, and other mock meats, and will continue to do so, which is perfectly fine. We have differing opinions.
My comment was more so a joke, I get the reason why vegetarians and vegans in the west tend to consume mock meats.....I just think its something that should be largely avoided. Considering I don't eat meat, I reckon I would be in the same boat as vegans regarding mock meat.
You asked me about a clinical degree not whether I had a formal education in nutrition. One can learn, formally, about nutrition in a variety of fields.......but my educational background is irrelevant to the issue. Also, I'm not sure why being vegan would be a prerequisite to talking about plant-based nutrition. In fact, vegans routinely quote plant-based advocates that are not vegan (e.g., T Collins Campbell).
I have not suggested in this thread that one needs to entirely avoid mock meats to be healthy, instead I have suggested that mock meats aren't healthful and many have junk-food status. As such they are the sort of food that should be minimized, like one would do with potato chips, rather than routinely build meals on.
I'm not sure what makes either of the menus extreme, the first was intended to be an example of a healthful and protein rich plant-based menu without the use of mock meat and cheese and the second was intended to be a similar menu, with similar calories, based on more common food choices.
Memories fade quickly, I would never use my tastes to determine whether something tastes like, for example, beef because its been many years since I've eaten it.......instead I defer to people that still eat it.
If taste was the only issue here there would be no discussion, but there are nutritional issues and cultural issues at play here and I think both point to the avoidance, or at least minimization, of mock meats and mock cheese. But, still, on the matter of taste I think you'd be hard pressed to find non-vegetarians that think mock meats taste as good as real meats.Clearly FS - you have renounced seitan
You said in a previous post: " Vegan/vegetarian food culture in the west is, I think, a total mess."
Yes, I said that I think vegan and vegetarian food culture in the west is a mess.....but when did I say I eat dairy or eggs? But I don't see why eating dairy or eggs would make it more difficult to avoid mock meat, avoiding mock meat is simply a matter of adjusting the way you think about and prepare food.
I disagree, the same considerations that make potato chips junk food also make many mock meats junk food. Why is some oil, protein isolate, refined starch and salt more nutritious than some oil, potatoes and salt? The potato chips are actually less refined.... The reason people don't think of them as the same is because they are using rule foods derived from their prior meat-based food culture.
The point of my comment was that if the only issue here were my particular taste preferences than there wouldn't be an issue. I personally think seitan tastes like cardboard, but I wouldn't use that as a basis to argue against seitan, instead its that non-vegetarians tend to think of mock dishes as inferior to what they are use to eating and as a result think of vegetarianism as some sort of great sacrifice. That is, I think, unfortunate because traditional vegetarian food prepared with whole ingredients is just as delicious....but few people are being exposed to this sort of vegetarian food.
The other major difference was the use of refined rather than whole grains, but the use of refined grains is more common and I find that the routine consumption of refined grains and mock meats go hand to hand. But no matter how you substitute matters, if you replace mock meats and cheese for more nutritious alternatives is going to lower the nutritional value of the menu and at some point the menu starts to become nutritionally unbalanced. To some degree, as you mentioned before, people can offset the poor nutritional value of mock meat and cheese by including foods with very high nutritional value but that requires conscious effort and doesn't seem to be common practice. People that are concerned with the healthfulness of their diet tend to make healthful choices in general, where as routine consumption of mock meats/cheese tends to follow other less than wholesome dietary practices (e.g., consumption of rich deserts, consumption of refined grains, etc). But my second menu wasn't overtly bad, I think many people would think of it as being relatively healthy. A second issue is that mock meats tend to negative attributes above and beyond their low nutritional value, for example, most are very high in sodium (to hide the cardboard taste!) and many are high in refined fats.
Many mock meats contain just as much of fat as potato chips. Having less carbohydrate and more protein doesn't make them more healthful, I think this notion is based on the association between "protein" and nutritious foods (e.g., meat) in western culture and the new anti-carb dietary fad.
I think it does, refining removes most nutrients and creates a highly digestible food that subverts our metabolic system.
Sure but some of the claims you highlighted were explicitly phrased to indicate that they were my personal observations and some aren't critical to my argument. The quoted post references two separate arguments, the first is regarding the culinary quality of traditional vegetarian dishes (many of which are vegan) vs mock vegetarian and vegan dishes. This argument is, admittedly, speculative because we'd have to do taste tests, ideally blind, to get an objective sense of how non-vegetarians respond to the respective meals. Right now we have a situation where the producers of mock meat, mock cheese, etc are the dominate marketing force. They sponsor events, they sponsor chefs to teach people to use their products, etc ......but what if these products aren't an effective means of promoting plant oriented diets? I suspect they aren't, and I can of course be wrong, but what I worry about is allowing the food industry to dictate matters before we have a good understanding of how to most effectively promote plant-oriented diets.
If I was feeling ill and my GP suggested I needed meat as a treatment I would get a new doctor.
I'm sure the doctor in this case wasn't vegetarian and was just trying to help his patient the only way he knew how, that is, the doctor probably didn't know enough about vegetarian nutrition to help his patient resolve his issue while maintaining a vegetarian diet. And, yes, if someone is dedicated to a vegetarian diet and was having health problems that may be attributed to the diet they should seek a doctor that is familiar with vegetarian diets."My doctor recommended that I eat some form of meat as I was not getting any better. I thought it would be hypocritical of me to just eat chicken and fish as they are just as much and animal as a cow or pig. So I went from no meat to all meat."
What was ridiculous about it? The article was based on a survey, according to the survey the top reason vegetarians return to eating meat are health issues. You may not like that these people didn't seek help, but I was citing this as evidence that many vegetarians and vegans have trouble thriving due to poor nutritional information. This is one of the few surveys on the topic.
I'm sure these people's doctors did run tests, it would irresponsible not to, and have concluded that part of their problem is their diet. If the doctor ate meat and in addition wasn't familiar with plant-based nutrition I can see why they would recommend a return to eating meat....its just the easy way to deal with the issue. Your average nutritionist wouldn't necessarily be of more help either....many aren't familiar with plant-based nutrition. You can become a nutritionist or dietitian without learning much of anything about plant-based nutrition. Anyhow since the US medical system is so focused on drugs and procedures as primary care, medical professionals that are both medical and nutrition savvy are somewhat rare. But I only quoted the article for the survey.
But people do routinely get it wrong, much of the information online is conflicting and industry promoted junk. The survey I cited included social reasons as one of the options, I see no reason to believe that a significant percent of the people that said they stopped for health reasons were deluding themselves. When I see how many vegetarians and vegans eat I have no trouble believing many return to eating meat, dairy, etc due to health problems.
I'm not sure whether people are having more trouble with vegan diets than vegetarian, both have potential weaknesses but vegetarians have an easier time getting high quality protein. I don't think most vegans are careful with those things, there are a lot of myths that circulate in the vegan community. For example, many believe that protein leeches calcium from your body and if you're not eating a lot of protein you don't have to worry so much about calcium. According to the EPIC-Oxford data, vegans have higher hip fraction rates than non-vegans and this appears to be due to low calcium intake:
