meat, becoming carnivores in pantomime, summoning skin, blood, bone, organ and offal without skin, blood, bone, organ or offal, we do the equivalent of squinting, squirming, sighing, sliding back and forth against something which we do and do not want to remember is not real. It plays its part. It flexes, gushes, yields. Proud of our cleverness and dedication, we've turned patties, tubes, strips, chunks and roasts fashioned from tofu, gluten, legumes, grains, nuts, vegetables and fungus into one of the food industry's fastest-growing sectors. Burger King launched its BK Veggie Burger in 2002, in collaboration with Kellogg's Morningstar Farms. With the help of Hain Celestial, McDonald's launched its Mc Veggie Burger in 2003. Fake meat is fast now, and fake meat is easy, and fake meat is everywhere.Even so, it has its enemies. These anti meat absolutists argue that scooping ,In real life and online, arguments rage over this premise that shunning meat should mean shunning not only meat itself but the very idea of meat, including its juicy, smoky, chewy facsimiles. In this view, word and deed are not enough. In this view, vegetarians are nobler/purer/kinder than carnivores and vegans are nobler/purer/kinder still, and the noblest/purest/kindest of all shun even every gesture commonly associated with meat, such as dipping long objects into tartar sauce and placing flat ones between buns.But where does this nobler/purer/kinder-than thou game end? If this were some other arena, we would say intention matters most. Does craving meat, even if we consume just a replica, mean we're monstrous? Science says no. In rejecting meat, we go against millions of years of evolution in which eating meat is what kept our species alive. As much as modern-day purists might protest, the biology of our teeth, intestines and cells informs us that Homo sapiens have always consumed animals. Tearing flesh from bones as suet slicks our chins is in our genes."Our fish, reptile and mammalian ancestors were all carnivores and designed to eat meat. But we humans are a very omnivorous branch of the evolutionary trees. we have cutting teeth in front, mashing teeth in the back that give us the ability to process a range of foods.".' We have bodies that can handle diverse diets and many of us are fortunate to live in socioeconomic conditions where we can decide what to eat and what not to eat. And we have brains that can look beyond immediate needs to think of the long-term consequences of our choices."The Buddha would agree. When he declared, as recorded in the Ji vaka Sutra, that "one should not make use of meat if it is seen, heard or suspected to have been killed on purpose," he knew full well how deeply his fellow human beings desired meat. A meat meal, he conceded in the sutra, is a "delicious meal." The tradition of creating authentic meat analogues was begun hundreds of years ago .For most of history, the West was way behind. Until recently, nations with few if any Buddhists and Hindus saw little demand for artificial flesh. As middle-aged readers might remember, even in the happening '60s, the only fake meats found easily in American supermarkets were canned versions — such as RediBurger and Dinner Cuts — manufactured by Seventh Day Adventist-affiliated Loma Linda Foods. Although fake meats had been introduced in the United States long before that, they had always been considered way-out-there fringe items.Embracing spun soy fiber in the 1950s, Worthington introduced Soya meat in the '60s. In the '70s, under its new Morningstar Farms label, what was then known as Miles/Worthington offered soy-protein breakfast links, patties and slices..A certain uniformity of texture undermines many fake meats. Too smooth, too sleek, no random air pockets, they signal our paleo-brains to panic: trickery's afoot. Fake-meat producers know that it's much more difficult to effect authentic textures than authentic flavors — if not of straight flesh itself, then of those cured, spiced, sauced and marinated end products we love. Even though his products replicate with stunning vividness things made from once-living, once-breathing, flesh-and-blood creatures, "Instead of spending our time trying to recreate the sinew and flavor of animal flesh, we just make a great product. It's easier than making a fake animal." As for that absolutist scorn for anything in any way resembling flesh, "that's just ridiculous. I've been hearing this stuff for years, and it just doesn't make sense to me. Our products are meaty," Lee muses. "We don't see anything wrong with meat" — by which he means animal meat, not Merriam-Webster "meat." In creating award-winning replicas, "we're embracing our millennia-old human culture of eating meat. We don't reject meat. We see ourselves as a meat company. We make meat. Field Roast isn't an alternative to meat. It's an alternative meat."As an analogy, he points out that rice milk, soy milk and nut milks no longer serve merely as wistful, sorry second-bests to animal milks — as they did in his youth — but are now prized for their own unique flavors and qualities.True enough: Fake meats have become their own culinary genre, used no longer just as pinch-hitters in standard meat dishes but as main ingredients in their own right "The assumption that a veggie burger should be an approximation of a hamburger is ridiculous. Veggie burgers are so much more than an idea of a meat patty,", who describes his creations as "a pride parade of vegetables, beans, and grains." "I try not to put myself in a position of having to defend my eating habits, because I inevitably get into an argument that is impossible to reconcile to the satisfaction of everyone involved. In vegetarian families more and more babies are being born into meatless households. They grow up never having tasted the stuff, their memory banks lacking all trace of that particular bloody crunch, those opalescent beads of fat, those glistening tubules, those hot fluids that feel almost alive. They do not share with nearly their entire species, dating back into prehistory, those happy-birthday hamburgers and Mom's meatloaf and fresh-fish cookouts coded to condition us to crave and cherish flesh. These creatures of a true new age know not the dinner-table surgery that entails shearing skin and fat from flesh and flesh from bone and shell, the rib-holding hand rendered lustrously, shirt-spoilingly greasy. (Granted, Field Roast products have a higher fat content than many other brands, which boosts their authenticity and greases hands."Both in terms of reducing carbon emissions and in terms of animal lives, it's better that people eat something called fake meat than actual meat, but whatever you want to call these soya vegetarian protein source. It's more important to me what the food is made of than what it's called." "I have known some people who have become vegetarian because they find meat aesthetically unappealing,", that liking the taste of something cannot justify killing an animal. People don't kill their dogs or cats, even though they would also taste good, and ethical vegetarians have simply gone an obvious step further and decided it's not okay to kill other animals because they taste good." Egg industry, are typically ground up alive. Nonetheless, Norris happily eats fake meat at least once a day, and often twice: His favorite fake-meat dish is lasagna with Yves Meatless Ground Round and Follow Your Heart cheese. ""Nutritionally, fake meats are a good source of protein for vegans who might skimp on legumes, the main source of plant protein — but they tend to be high in sodium." As a rapidly growing and increasingly sophisticated fake-meat industry rushes ever more products into stores, we can and should be as vigilant about what's in them and how they're made as we are when it comes to chips or sodas or any other processed foods.