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Maybe unpopular opinion, but for me, best plant based patties are those that do not try to replicate meat taste. I much prefer patties made from actual plants&v

Maybe unpopular opinion, but for me, best plant based patties are those that do not try to replicate meat taste. I much prefer patties made from actual plants&vegetables/mushrooms/chickpeas/beans like potato, carrot, some spices and so on. They have like actual 'natural' flavor, almost like something homemade. Those that add a ton of additives often taste awful, even beyond/moving mountains...

watwut 4y ago
I agree. I dont think this should be unpopular option. Most of actually vegetarian food I tried tasted fine. It did not tasted like meat, but I don't even understand why I should want it to taste like a meat. It tasted like its own thing and it was made from actual fresh vegetables plus cheese, nuts and what not. I like eating meat, when I want meat I eat that. I do not need vegetarian meat that tries to pretend to be meat.
Frost1x 4y ago
I share the same opinion. With plant based meats you're trying to fit a round peg through a square hole. It just isn't meat and doesn't get close enough for me. I would much prefer a good well prepared and thought out vegetarian style dish full of flavor. Maybe it's possible with more time and effort to get close enough but it's not there for me. The issue in the West is that we have fairly limited time and experience in preparing good vegetable dishes. Most are traditionally quite bland and off putting (for me, at least). Don't get me wrong some are quite good but usually as sides and very rarely can I visit some random person or resturaunt and expect a decently prepared vegetable dish compared to a meat dish. In contrast, when I eat at Indian resturaunts, it's not uncommon that I prefer some vegetarian dishes over ithers. I don't even feel "cheated" like I often do with poorly made vegetarian dishes because the food is usually quite satisfying and flavorful.
harel 4y ago
That! I do not want meat substitute for my burger. I want a veggie burger. One that has it's own taste profile. If I want a meat burger I'll have a meat burger. Sell me something else with a sane list of ingredients and I'm there.
serial_dev 4y ago
I was a vegetarian for years, and I totally agree. People always recommended me these awful veggie/vegan alternatives to meat, and they were all disgusting. Fake bacon, fake meat, fake sausage, fake ham, baloney, all ended up being stomach turning. Interestingly, only people who recommended me these still ate meat, never vegetarians. The thing is that there are many alternatives (falafel, all kinds of different cheese, beans, etc) that are delicious but not trying to replicate meat taste, and they are all great. I don't get the point of eating fake meats, just eat veggies, learn to cook, and enjoy. I'm convinced that the push for these plant-based meat products are purely economical: if you can make a good enough vegan ground beef, bacon, cheese, it will be hard to copy so you can make a ton of money with that. Recommending people to eat beans, carrots and zucchini? That's just good old vegetables sale, so you can't hype up your VC-backed company to billion dollars of estimated value with a handful of real consumers.
- dfxm12 4y ago
  Interestingly, only people who recommended me these still ate meat, never vegetarians. Some people have a near religious connection with their burgers & nuggets. I'm not so naive as to believe this isn't in some way motivated by "winning" the fake meat market like McDonald's more or less "won" fast food, but by getting omnivores to remember that they aren't carnivores, and getting them to just cut down their meat intake a little bit will do wonders for the sustainability of our planet and help move away from factory farming animals. That's enough for me. If this stuff acts as the gateway drug to actual carrots and zucchini? Even better...
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  > The thing is that there are many alternatives (falafel, all kinds of different cheese, beans, etc) that are delicious but not trying to replicate meat taste And not a one of them is available at a common fast food joint, but I can get an Impossible Whopper anywhere there is a Burger King, which is a lot of places. This is enormously convenient for me when I have to go on a road trip. > I don't get the point of eating fake meats, just eat veggies, learn to cook, and enjoy Cooking is a time investment and many of these dishes are pretty heavy on the time investment. How about this: I'll eat what I want and you eat what you want, ok?
PurpleRamen 4y ago
It's a matter of taste. If you're accustomed to meat, or even industrial meat-products, then they taste quite good. But if you're from a different taste-realm, it can be indeed very disgusting. This is similar to all the diet-products. People always want the taste, but not the guilt.
- Moldoteck 4y ago
  well, I was implying that at least for me, those alternatives tasted worse compared to 'classic' meat burgers back when I wasn't vegetarian. I'll even put it another way> I liked the taste at first for some brands, but I suspect they changed the formula in an attempt to 'improve' the taste or maybe cut some cost, but that change in additives ruined the experience for me
JohnDoe124 4y ago
I am a lifelong vegetarian and I completely agree, and tbh the idea of eating something that tastes like meat is pretty unappealing.
boringg 4y ago
I think the way this shakes out is that the plant-based meats like impossible burger and beyond burger marketed to people who don't eat plant focused diets to pull them away from meats whereas vegetarians typically don't like the high processed component and prefer the vegetable based patties. Seems to be the common thread that I hear when I talk to people who are vegetarian. I myself am omni but prefer the vegetable based burgers. To your point though the vegetarian 'natural' nutty flavor is for the most part a learned palette through exposure.
