> The French government has said it is preparing a new decree against meaty terms like “steak”, “grill” and “spare ribs” being used to describe plant-based products.
I wonder what is the approved alternative for grilled vegetables.
GRILLADE, noun, feminine
A. The act of grilling. "One also had to endure the smell of the kitchen, the heavy scent of wine in the sauces, the nauseating grilling of onions in the frying pan" (HUYSMANS, Marthe, 1876, p. 62).
Yes it does, as shown by your own link. You translated the "A" part, which is the general definition. There is a "B" part dedicated to the definitions in the cooking domain, "CUISINE" is even spelled out in uppercase letters. The definitions there all refer to meat or fish.
Also anecdotally as a French native, grillade = meat for me.
Indeed ! But as pointed by the sample I provided, you can use that word to refer to the act of grilling vegetables, so there is no point in being overly particular about the use of the word grillade. If a word was already reserved for the designation of grilled vegetables, on the model of bus/car or train/tramway (ie /within a city/ vs /between cities/), I'd accept your argument.
However what's discussed here is a case of legislators deciding what shape language should take, not usage !
"grill" in France is used as an anglicism, ie. words imported straight from English, with the meaning sometime distorted beyond recognition. Here, it's used to imply that something have a flavor somewhat related to barbecue meat, say potatoes chips with "grill flavor".
> "grill" in France is used as an anglicism, ie. words imported straight from English, with the meaning sometime distorted beyond recognition
That’s not that simple. The English word "grill" comes from the French "gril", a word that has been in used for more than a millenary. Only the orthography "grill" with two "l"s comes from English, but the rest is plain old French. It also makes sense: "gril" comes from "grille", which also gave "griller".
The French name for "beefsteak tomato" is indeed "Beef tomate" or "Bif tomate" but the French word for "beef" is "bœuf", so there's really no conflict there.
> I need to see if I can make spicy bean burgers at home — they were a thing back in the UK that I can't seem to find since moving.
I wouldn't call myself a vegetarian per se, but I've explored more foods without meat in the past years, and it's been quite pleasant! Actually, even when I was a student, this burger chain that we have here had what they call VEKE burgers, which were also somehow cheaper than burgers with meat, and also tasty: https://www.hesburger.com/products/hamburgers/veke---cheese-...
I actually tried making some bean burgers myself recently - which went pretty okay for an experiment. You do need something that adds a bit of a crunch in the recipe though, like some bread crumbs on the outside, and things can be a bit dry depending on how you make them, so adding onion, tomato, cucumbers etc. to the burger itself in ample amounts is also a good idea!
Can't really talk about France or the naming idea in the article, but exploring all sorts of foods is nice! Even the plant based "milk" varieties are interesting, especially since regular lactose free milk isn't something you always find over here, at least not in all stores.
this is going overboard. France has already made a national decree [1] stating that terminology specific to sectors traditionally associated with meat and fish to designate products not belonging to the animal kingdom.
I'm not sure what this adds to the applicable law already. But then again, we love creating new laws.
It's interesting because I saw an article just yesterday where someone was taking corporations to task for misleading or fudged information on packaging. Yet it seems many people are opposed to this. Curious
Vegans motivated by ethical arguments think that tricking consumers is a lesser evil than eating meat, therefore the ends justify the means. This explains their apparent hypocrisy.
Except that people aren't tricking consumers. Vegan meats are clearly labeled; usually in their own section of the grocery store.
The only instance where manufacturers try to trick consumers are hamburgers that are part meat and part soy; and those aren't vegan or vegetarian to being with.
> Vegan meats are clearly labeled; usually in their own section of the grocery store.
Not so at many stores and with many brands. Trader joes has tricked me two or three times, now I know to read all product packages carefully. [This is the point where you insult me for shopping while groggy and not paying close enough attention!]
If these food producers aren't being deceptive, then the law won't effect them or their bottom line. But of course they are, so it will.
Lol non of the fake meat companies are in it for "ethics", what are you on about?
I'm not convinced this is entirely meritless either. The packages of meat-replacements are usually right next to the ground beef in my store, and it's not trivial to pick them out from the just "Artisanal" ground beef products, unless you pick up and carefully read each and every package. Maybe they need a protected word they can use to clearly self label as a meatless product.
gustavus made a remark about internet commenters, not vegan food companies, and I responded to that with a remark about internet commenters, not vegan food companies. Obviously the companies are in it for profit, who said otherwise?
