Ymmv, but as a lifelong flexitarian, meat substitutes help me adapt recipes I encounter in the wild. Just as there are nonvegetarians that enjoy new tastes and

Ymmv, but as a lifelong flexitarian, meat substitutes help me adapt recipes I encounter in the wild. Just as there are nonvegetarians that enjoy new tastes and food and nonvegetarians that stick to what's vanilla, so too you can encounter diversity among vegetarians. Besides, meat substitutes have a long tradition; where I live, mock meat has been in Buddhist cuisine and this has been a tradition prior to the Western trends towards vegetarianism.