17/02/2026
Well said Isa 🙏
Why do vegans mimic meat? My thoughts.
Life would be boring if we didn’t try new things. "We", as a civilization, and "we", as individuals who make breakfast.
Listen: thousands of years ago, in the volcanic ash of the Andes, someone found a knobby clump and figured out a way to eat it. "What could this be?" She smashed one with a rock. She bit into it. She probably died. But the community kept the seeds from the ones that didn't kill anyone. Thousands of years later, we have french fries. We don't even think about how lucky we are.
Food evolves. The word "meat" didn't even mean capital M MEAT until the middle ages. Before that, "mete" just meant food. No one sued anyone over it.
I didn't give up meat because I didn't like it. I gave it up because I cried at Bambi. I tried to save every dog I found. I talked to my cat like he was my therapist. I'm an animal lover and that love doesn't end when I get hungry.
But a few things I do miss: Aromas. Experiences. Methods. Traditions.
I remember all the tastes and sensations from my meat-eating days. My grandmother's meatballs, burnt on one side. Stuffed clams at a cafe along the bay, my teeth scraping against the hard shell. Reaching for spareribs from a Chinese restaurant, in a white foil bag, smothered in caramelized sauce that you sucked off your fingers.
The point isn't to completely recreate the inspiration. It's a rough translation. Could a vegan Philly Cheesesteak trick anyone? Most likely. But will someone mistake a cauliflower wing for a piece of chicken? Probably not. A cauliflower wing is its own delicious thing. And we are going to call it a wing because it invokes a wing. And no one can stop us.
Fake meat has been around for over a thousand years. Human beings have always thrown themselves into the food making process, come what may. So that's why. We're just doing what people have always done: figuring out what a thing could be.