I'll reiterate my point since you missed it by a mile the first time: Ethical vegan internet commenters defend deceptive branding in this context but not others because they think tricking meat eaters into eating vegan food is an end that justifies the means.
It's because it's not coming from a well-meaning place.
If clearing up confusion around naming was really the goal they'd put forward legislation stopping people from calling a chicken sandwich a "chicken burger".
Now that distinction is definitely lost on this non-native speaker. Mostly because we have burger as a loan word and a sandwich is simply not defined in German, and only used sparingly. (Except a classic Club Sandwich, I guess.)
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. No one is opposed to restricting companies from making vegetarian food from tricking consumers; mainly because that's not actually happening. People are opposed to restricting the established names for vegetarian foods. It comes across as a ploy from the meat industry to try to restrict competitors.
France is a bizarre country to me. In the US, they are often the archetypal left-wing country in terms of economic policy and the size of the state, but culturally and socially they seem very conservative. Somehow a country which has its own English-language Wikipedia article for threesomes is also a country that aligns with Texas on its opinions toward meat
France has democracy do they not? They voted for the government. This also isn't a new thing; France has been legislating what people are allowed to wear in what contexts for a while. Ironically, in many contexts you are required to wear less clothes, such as at the beach or in a swimming pool. It's a kind of "liberalism, or else" type policy
Democracy is not a binary thing, that’s here or not here. It’s a spectrum. Yes, last time the French people had to vote and had the choice between someone they really didn’t want and someone they didn’t really want but had no choice they voted for the later. Does that make every governement decree an expression of the French people as a whole? Of course not. Decrees like this tell you more about the political power of the meat industry than anything about the culture of the country.
> Ironically, in many contexts you are required to wear less clothes, such as at the beach or in a swimming pool.
Citation needed. There isn’t any law requiring you to wear less clothes on the beach; it would be ridicule and contrary to the Constitution.
turns out you are correct about beaches, the french beach burkini ban was a local ordinance which was thrown out. However, swimming pools still require less clothing:
> Clothing rules in public pools in France are strict, for what authorities say are reasons of hygiene: caps are required, and baggy swim trunks or other voluminous clothing is generally banned. Wetsuits are not allowed in many pools too, as are some sun-protection suits.
Officially this is a matter of public health, but it's a pseudo-scientific law that likely has more to do with French culture and national identity as a more libertine place (or else)
> Officially this is a matter of public health, but it's a pseudo-scientific law that likely has more to do with French culture and national identity as a more libertine place (or else)
It’s a law from 1981 that says that for hygiene reasons bathing clothes must adhere to your body. Burkinis were invented in 2004.
"So far a small number of women have been fined (€38 in Cannes - £33; $43) for wearing a burkini on the beach at Cannes."
What an awful place to live. I was commenting with a friend the other day who was claiming the old "food in Europe is better for you because they have more regulations". I countered that they also have the most regulations about all the ways a website has to harass you with absolutely Zero (0) legitimate justification, so why should we expect their food regulations to be any better founded? He seemed to find that line of reasoning well founded.
>regulations about all the ways a website has to harass you
For the hundredth time, the regulations do NOT tell companies to harass you. They do that to make you angry at the laws that prevent them from data harvesting you to the extent they do in the US. It's that simple. You can comply with GDPR and the cookies law 100% without ever asking the user anything.
If a website is asking you for consent for anything, they're trying to treat you as cattle they can harvest data from for sale. That's the only reason. That or utterly incompetent lawyers.
It's more common that they're using the data themselves for tracking (product suggestions, advertising), selling it isn't as common for most sites. These 3rd party publisher websites don't usually harvest enough data to make it worth selling. Usually, they're the ones buying data to enrich their tracking set
But that data isn't necessary to run their business, hence the restrictions on doing so. It really really really isn't hard to comply with these rules without asking the user for consent, all you have to do is not collect everything you can about them.
Any website who asks you about cookies or tracking thinks they are collecting more information about you than they need to do their work. Meanwhile the EU has signaled through lax enforcement that they aren't interested in going after anyone but the largest players, and seemingly more for recovering lost tax than shutting down their data collection.
There is no justification for the cookie and tracking prompts. By definition, they are direct evidence of a website trying to track you in ways they aren't allowed.
Try opening https://www.lemonde.fr/, then try opening https://www.lemonde.fr/en. Which is a miserable experience with a ton of added hassle that provides you 0 actual benefit, and which is a normal website that gives you the information you want and gets out of the damn way?