abliefern 4y ago
That's a misunderstanding. Fake meat products don't contain "a ton of additives".
- raghavkukreti 4y ago
  Water, soy protein concentrate, coconut oil, sunflower oil, natural flavors, 2% or less of potato protein, methylcellulose, yeast extract, cultured dextrose, food starch modified, soy leghemoglobin, salt, mixed tocopherols (antioxidant), soy protein isolate, zinc gluconate, thiamine hydrochloride (vitamin B1), niacin, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin (vitamin B2), and vitamin B12. This is the list of ingredients in an impossible burger. Just so it can somewhat (barely) mimic the taste and texture of actual meat, for what? Shoving myself full of GMO produce and preservatives? It's much more fulfilling and better for your own health to buy fresh produce, make your own umami rich, organic blends and eat them and not strive to mimic something it cannot be.
  - diydsp 4y ago
    Almost all of those are protein and vitamins - good for you. Then there are some carbs. Not horrible. Even sunflower oil gets a bad rap bc it's assoc w proc foods but it's fine just don't get it too hot or overconsume: https://www.webmd.com/diet/sunflower-oil-good-for-you https://www.webmd.com/diet/sunflower-oil-good-for-you Coconut oil's sat fat is highly contested and mixed. Very hard to untangle its effects but it seems to be nonlinear: A little seems okay.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      Excess vitamins may in fact be bad for you in some situations. Studies using antioxidants A, C, and E found they can accelerate cancer growth.
      - bawolff 4y ago
        Wouldn't most food accelerate cancer growth? Cancer needs nutrients to grow the same way normal cells do.
avhception 4y ago
I'm a meat-eater, but those "classic" plant-based patties often taste perfectly fine. Not like meat at all, but they don't have to, that's okay. It's not like I only eat meat. But the new breed of patties that claim to be meat taste really awful, definitely. They sometimes smell really weird, too.
- stuaxo 4y ago
  The oil-ness is not pleasant.
- telchar 4y ago
  I find ground beef smells worse than any of the plant-based alternatives, personally. Give me the impossible or beyond burgers any day over a real burger if we're judging by smell or mouth-feel. In taste, I'd say they're equal. The planty patties lose out and mouth-feel, usually, but some of them are ok in taste, and usually smell good. The planty patties tend to crumble and fall apart which makes them hard to eat as burgers.
- dachryn 4y ago
  Beyond burger or what was the one that was hyped 3 years ago was really good in my opinion. Especially on a burger with some sauce and other taste things. The only thing you really shouldn't do is mix real meat and fake meat. A natural thing to do is order two burgers, and compare them. Whatever you eat first will taste fine, whatever you eat second is extremely gross.
  - Moldoteck 4y ago
    also found out that during this years, some 'local' businesses have changed the 'formula' of their burgers, so even if I liked what they made in the beginning, due to less chemicals maybe, they became awful to my taste
  - avhception 4y ago
    It never occurred to me to mix real and fake meat. Now I'm curious. Maybe I'll have to try a 50/50 ground beef mix, just out of curiosity, haha. My comparison method so far was the Whopper.
23B1 4y ago
You can do up a portobello burger in a thousand different ways and they all taste amazing. I do not understand the fascination with replicating meat for environmental good when nature herself provides plenty of delicious alternatives. Ever had a deep-fried cheese-stuffed portobello? Mama mia...
- sushibowl 4y ago
  It's precisely because the alternatives, delicious as they are, do not replicate the experience of eating meat. People like the taste of meat and they want to have it, that's really all it is. If you want to satisfy those people without incurring the environmental and ethical costs associated with raising and killing animals, you have few options besides replicating meat.
- edu 4y ago
  Or, portobello carpaccio with pecorino and truffle.
- astura 4y ago
  I'm not sure what the need is for the fake confusion. People like these items because they enjoy the taste and/or they are familiar. It's not at all hard to understand. I've been a vegetarian for well over two decades. Growing up I was always completely grossed out by the concept of meat, so I almost never ate it before I went vegetarian, and didn't AT ALL enjoy it when I did eat it. For many years I didn't want anything "meaty." It was still obvious why people would want meat analogues, even if I wasn't one of them. I don't believe that these "I don't get it" comments are in good faith. Around 5 years ago I started dabbling in fake meat. Turns out enough time had passed that I got over the icky-ness of a "meaty" product. Now I really enjoy a large variety of fake meats even though there's ALSO a large variety of vegetarian dishes I enjoy.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  I want a burger, I don't want a mushroom sandwich. How is that so hard to understand? When I want mushrooms I will eat mushrooms. If random replacement was a viable alternative, I would just eat a fish sandwich.
jemmyw 4y ago
Yes, I agree. I'm not vegetarian but I don't like meat patties so I used to buy the vegetarian option, which was like mashed up actual veg. Always pretty good I thought. Now these meat alternatives have actually ruined my social burger eating because I don't like anything on the menu. Lucky for me I don't really have that kind of social life anymore.

