weastie

Same, I preferred plant milk to real milk for a few years before I went vegan.

I feel like that's a common trend with vegan food. Take a delicious food item and overuse it until it's almost disgusting. I love hummus but I can imagine if I ate it all the time I would get sick of it. I'm like that a little bit with mushrooms, I love mushrooms but eating a ton of them makes them gross for me.

I think something sorta unique about hummus that makes it really popular is that it's a vegan protein source that is served cold and can surprisingly substitute meat and cheese well. Like you mentioned about sandwiches, you can take out the deli meat and cheese and replace it with hummus and it still tastes delicious. Most vegan protein sources are cooked and served warm, or don't taste well with garden vegetables (like peanut butter).

I think I'm very okay with admitting that I probably just haven't had good falafel yet. But I'll make more effort to do so based on everyone's comments!

From a taste perspective, umami.

From a health perspective, eating more protein is really good for satiety and therefore weight loss. Personally, when I don't go out of my way to incorporate extra protein sources, I usually just don't feel satisfied and full. I understand and recognize that you literally don't need a ton of extra protein to be healthy, but I feel best when I have it.

Honestly, I in general don't really like when a meat is substituted for a food that is not a primarily protein source. Like replacing meat for cauliflower or jackfruit, as opposed to something with legumes or lentils

I've never tried a durian but it's kind of tempting, bucket list item for sure. What do you hate about it?

That's fair, as someone who went vegan recently I quite enjoy a couple meat substitutes. I imagine someone who's been vegan for a while doesn't care for them much though.

I really like impossible ground beef and its derivatives (meatballs, burgers). This has been my main way of convincing my friends they could maybe go vegan, all but one of my really picky friends still enjoy these. But the vast majority of vegan imitation meats I don't care much for.

I think there are a few spots where vegan cheese works.

There's a couple simple parmesan cheese recipes that are pretty much just blended cashews, nooch, and seasonings that I enjoy on spaghetti. I'm sure it wouldn't fool anybody but it works like a charm for me.

I also think you can make queso dips pretty well, the main ingredient usually being blended cashews or blended potatoes and carrots.

Sorry for bringing up cashews again but you can also make a really good cashew ricotta that's a good spread on crackers.

I tend not to enjoy the imitation cheeses. I prefer just going all in on the nuts and enjoying the final product as it's own unique item.

I've never been all that fond of falafel. I feel like I would like it in theory but when I eat it it's just, meh.

Okay but there's a moral hierarchy when it comes to eating meat. Humans used to hunt, meaning we would kill animals that lived natural lives. Not to mention, we would typically target animals that were older or sickly, because we would have a harder time killing animals that are in their prime.

That's so much different from modern day agriculture practices. We raise animals in fences so tight they can't turn their heads, and feed them nasty stuff. We abuse the shit out of them until they reach the point where we deem them the most profitable then we kill them. There's nothing natural about that.

Also, it's really hard to know for sure, but we have a good amount of evidence that humans didn't eat that much meat. First of all, the animals we hunted wouldn't be nearly as fat as the animals we eat today. Secondly, there's evidence that many humans ate roughly 100g of fiber per day, which is not possible if you had any serious amount of meat. Humans ate a lot of plants. 100g of fiber is an insane amount of plants.

Would you eat human meat? Enslaved toddlers, probably killed at roughly 1-4 years old. Cannibals say it tastes like ham. If it was nice and packaged up for you at the grocery store.

Honestly I feel like the idea of "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" is so lame. Like I understand that you could find something technically ethically wrong with everything, but that statement just feels like a way for people who don't want to give up certain things to justify themselves.

Capitalism, especially modern day capitalism where the government and companies collaborate, does lead to a lot of ethical issues. And yes, I understand that it is not liveable to give up everything that is unethical. But you can still have boundaries.

I mean like, buying oats and grains from a grocery store, which are typically grown domestically, compared to buying dead abused animals or bananas from a company that uses slave labor. Those are totally different things.

If you prioritize buying things that are made in countries that have better labor laws, and avoid animal products, then that's a pretty damn good start.