Also fun fact: just navigating to https://www.lemonde.fr/ already sets the cookies (which don't matter at all and are a 100% non-issue to everyone else in the world) without you interacting with the popup at all.
All in all a complete shit show. Kids of today will never know what it's like to go to a website and just. see. content.
In some platonic wet dream, perhaps. In the real world, the user experience on basically every website degraded significantly, and the preexisting tools to solve the supposed problem better than they could have (clearing all cookies on session termination) just makes things worse. So they broke the real fix, made life worse for everyone, and made people much more willing to "Accept" whatever is asked of them so they can just move on with their damn life.
Also, never underestimate the ability of lawyers to be utterly incompetent.
Ok, still the folks were religiouslly harassed then and maybe getting some money back years later doesn't change that. And the point still stands for swimming pools, which is basically the same.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/21/europe/grenoble-france-burkin...
The decree has been overthrown after two days. That it took years to get the €11 back is another issue.
> And the point still stands for swimming pools, which is basically the same.
There’s no point here; for hygiene reasons you are required to wear clothes close to the body in public swimming pools. As I wrote in another comment, this is a law from 1981, while the burkini was only invented in 2004. You are free to wear religious clothing (some do), but it has to respect the basic hygiene measures.
A precinct where reason prevailed over tradition would recognize that new legislation is required to adapt to changing demographics and find a way to enforce cleanliness without infringing on religious freedom. (Off the top of my head: offer certified-clean burkinis for rent.)
A precinct where tradition prevails over reason would find "ah-ha!" gotchas from over 40 years ago as justification for their inherit sexism/racism and refuse to budge on them (so long as only the "inferior" race/gender/religion is affected).
> A precinct where reason prevailed over tradition would recognize that new legislation is required to adapt to changing demographics and find a way to enforce cleanliness without infringing on religious freedom.
Various spokepersons from the French muslim community have repeatedly said that it’s ridiculous to make a controversy out of the burkini because virtually nobody wears it. When the numbers are so anecdotical that estimates are impossible to make it’s hard to speak about "changing demographics".
Have you considered that, perhaps, virtually nobody wears it because the police will stop you on the beach and fine you for wearing it?? (As has actually happened, indicating that people do in fact wear it. And have been dramatically disincentivized form doing so.)
Also, "the people who might disagree with me probably don't actually exist" is the lowest form of argument, combining it with an unlawful activity is rhetorically ridiculous. You are saying, quite literally: "People haven't been free do this, and they (mostly) haven't done it, therefore they (all) don't want to do it, so we shouldn't let them be free to do it".
> Have you considered that, perhaps, virtually nobody wears it because the police will stop you on the beach and fine you for wearing it
It would be illegal for the police to do so, so no that’s not a valid argument.
> Also, "the people who might disagree with me probably don't actually exist" is the lowest form of argument, combining it with an unlawful activity is rhetorically ridiculous. You are saying, quite literally: "People haven't been free do this, and they (mostly) haven't done it, therefore they (all) don't want to do it, so we shouldn't let them be free to do it".
All I’m saying is that people who know the matter say this is an anecdotical thing.
If you don’t have anything more to bring to the discussion than pure rhetoric and straw man fallacies I don’t think it’s worse pursuing. You haven’t provided any evidence of what you say, only personal suppositions-- it’s fine, but you should review them when the reality doesn’t match. Have a good day.
Your entire argument is appeal to false (and made up, and un attributed) authority. I've been fully based on real world happenings and provided plenty of documentation on them, for you to simply turn around and claim they didn't exist. Hilarious that you even go so far as to claim the sources I already provided don't exist.
Also your entire argument is "the Government would never do something illegal! That'd be wrong!"
But I don't really care about France, the French, or their burkinis. Good day.
I like that legislation, and I like we have real democracy at work here. Not the kind you have in the US where a loud minority imposes abstruse rules on everybody.
Interesting take because to me this seems like typical consumer protection law, which is usually associated with the left.
I think this particular implementation is going too far but I can definitely empathize...
I'm ashamed to admit it but I was fooled more than once into buying plant-based burgers. My grocery store puts them next to real meat, the packaging has the words "beef" and "burger" on it and they're larger font than "plant", so in a hurry I got confused.
I think the US is the outlier in this regard. To the rest of the world, having a functional government with good education and healthcare is a baseline, not something to be feared. Only the US and its cultural cousins (the UK, Australia, etc.) have this weird idea that good government is too "big".
France is where the left–right political divide comes from. Supporters of the king sat on the right, and republicans on the left.
