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‘Shark Tank’ Startup Is Making Vegan Bacon Out of Seaweed
- matt3210 4y agoBacon comes from a pig. Anything not from a pig can be bacon-like and delicious if it wants to be but it will never be bacon. Tons of plant based alts are delicious, it just factually incorrect to call them meat.
- version_five 4y agoAlso, it's terrible branding. I like seaweed, it's a great snack (I especially like dulse). I also like thousands of other things that aren't bacon. When I want bacon, I'll have bacon, when I want some other food, I'll look for that. A "vegan" or fake version of something I already like is the last thing I'll seek out. Make something tasty and give it a proper name, and I'll buy it because it's tasty. Piggyback on some already popular food, I'll just be set up for disappointment
- YLE118 4y agoI thought this was going to be the seaweed chicharron snacks. There's surprisingly not bad, in fact I might prefer them to almost any packaged chicharrones. If they'd been called seaweed puffs they might appeal to a different audience, the way I see veggie crisps placed near the produce in some grocery stores. https://www.seacharrones.com/ https://www.seacharrones.com/
- Kon-Peki 4y agoThere’s been a lot of discussion about the challenges companies in this space are having. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that there are two distinct markets, with almost zero overlap, and they are at odds with each other. You can’t serve both markets at the same time, you can’t succeed without the credibility of one, but the only way to profitability and sustainability lies with the other. This just isn’t a VC-compatible industry. Full stop.
- jjj123 4y ago“When I want bacon, I'll have bacon, when I want some other food, I'll look for that” I hear this all the time from people who eat meat, but consider this: maybe you aren’t actually the target audience for this product. Maybe it’s for people that don’t eat any pork but still like the taste and texture of bacon.
- mc32 4y agoBut if they are not trying to entice meat-eaters there is no reason to ride the coattails of the original, real and authentic thing. You'd sell it as "seacrunch" or "seamunch" or whatever.
- Jarwain 4y agoThe reason is to draw people in with a comparison to something they already know. "bacon made of seaweed" sounds more interesting and will draw more people in than "seacrunch", which has its own identity and brand it would need to build up
- mc32 4y agoYou may be right, but I have a feeling most vegetarians and vegans don't need an imitation of meat in mock bacon. They have a great variety of tasty things already few if any rely on meat analogues (especially if the diet is inspired by traditional vege/vegan diets). So the target with this naming convention would be "converts" or people transitioning to vege/vegan --which is a smaller market.
- kjkjadksj 4y agoThe end result is more like replicating a grape with artificial grape flavor: not nearly there in taste and with a ton of processing. I hate how tepid these companies are. Its like if all food has to be a copy of some other food to go to market, then we are stuck with the mass market cuisine of the mid 19th century as our end all be all.
- 4y ago
- wilg 4y agoSorry to interrupt your pointless rant, but that’s why it’s called “vegan bacon”. It’s generally accepted that words can modify other words, like in your example of “bacon like”.
- kjkjadksj 4y agoRestaurants are even doing this. “Fried chicken restaurant” it says on the sign selling “chicken sandwiches” that are actually deep fried gardein but its hardly clear because the restaurant is trying too hard to be cute. I went to a place like this with vegan friends and even they were confused whether or not this was actually a plant based item on the menu, had to get reassurances from wait staff. There needs to be laws like with cheese or wine over what you can call things when you sell them to consumers.
- kennedywm 4y agoLanguage is constantly evolving.
- nashashmi 4y agoHave you had turkey bacon?
- buzzdenver 4y agoLanguage is flexible, and "seaweed bacon" clearly communicates what it is. Just like "soy/oat/coconut milk", the dairy lobby's objections notwithstanding.
- jhanschoo 4y agoAs a flexitarian, I find "vegan X" or "vegetarian X" labeling very useful. It tells me that when I want to adapt an omnivore recipe, I can have a certain set of expectations on how the vegan substitute can be prepared and would taste and feel like.
- anm89 4y agoI don't understand the obsession with recreating meat from people who seem to make a lifestyle out of disliking meat. If vegetables are your thing, why not eat vegetables in vegetable form? The imitation stuff is always terrible. Vegetables are great when you don't mess with them.
- loktarogar 4y agoVegans can be vegan for many reasons, including moral and having issues digesting actual meat. They can still like the experience of meat but won't have real meat.
