Whenever I see a new vegan recipe
posted by “regular” site many of the comments are “you, vegans, should stop naming your food like meat”, “find your own names or return to
eating meat if you miss it so much you have to name your food like this”. Recently the UE passed the
regulation forbidding plant milk producers calling their products “milk”. As I
read on Independent website - “Purely
plant-based products cannot, in principle, be marketed with designations such
as ‘milk’, ‘cream’, ‘butter’, ‘cheese’ or ‘yoghurt’, which
are reserved by EU law for animal products, according to a European Court of
Justice judgement”. So, companies can no longer
sell “soy milk”, “rice
cream” or “plant cheese”. They
decided those names may be misleading for customers.
Okay, but why do vegans call
their food meat names? Is it really to mislead others? Do they want people to
mistake their meat substitutes for real meat and therefore buy more vegan food?
Or maybe they want to fool themselves they are eating actual meat while they
don’t? Do they really miss meat so much?
"Pulled
jackfruit" instead of "pulled pork".
No, no, no, and no. Many (or even
most) of people don’t go vegan because they don’t like meat and want to avoid eating
anything that resembles it even a bit. They do it because of ethical or health
reasons. And all those names are not to compensate for not eating meat. They
are to give you the sense of what to expect from the dish. Would you know what “vegan sticks” are? Actually, there are multiple options to think of.
But if you hear “vegan sausages” you can at least imagine the taste, consistency
and look of a product. Same with “soy
milk” and “rice cream”. What
is more, knowing we are eating “[bean]
cutlet” makes our brain certain we
will be full after the dinner, as we were after eating meat. It’s all not to trick others but to make
vegans’ lives easier.
Vegan steak with
peppercorn sauce. Does it really look so much different from meat with
cream-based sauce?
Of course, don’t think vegans take all the names for
their dishes from the traditional cuisine. I’m going
to give you some Polish names. For example, “tofurnik” instead of “sernik”. Tofu is made just like cheese but
out of soy, not milk. If it’s made
of cashews it’s called “nernik”. There
is also “chili sin carne” (chili without meat) instead of “chili con carne” (chili with meat). Recently, I’ve heard the name “hemp-dog” for a hot-dog with sausage made of hemp (hemp flour and
seeds).
Have you ever heard any strange
vegan names of food and dishes? Do you think vegans should stop using meaty
names and create their own, completely new ones? Do you think names like “soy milk” or “plant
cheese” are really misleading?
Comments
In my opinion, vegetarians are people who simply do not have enough attention and they allegedly protest against eating meat, although for a healthy diet a person should eat it. About strange names of vegetarian dishes, I do not know anything because I'm not interested, but if there are names for vegetarian food with meat names, it seems to me that it does not matter.
Have you even read the article? It's all perfectly explained.
Vegetarian/vegan products are always labeled as vegetarian or vegan when they are to be meat/dairy substitute.
I'm not vegetarian and maybe that's why I've never heard about these names.
It's not a problem for me. "Hemp-dog" is very funny but If vegans want to use it, why not?
(15 minutes and one low temp vegetarian lasagna later)
"I call this dish, healthy pizza"
Personally I'm a meat eater, and I find food to be one of the main sources of joy in my life. I don't think I could limit myself to not eating any meat, it's just too tasty. And don't even get me started on cheeses...
Seriously, you can name it whatever you wish, all the same to me. I don't really eat meat very often, sometimes I don't think about it. I could survive easily without meet and fish and so on, but even if I would start eating only plant food, I won't like to be considered and called a vegan. All the discussions about all this modern diets, eating differences and lifestyles are a little bit annoying for me. People should pay more attention to personality, not eating preferences.
Aside from that, I don't have any problems with how vegans name their food. It's clear, that "soy cheese" or "tofu" is something different than "cheese" and "carrot cutlet" is not the same thing as "cutlet".
I also do not like the fact that drinks are called XXXX milk. Even though I like normal milk, I use Oatly daily (it's an Oat drink which can be used as substitute for milk). On the box they just state, that it can be used instead of milk, but do not try to call it milk, and it is the way to do it. The same goes for cheese, which is by definition a food derived from milk, and should only be called that if it is accurate with its definition.
And I understand, becasue you know, people imagination and everything has its limits. So they are using something they know.
One sentence in your article desribes it PERFECTLY:
[...] all those names are not to compensate for not eating meat. They are to give you the sense of what to expect from the dish. "
What is more, knowing it may give so much options for dinner. I'm not vegan, I eat meat, sometimes I want to make something else or I just don't have got any, so I have to figure something out from what I've got. And this is how non-meat, all vegan letcho was born in my kitchen. Something I know, but without ingredient I didn't want to put in. Voila!
>people don’t go vegan because they don’t like meat and want to avoid eating anything that resembles it even a bit. They do it because of ethical or health reasons.
Okay, I dig the health reason, but I still don't get the idea of calling the vegan version of a meal deceptively similar to its meaty version.
>What is more, knowing we are eating “[bean] cutlet” makes our brain certain we will be full after the dinner, as we were after eating meat.
I'd rather call that just "vegan cutlet", not "bean/rice/wheat/anything"-one, as it clearly indicates we are not eating meat, not some "find out what kind of replacement is this"-cutlet.
Personally a big fan of Buddha Bowl and Buddha el Tez-Aviv
They should use their own ones, with a description what is this product/dish substitute for in normal nomenclature.
Yes, they are. Soy milk can be called as soy drink with an information that it can be use instead of milk.
All titles of vegetarian products are simply deceiving us. Don't forget that they are not as used as normal products with these names.
As you can guess I also don't know any extra-ordinary vegan names, simply because I'm not vegan and I'm not really interested into this that much :). Let people call their food however they wish.
And about the ketchup. Sometimes it's about assure people your product contains no animal products, like lactose. But many times it's just marketing - like Vegan Cola (most of vegans I know just laugh about it). Regular coke is vegan as well, but maybe adding "vegan" before the name makes it more vegan? I don't know. It definitely catches the eye and make it more probable some (new) vegans will buy it just because of the label.
And about Oatly - I love the company for the humour and creativity. It just makes you more involved in the process of consuming their food. It's not that you just buy Oatly milk and drink it. You can feel the part of the production process.
And that's true - imagination has its limits and we just want to use names we know for dishes we know. To make life easier, not harder!
I guess your letcho tastes amazing :D
Thank you!
And of course vegan products are used as traditional ones. I put my vegan cheese on a sandwich, and my oat milk in a coffe. How is it different from animal cheese and milk?
Me myself and maaaany many vegans I know are neither always hungry nor grumpy because of not eating meat. If you don't eat it you have to substitute the protein with plant sources of it - beans, whole grains, nuts. If you don't don't be surprised to be hungry all the time :P
Soya pork chop, soya tripe – these are strange names for me, because they are incoherent from the beginning – it should be either pork, or soya, istn’t it? On the other hand, I can understand names like: vegetarian hamburger, because word “hamburger” doesn’t say anything about its ingredients, so you can precise what it is made of: chicken, pork or soya.
And, after all, I don’t perceive names like “soya milk” or “plant cheese” as “misleading”. I guess intelligent people, who vegetarian are :-), will understand it in appropriate way. Such kind of names used to exist for many years and everybody got enough familiar with that.