It was just a means of avoiding each other while occupying seats. It's nonsense that people actually believe political opinions align to a single dimensional spectrum.
If that was the case, the US would be the bizarre country because it has no right wing: there are no supporters of monarchy.
The issue is that my wife hates the flavor and texture of meat; and the "plant meat" industry is really trying to shove traditional vegan proteins out of the way.
It's a familiar refrain for us to show up at a restaurant that used to have a tasty veggie burger, only to have the staff complain that it's been replaced with a "plant meat" that, to my wife who doesn't like meat, is just gross.
IMO: I think "plant meat" is an idea that's ready to die. I'd rather eat real vegetarian food when I eat plants, and cultivated animal tissue as sustainable meat.
My wife and I are both vegan and we eat all the plant meats. I'm the opposite from you: If I go to a restaurant with a veggie burger and it literally tastes like vegetables I'll probably never go there again. I tried the veggie burger at shake shack, and it's definitely not for me. I go there for the fries only now, until they get a beyond or impossible burger
I like both, but on different days. Sometimes I feel like lentil /mushroom burgers (I am good at making them nicely, but they just don’t have the same texture or taste as meat which is fine; I often like them better than the meat ones) and sometimes I want beyond or impossible or vegetarische slager.
>> Meat tastes good, I'm not gonna lie. I just don't wanna kill animals
This is very common. A lot of people just keep that part of the meat industry out of sight, out of mind. I'm not sure which is worse, ignoring the killing or accepting we are omnivores and making substitute foods.
Imagine Hanibal crafting some very convincing plant based fake people :-) I'm not sure that's an argument for or against...
I'd like to think you're in the minority since everyone in my vegetarian/vegan crowd hates or is neutral to meat-looking/tasting plant food. Of course, it may just be selection bias on my side.
Fake vegan meat sometimes manage to mimick the appearance from far away but it never taste like meat.
I am not vegan (and yes I accept we are predators and kill other animal to eat their cadavers), but I also do like some of the vegan substitutes...but for the very reason they taste differently. They don't even taste close, they are all very far and taste closer to a lix of lentils and chickpeas than any meat.
And I don't need them to be named like meat, I am buying them because they are not.
Agreed, there's so much interesting vegetarian cuisine out there to take inspiration from, it's kind of a shame that they fall back to either just plain veggies or imitating meat.
Completely disagree. I don't eat meat, personally, but purely out of ethical reasons. I love the taste and the mouth feel and the dishes it's usually paired with and I'm glad that there are vegetarian and vegan options that try to replicate this.
I like that you and the parent comment have valid reasons for liking or disliking the same type of food. The article is not about that, its about labeling and the meaning of words.
Which basically means that unless a new word is invented to differentiate between the two types of vegetarian options, then this will lead to more confusion (is this dish on the menu a meat simulation, or a traditional vegetable dish that has its own characteristic and does not try to emulate meat?)
> and the "plant meat" industry is really trying to shove traditional vegan proteins out of the way.
I mean, you can't push beans and tofu out of the way, but you also can't make a big profit on them, so it's natural that companies are investing in highly processed foods; not sure what else you expected? It's great to have options to eat vegan junk food, not everyone wants to eat 100% WFPB every day.
Which brings us to the point of the article; should we be supporting that? Not everyone wants to exercise either, but should we be supportive of that by calling them "motivationally challenged individuals"?
Different strokes for different folks. An idea doesn't need to die because it's not to your taste. Ideally both "pure" veggie burgers and "plant based meat" burgers would be available.
I agree. I think a lot of fake-meat options are trying really hard to produce the meat flavour that they end up actually making food that doesn't taste super great, but tastes somewhat close to meat... what I would prefer is food that tastes exceptionally good, even if the cost is that it doesn't taste like meat.
There's not enough pure veggie dishes out there. I've been turning to Indian cuisine because they're the few options that don't have their entire veggie menu be "fake burger, fake hot dog, fake chicken nuggets, salad". It's like we can't conceive of eating a meal unless it has meat in it.
What if widespread production and consumption of "plant meat" significantly reduced the production and consumption of animal products? Wouldn't that be an acceptable tradeoff for not getting your favorite veggie burger?
I don't mind "plant meats" too much on occasion. I am a bit frustrated that they've largely displaced all other vegetarian options at restaurants and stores though. Bean/veggie burgers have mostly stopped existing, replaced with obscenely expensive and ultra-processed "plant meat" burgers.