watwut 4y ago

I agree. I dont think this should be unpopular option. Most of actually vegetarian food I tried tasted fine. It did not tasted like meat, but I don't even understand why I should want it to taste like a meat. It tasted like its own thing and it was made from actual fresh vegetables plus cheese, nuts and what not. I like eating meat, when I want meat I eat that. I do not need vegetarian meat that tries to pretend to be meat.

Frost1x 4y ago

I share the same opinion. With plant based meats you're trying to fit a round peg through a square hole. It just isn't meat and doesn't get close enough for me. I would much prefer a good well prepared and thought out vegetarian style dish full of flavor. Maybe it's possible with more time and effort to get close enough but it's not there for me. The issue in the West is that we have fairly limited time and experience in preparing good vegetable dishes. Most are traditionally quite bland and off putting (for me, at least). Don't get me wrong some are quite good but usually as sides and very rarely can I visit some random person or resturaunt and expect a decently prepared vegetable dish compared to a meat dish. In contrast, when I eat at Indian resturaunts, it's not uncommon that I prefer some vegetarian dishes over ithers. I don't even feel "cheated" like I often do with poorly made vegetarian dishes because the food is usually quite satisfying and flavorful.

harel 4y ago

That! I do not want meat substitute for my burger. I want a veggie burger. One that has it's own taste profile. If I want a meat burger I'll have a meat burger. Sell me something else with a sane list of ingredients and I'm there.

