>Why do we put so much energy into trying to recreate exactly the experience of traditional animal based food products? Because until we stop using animals for

>Why do we put so much energy into trying to recreate exactly the experience of traditional animal based food products? Because until we stop using animals for food, those other things are kind of pointless? Who cares if you can buy vegan shoes that last decades, what's the end game? The cows are still going to be slaughtered for food, it'll just be one more thing that gets wasted instead of used. >Pioneering chefs and restaurants create amazing experiences from flavors and textures that are new, unfamiliar, and surprising (maybe a point of comparison would be the fermentation experimentation that Noma got so much media for). So it's not that we can't really love new foods. I think the number of "completely new and unfamiliar" foods created in the last 100 years can be measured on one hand. Sure people have taken known ingredients and mixed them in new ways, but that doesn't change the fact the underlying thing that we like is still there. Humans have had thousands of years to perfect food, why do you think someone in a lab working for a couple years is going to be able to upend that? >If this energy and innovative spirit was directed differently, I wonder what new things we might be enjoying which are very different from traditional concepts but in many ways better, and which the next generation will consider foundational? You're basically describing soylent, and the results are as expected. To pretend that there aren't people thinking about new ways of fueling humans is kind of unfair - it's happening, it's just HARD. People like "real" food.