Maybe a more rational, objective argument against "plant meats" is that they are usually heavily processed food. Once in a while, they are unlikely to make any problem, but as a daily staple it's not ideal, health wise.
I think there's absolutely a place for imitation meat amongst ethics- or eco-conscious consumers who enjoy the flavor and feel of it.
However, as an omnivore myself, I have no interest in the imitations I've tried— Beyond's fake beef has an oily odor that is extremely off-putting to me. When I want a hamburger, I want beef, and if I don't want beef then I'll have a falafel sandwich or tempe or roasted zucchini or slices of crisped up tofu or whatever other "authentically" vegetarian options.
I personally agree with you -- as a vegetarian I'd rather eat a great black bean burger than some highly processed industrial fake meat product -- but I don't think plant based meats are going anywhere. Most people have no problem eating highly processed foods, and a lot even want that texture and flavor. People are out here drinking oat-flavored canola oil, and paying extra for it, after all.
> These rules won't be a problem for anybody except those trying to trick consumers.
But companies selling "vegan sausages" or "vegetable steak" aren’t trying to trick anyone, they just sell an alternative to a common meat-based product and so call it that way. It would be like forbidding e-cigarettes to be called "cigarettes" just because they’re not the same thing.
We have the same idiotic legislation in Germany, forbidding "confusing" language like calling oat milk "milk", because clearly only liquid squeezed from an utter constitutes milk (don't mind coconut milk..) and so producers have to call it oat drink, even though every single consumer just calls it oat milk anyway.
Some other regulations exist for meat-like products, clearly put in place by protectionism of the dairy and meat industry under the guise of "not confusing consumers". Oh well.
I see no problem in "oat drink" vs. "oat milk". To me there's a difference in it, even if we have words like "Scheuermilch" (scouring milk) and milk also has a definition as "milky white opaque substances" which an oat drink is.
No, I'm being fair towards those who are in favor of "oat milk". But I have zero issues with it being forced to be named "oat drink" and I prefer it this way. In my case because they taste completely different. An oat drink requires added sugar for it to even be tasty to me.
Oat milk companies aren't trying to trick consumers. We drink Coconut milk and the box has two big coconuts in the middle. The only mention of milk is relatively small text towards the bottom of the box.
The vegetarian sausage/patties and similar sorts of products do the reverse. They mimick meat products as closely as they can and relegate the vegetarian part to the small text. It's a basic truth in advertising/fraud thing. Obviously not a mind reader but sure looks like these companies are at some level trying to trick people into buying their product.
Yesterday I was confronted with a "Leverwurst", where "Leberwurst" (liverwurst) is the one with meat. Initially I thought it is an odd typo for an advertising effect until I realized which section I'm in.
Vegan products enjoy a healthy markup, and vegan stuff sells nicely. No producer is relegating the fact that their product is vegan to some fine print in the hopes to trick someone trying to buy animal meat. Has anyone ever mistaken vegan meat alternatives for the real deal?
That is such a straw-man, c'mon. If you're that allergic, you better look at the ingredients list and don't just hope for the best when glancing at the label, especially in the US of A.
If you have had an allergy your whole life, and never once had any meat product contained that allergen, then are you really going to check the packaging?
What if you thought you were getting the same thing you always get, assuming the packaging only changed slightly?
Its not a strawman. Calling plants steak, ribs (see TFA) or even burgers is just playing word games in an area that actually means something to people. I'd say Amy argument in favor of that is some kind of BS argument. To be clear, I have no issue with the products, just the deliberately deceptive naming.
Any mention of "Milk" is like the 4th or 5th most prominent text. This is clearly a product that is not cow milk and doesn't want to be mistaken for cow milk.
Right below it says "Plant based Frankfurters" in a font only slightly smaller than the rest. No-where does it mention meat, there is no animal printed on it and plant-based is mentioned twice, right on the front label, once in small, once in medium letters. I mean, what do you expect? I'm all for producers not fooling customers, but compared to really egregious things you sometimes see in the US, your example doesn't strike me as deceptive at all.
It's literally called "meat and cheese co". You have to look above the branded and bold FIELD ROAST to see that it's a "plant based meat and cheese co".
You've gone from:
>Vegan products enjoy a healthy markup, and vegan stuff sells nicely. No producer is relegating the fact that their product is vegan to some fine print
To quibbling about whether clearly secondary text counts as "fine print". It's not an honest argument. To further illustrate, I never said "fine print". I said "small text". You're trying to shift my goal posts in order to find some fig leaf to be right.