- krsrhe 4y agoWe love meat, but we hate torturing animals.
- ok_dad 4y agoMost of these are to try and reduce the amount of meat people eat by making similar tastes and textures. Vegans usually don’t want meat flavored or textured stuff.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago> I don't understand the obsession with recreating meat from[sic] people I agree, that doesn't sound particularly appealing
- akomtu 4y agoI guess there isnt much money in the vegan market, so this false advertising is trying to appease meat-eaters.
- paranoidrobot 4y agoThere are some people who like the taste and texture of meat, but dislike the impacts of the commercial meat industry. Those people might choose to use a meat-substitute, if it was reasonably similar in taste/texture/resulting product, and had less harmful impacts on the world.
- 4y ago
- defrost 4y agoFFS, It's not bacon, it's seaweed. I've eaten seaweed. I like seaweed. Choice kinds, prepared well, taste great. Can we stop it with the "pretend meat" already.
- nashashmi 4y agoAnd also let’s stop the pretend milk. Oat milk ain’t milk.
- buzzdenver 4y agoWhy would you object to calling it oat milk? It's simple, descriptive, doesn't deceive anyone. It's not a coincidence that in most (all?) languages coconut milk is a just coconut + milk in that language. (Using coconut milk as an example since it is a much older product than oat milk)
- throwaway1851 4y agoOat milk may be a recent invention, but alternative milks aren’t. E.g., almond milk (“almonde mylk”) dates back to the Middle Ages as a dairy milk substitute.
- gault8121 4y agoI've had this and I've had seaweed. It tastes much more like bacon than seaweed.
- tommiegannert 4y ago'Shark Tank' startup is making seaweed foods Does not create the same outrage as "vegan bacon". Marketing dept abusing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance to create a buzz. Half of YouTube (and TikTok?) is about reacting to outrageous things, so by now, it's not just the marketing departments that benefit from this practice, but vloggers too. Seems to be working (for them all,) so we'll see more of it.
- exabrial 4y agoBacon is from pork. I appreciate the innovation, and I will definitely try it, but please call a spade a spade and stop the nonsense.
- an_aparallel 4y agothe issue with all of these foods is the amount of chemistry required to get them working. I like Michael Pollan's philosophy of "not eating food your grandmother wouldnt recognise". My outlook is at odds with the majority of folks I know which eat heavily processed food. I just cant see positive health outcomes with diets where your main protein source is stuff like this...VS being nuts, tofu, legumes (and milk, yoghurt, cheese, eggs if you eat them).
- akiselev 4y agoMany grandmothers who lived during the great depression ate ultraprocessed stuff like spam and vienna sausages that I barely recognize as food and most of the fruits and vegetables I have available are barely recognizable to them. I don’t think we should be using such simplistic yardsticks to measure our diets.
- an_aparallel 4y agoThat's a great point - i'll give you that. But their grandmothers probably baulked at that too? :) Taking this further, cooking IS processing food, nuts (ie. cashews) require curing before eating else being poisonous. Where [i]should[/i] one stop with this idea?
- akiselev 4y ago> But their grandmothers probably baulked at that too? I don’t think it’s a very big leap from mortadella (circa 14th century) or bologna sausage (some centuries later) to vienna sausages. Abundant fresh meat and vegetables are a very recent development thanks to refrigerated transportation. The poor and middle class only ate fresh food during harvest time, most of the rest was either dry or processed.
- basch 4y agoprocessing isnt a binary but a spectrum. The harnessing of fire made humans the universal predator, that could denature poison and kill bacteria. Salt and Acid as preservatives fall into similar categories. This is processing that has been around as long as or longer than modern humans. Human's wouldn't be humans without fire, salt, and acid. Conversely, pea protein isolate, spun into meat with 30 other isolated substances isnt really "food" in any historical or traditional sense. Somewhere in-between lies things like fermentation. It's up to you to draw a line somewhere, or forget about lines and eat anything.
- nathanaldensr 4y agoCan we just stop with the dumb oxymorons with these imitation foods? There is no such thing as vegan bacon.
- willnonya 4y ago'Vegan Bacon' a moronic oxymoron.
- Mikeb85 4y agoOr just eat seaweed... And tasty vegetables. Dunno why the obsession with substitutes...