serial_dev 4y ago

I was a vegetarian for years, and I totally agree. People always recommended me these awful veggie/vegan alternatives to meat, and they were all disgusting. Fake bacon, fake meat, fake sausage, fake ham, baloney, all ended up being stomach turning. Interestingly, only people who recommended me these still ate meat, never vegetarians. The thing is that there are many alternatives (falafel, all kinds of different cheese, beans, etc) that are delicious but not trying to replicate meat taste, and they are all great. I don't get the point of eating fake meats, just eat veggies, learn to cook, and enjoy. I'm convinced that the push for these plant-based meat products are purely economical: if you can make a good enough vegan ground beef, bacon, cheese, it will be hard to copy so you can make a ton of money with that. Recommending people to eat beans, carrots and zucchini? That's just good old vegetables sale, so you can't hype up your VC-backed company to billion dollars of estimated value with a handful of real consumers.

dfxm12 4y ago
Interestingly, only people who recommended me these still ate meat, never vegetarians. Some people have a near religious connection with their burgers & nuggets. I'm not so naive as to believe this isn't in some way motivated by "winning" the fake meat market like McDonald's more or less "won" fast food, but by getting omnivores to remember that they aren't carnivores, and getting them to just cut down their meat intake a little bit will do wonders for the sustainability of our planet and help move away from factory farming animals. That's enough for me. If this stuff acts as the gateway drug to actual carrots and zucchini? Even better...
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
> The thing is that there are many alternatives (falafel, all kinds of different cheese, beans, etc) that are delicious but not trying to replicate meat taste And not a one of them is available at a common fast food joint, but I can get an Impossible Whopper anywhere there is a Burger King, which is a lot of places. This is enormously convenient for me when I have to go on a road trip. > I don't get the point of eating fake meats, just eat veggies, learn to cook, and enjoy Cooking is a time investment and many of these dishes are pretty heavy on the time investment. How about this: I'll eat what I want and you eat what you want, ok?

PurpleRamen 4y ago

It's a matter of taste. If you're accustomed to meat, or even industrial meat-products, then they taste quite good. But if you're from a different taste-realm, it can be indeed very disgusting. This is similar to all the diet-products. People always want the taste, but not the guilt.

Moldoteck 4y ago
well, I was implying that at least for me, those alternatives tasted worse compared to 'classic' meat burgers back when I wasn't vegetarian. I'll even put it another way> I liked the taste at first for some brands, but I suspect they changed the formula in an attempt to 'improve' the taste or maybe cut some cost, but that change in additives ruined the experience for me

JohnDoe124 4y ago

I am a lifelong vegetarian and I completely agree, and tbh the idea of eating something that tastes like meat is pretty unappealing.

boringg 4y ago

I think the way this shakes out is that the plant-based meats like impossible burger and beyond burger marketed to people who don't eat plant focused diets to pull them away from meats whereas vegetarians typically don't like the high processed component and prefer the vegetable based patties. Seems to be the common thread that I hear when I talk to people who are vegetarian. I myself am omni but prefer the vegetable based burgers. To your point though the vegetarian 'natural' nutty flavor is for the most part a learned palette through exposure.

abliefern 4y ago

That's a misunderstanding. Fake meat products don't contain "a ton of additives".

raghavkukreti 4y ago
Water, soy protein concentrate, coconut oil, sunflower oil, natural flavors, 2% or less of potato protein, methylcellulose, yeast extract, cultured dextrose, food starch modified, soy leghemoglobin, salt, mixed tocopherols (antioxidant), soy protein isolate, zinc gluconate, thiamine hydrochloride (vitamin B1), niacin, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin (vitamin B2), and vitamin B12. This is the list of ingredients in an impossible burger. Just so it can somewhat (barely) mimic the taste and texture of actual meat, for what? Shoving myself full of GMO produce and preservatives? It's much more fulfilling and better for your own health to buy fresh produce, make your own umami rich, organic blends and eat them and not strive to mimic something it cannot be.
- diydsp 4y ago
  Almost all of those are protein and vitamins - good for you. Then there are some carbs. Not horrible. Even sunflower oil gets a bad rap bc it's assoc w proc foods but it's fine just don't get it too hot or overconsume: https://www.webmd.com/diet/sunflower-oil-good-for-you https://www.webmd.com/diet/sunflower-oil-good-for-you Coconut oil's sat fat is highly contested and mixed. Very hard to untangle its effects but it seems to be nonlinear: A little seems okay.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Excess vitamins may in fact be bad for you in some situations. Studies using antioxidants A, C, and E found they can accelerate cancer growth.
    - bawolff 4y ago
      Wouldn't most food accelerate cancer growth? Cancer needs nutrients to grow the same way normal cells do.