I'm not quibbling, and disagree with the notion that I'm doing dishonest discourse. I merely disagree with you that the package as you have linked it is deceptive, and that it is in my opinion not in need of further regulation. What does an appropriate packaging for a plant based sausage look like to you?
>disagree with the notion that I'm doing dishonest discourse. I merely disagree with you that the package as you have linked it is deceptive
Nah, the chain was:
Me: They mimick meat products as closely as they can and relegate the vegetarian part to the small text
You: Vegan products enjoy a healthy markup, and vegan stuff sells nicely. No producer is relegating the fact that their product is vegan to some fine print in the hopes to trick someone trying to buy animal meat
Anyone engaging in honest debate would look at the package I linked and see that it doesn't look like anything you describe. They also wouldn't say "No-where does it mention meat" and then completely ignore the fact that "meat and cheese co" is on the package when pointed out.
> Has anyone ever mistaken vegan meat alternatives for the real deal?
Yes, I was in Portugal this summer for vacations. I don't know the language and was shopping for groceries. In the meat aisle I saw a package and recognized the word for "sausage" in big so just bought some. Later at home I discovered that it was a vegan product.
I did not really mind, but the packaging felt quite deceptive. Obviously it's not an every day occurrence to shop in a foreign country, and it would have been solved if I carefully analyzed the products I pick; but I just wanted to get some groceries quickly. There were no illustrations that would hint to a vegetarian composition.
I think the vegan stuff is taking the brunt of what the industry has done to other traditional ingredients. Replacing sugar with Sucralose or HFCS (it's hidden and not made clear). Replacing butter with palm oil. Randomly adding MSG and preservatives where they can get away with it.
I am not some sort of traditionalist but the food industry hasn't regulated itself on things that deeply annoy consumers (given how retail shelf stocking works, consumers aren't the ones buying from food producers directly - it's the megastores). Absent shaking up retail business model, we need regulation so consumers' needs are represented.
A slight tangent, but does anyone remember that fake commercial for Wood Milk? I feel like it was some ridiculous attempt by milk companies to make people think oat milk or almond milk is gross, but it just made me want some wood milk.
Also was this actress they used just laughing at how ridiculous the milk companies were being or was she genuinely anti-milk? Not that it particularly matters.
The part that bothered me was the grocery store I typically frequent reduced the shelf space for actual meat with the vegetarian meat product. Luckily, it only lasted for 6 months before the lack of sales meant removing them.
Sorry that this is somewhat of a tangent, but in the supermarkets I frequent the fact that we're talking about "patties" already makes it like 75% (or more) probable it's plant-based because they're kinda rare and everyone just buys ground beef to make burger patties.
If you are going to barbeque for a dozen or more people, the pre-made patties are much more convenient, particularly because they will take the same amount of time to cook.
So if that's a thing you only do every once in a while, you are a prime candidate for confusing advertising. You don't already know what the thing you want looks like, and you probably weren't expecting the ambiguity, because "meat" has meant one thing for thousands of years.
True, but the larger quantity of "unknown" stuff I buy, the closer I look, usually ;)
But yeah, that's why said it less of an argument, more of a fun fact. I honestly couldn't tell you if the regular supermarket I usually shop at has patties, I think not. The large one usually has everything though.
You may have a point regarding milk, but not for the meat related words in the article like steak and ribs. I can accept that "burger" has probably been generalized already.
The real issue is making the plant stuff look like the animal stuff and then naming it that way. That's just deceptive. In that regard most of the "milks" are fake.
There is also an issue around food allergies, which can actually kill someone. Don't forget to tell people your nut-based milk isn't just dairy. It's sad that we now have to ask what's in everything because the words are starting to mean nothing.
I'm not sure why people think words are starting to change. "Almond milk" for example is a venerable term about 800 years old. I attribute this furor to a lack of English skills, but maybe there's a political angle as well, with people regurgitating the latest political rage.
Various nut and grain milks have been around since the 1200's, and always called 'milk'. It's strange that the objection is only made now, 800 years later.
Makes sense. Twice I bought vegan products thinking they weren't fake. They need to be clearly labeled.
To people who think otherwise, how would you like it if I sold real sausages as "vegan sausages"? If you can call plants "bacon", you should be able to call meat "vegan", right?
Then it's probably a case for a complaint to your local consumer protection org. It's not about calling it "sausage" without a qualifier. To most people sausage only describes the shape and you need to read the ingredients anyway, but of course if it's "beef sausage" it shouldn't have pork and "vegan sausage" should indicate no animal products. I don't see how common sense should not prevail here?
I'm not a vegetarian but I like to eat fake meat burgers and stuff like that, and it's really weird to me how sensitive some people get about this. I have friends who get genuinely mad that they call fake meat products "meat" because "it's not meat and they should call it something else".
Nobody seems to actually be confused into thinking these products came from an animal, though, and the labeling does not seem to be designed to fool anyone. If the taste is designed to mimic a cow burger, then calling it a burger is genuinely descriptive.
When I point this out though, people just switch gears and start making up other arguments instead. The emotional response seems to be coming from somewhere else, but I haven't figured out where.
Often the root cause ia cognitive dissonance. A large portion of the populace doesn't want to be reminded where their meat actually comes from, and prefers to not think about it. Confronting them with the notion of non-animal "meat" forces them to face that dissonance.
My family has even introduced new words for some of these meatless products such as facon for the plant-based bacon, soysage for the plant-based sausage, and not dogs for the plant-based hot dogs. We've been eating these products for decades, along with the "traditional" vegetarian proteins.
Meanwhile, hamburgers aren't burgers made from ham, and milk is a word used to describe a liquid available from several animal and plant sources.
People are losing their minds over trivial nonsense. It's the phenomenon of our time.
Many people don't question why we have words for things, and speak as if there's some word-particle or word-god that determined what all words mean, as opposed to words having uses that grow and evolve as humans grow and evolve. There will always be that form of concrete thinking, but I think the sort of rote-style learning in American schools is in part responsible for otherwise intelligent individuals believing that American cheese is a lie because "it's not cultured therefor it's not cheese!"
Perhaps I don't care enough either way. Even if the metaphysics of language different such that words could only ever have one very specific immutable meaning, I can't imaging caring enough that I would object to something being referred to as "oat milk."
To be fair, American "cheese" isn't legally able to sold as "cheese" in America. That's a fun enough piece of trivia that it gets shared a lot.
There is something to be said for basic truth in advertising law, though. There is a fundamental difference in quality between what meets the requirements for "ice cream", "frozen dairy dessert", and "frozen dessert".
> Meanwhile, hamburgers aren't burgers made from ham
Right? Who wouldn't go for some city-raised[1] pork?
(A clarification, to reduce confusion for readers not well-acquainted with Western meat dishes: Hamburgers are named after the city of Hamburg, and are always made from beef.)
> Nobody seems to actually be confused into thinking these products came from an animal, though, and the labeling does not seem to be designed to fool anyone.
Multiple people here have, presumably because it is
I agree. The poor, poor consumers are confused and we need to help them. We should ban all euphemisms and metaphors in food. Sausage? No, leftover-meat-and-cartilage-stuffed-pork-intestines.
On a serious note, an obvious solution to prevent consumers from being confused in their tiny little precious heads is a EU-wide standard vegan/vegetarian label and make it mandatory in any vegetarian analogues. But of course this isn't about consumers at all, no one ever bought a vegan patty thinking they were buying beef.
> But of course this isn't about consumers at all, no one ever bought a vegan patty thinking they were buying beef.
I bought vegan sausages thinking they were real. They were placed next to real sausages and I thought I should try something new.
I'm sure geniuses like you always read the full packaging before buying but poor untermenschen like me need protection from capitalists who sell us vegan poison.
But of course you would oppose that, because if consumers made informed choices hardly anyone would buy vegan stuff.
It's the reason people sell shoes labeled Niko or Abibas.
That's why I said vegan food should be clearly labeled. Everyone benefits. Vegans love the labels and people that don't read what they are buying can avoid being mislead by their own negligence.
It's simple Doublespeak. This has nothing to do with protecting consumers. It has everything to do with vegan products eating into the animal-agri industries bottom line, and them using every cheap political trick in the book to slow that.
They'll be demanding that they take a separate section in the back of the supermarket next. Then, lobbying to make sure that a certain percentage of plants grown must go to animal agriculture for "tradition and heritage" or some such shite. I'm sure banning plant-based meat alternatives is somewhere on the wish list too.
Do you have evidence they are eating into the bottom line? It's my impression that these two classifications of food sell to very different markets. I myself would never buy any vegan "meat" product.
Auf Wiedersehen Schnitzel: Meat consumption hits record low in Germany
More and more Germans are swapping meat products for plant-based proteins, according to Germany's Ministry for Agriculture, but not everyone is ready to give them up.
Today 10 per cent of Germans opt for plant-based foods compared to six per cent in 2018.