avhception 4y ago

I'm a meat-eater, but those "classic" plant-based patties often taste perfectly fine. Not like meat at all, but they don't have to, that's okay. It's not like I only eat meat. But the new breed of patties that claim to be meat taste really awful, definitely. They sometimes smell really weird, too.

stuaxo 4y ago
The oil-ness is not pleasant.
telchar 4y ago
I find ground beef smells worse than any of the plant-based alternatives, personally. Give me the impossible or beyond burgers any day over a real burger if we're judging by smell or mouth-feel. In taste, I'd say they're equal. The planty patties lose out and mouth-feel, usually, but some of them are ok in taste, and usually smell good. The planty patties tend to crumble and fall apart which makes them hard to eat as burgers.
dachryn 4y ago
Beyond burger or what was the one that was hyped 3 years ago was really good in my opinion. Especially on a burger with some sauce and other taste things. The only thing you really shouldn't do is mix real meat and fake meat. A natural thing to do is order two burgers, and compare them. Whatever you eat first will taste fine, whatever you eat second is extremely gross.
- Moldoteck 4y ago
  also found out that during this years, some 'local' businesses have changed the 'formula' of their burgers, so even if I liked what they made in the beginning, due to less chemicals maybe, they became awful to my taste
- avhception 4y ago
  It never occurred to me to mix real and fake meat. Now I'm curious. Maybe I'll have to try a 50/50 ground beef mix, just out of curiosity, haha. My comparison method so far was the Whopper.

23B1 4y ago

You can do up a portobello burger in a thousand different ways and they all taste amazing. I do not understand the fascination with replicating meat for environmental good when nature herself provides plenty of delicious alternatives. Ever had a deep-fried cheese-stuffed portobello? Mama mia...

sushibowl 4y ago
It's precisely because the alternatives, delicious as they are, do not replicate the experience of eating meat. People like the taste of meat and they want to have it, that's really all it is. If you want to satisfy those people without incurring the environmental and ethical costs associated with raising and killing animals, you have few options besides replicating meat.
edu 4y ago
Or, portobello carpaccio with pecorino and truffle.
astura 4y ago
I'm not sure what the need is for the fake confusion. People like these items because they enjoy the taste and/or they are familiar. It's not at all hard to understand. I've been a vegetarian for well over two decades. Growing up I was always completely grossed out by the concept of meat, so I almost never ate it before I went vegetarian, and didn't AT ALL enjoy it when I did eat it. For many years I didn't want anything "meaty." It was still obvious why people would want meat analogues, even if I wasn't one of them. I don't believe that these "I don't get it" comments are in good faith. Around 5 years ago I started dabbling in fake meat. Turns out enough time had passed that I got over the icky-ness of a "meaty" product. Now I really enjoy a large variety of fake meats even though there's ALSO a large variety of vegetarian dishes I enjoy.
mrguyorama 4y ago
I want a burger, I don't want a mushroom sandwich. How is that so hard to understand? When I want mushrooms I will eat mushrooms. If random replacement was a viable alternative, I would just eat a fish sandwich.

jemmyw 4y ago

Yes, I agree. I'm not vegetarian but I don't like meat patties so I used to buy the vegetarian option, which was like mashed up actual veg. Always pretty good I thought. Now these meat alternatives have actually ruined my social burger eating because I don't like anything on the menu. Lucky for me I don't really have that kind of social life anymore.