I don't have any numbers, but most of the advertising I'm seeing for these products aren't targeting vegans, but rather meat eaters. The basic message seems to be "all the yummy flavour of meat, without any of the guilt or ethical quandaries", and "you don't have to go full vegan, you can make an impact with just 2 vegetarian meals a week, with the help of our delicious products". If they're not having an impact on the bottom line, it is not for lack of trying
> How poor would someone's lateral thinking skills need to be that they can't manage to square "vegetarian meat" on the fly?
Of course you have to insult the victims so we don't show up, but I don't care if people think I'm a moron.
The botulism outbreak of the 1920 gave rise to the US's food and safety system. People called those who consumed those cans and died idiots too, because contaminated cans swell up, so imagine how "how poor would someone's lateral thinking skills need to be that they can't manage" to figure out that swollen cans are dangerous.
But that incident led to better food safety. Society advances with every man that gets called an idiot.
But fake meat is just food, and equally, if not more, safe than the meat you intended to buy. Sometimes I wanted to buy beans and bought mushy peas instead; oops, my mistake. I just made a soup and called it a day. People that have dietary restrictions are rarely in danger becsause we actually pay close attention to the products we buy.
I'm still hopeful about the promise of plant-based meat products.
The rainforest is burning (or rather it's being burned) so that the world can have more and more beef. We cannot sustain the entire world having a Western diet of way too much animal protein. And I say that as a guy who loves a good steak. We need to cut back, and we'd be healthier if we did.
I truly want to see a world where plant-based is cheaper and tastes even better than real meat.
Why oh why does France want to fight this? No one is being 'fooled'. It's just a meat industry lobbying law to fight competition.
I certainly don't want rainforests to be destroyed, but what's the evidence that the the world can't sustain eating a diet of "way too much" protein?
> We need to cut back, and we'd be healthier if we did.
Why do you think that meat is the problem when it comes to health?
> I truly want to see a world where plant-based is cheaper and tastes even better than real meat.
I would not object to this, so long as the meat substitute is also as nutritious as real meat, or at least less nutritionally-offensive than current meat substitutes. Current generation plant-based meat are not only less nutritious than real meat but contain ingredients that people have no business consuming if they can avoid it.
I know this isn't quite what you meant, but I know a dog by the name Chorizo, and every time I see a soy chorizo in a supermarket, I can't help but imagine him in a sombrero introducing himself in Spanish.
I agree with the actual point you're making — though I can imagine a DnD-style alignment chart with one axis for substance purity and the other for functional equivalence, such a chart has both soy milk and peanut butter in the "functional purity, ingredient rebel" corner.
This quote puts it quite succinctly: “Do people confuse motor oil, olive oil and jojoba oil? I think not. No more than they confuse vegan steak from beef steak.”
The same thing as in France has happened in the UK. Social media was inundated with tweed-wearing, flat-cap touting, Jeremy Clarkson idolizers who seemed utterly outraged at the idea of someone using "sausage" to describe something shaped and tasting like a sausage. Some so frothing berserk over the idea, that you'd think that plant-based food producers were planning to take these people's children in the night and make sausages out of them. Utterly unhinged.
It's Orwellian newspeak in a new form; just driven by lobbyists and think-tanks from the animal agriculture industry, rather than the Party. The language came organically and is being clamped down artificially. It's pathetic, and I despise the fact our supposedly "liberal" governments are backing into this pressure. People should be able to call their food whatever they want provided the ingredients are included on the package. No one needs "protecting" from this, and the value-add to society is less than the cost of ink that went into signing the policy; probably less that the computing power required to type this comment.
I think that it makes the most sense to use existing truth in advertising laws to decide on a case by case basis. If a product's branding is setup to create confusion like that, then I think it's reasonable to sanction the company. A similar gray area I've seen is a vegan chicken product called something like "chikn"; overall I doubt it confused people much, but I wouldn't be opposed to the government telling them to name it something else.
However, I don't think this sort of law that tries to proscribe for every situation is needed. The majority of vegan meats that I've seen have been obvious.
Or at least a product in Finland had to go from "voi"mariini to "oiva"riini a years ago. From butter to fine. And this product was mix of butter and margarine. (BTW, for my taste superior to butter).
The language has stagnated in many areas. Meat is flesh.
Maybe we can call vegetable products that try to emulate meat: veat, in English anyway. There's probably already a term that has fallen out of common usage, maybe we can look it up.
It seems to me that there's a long history of using "meat" and "flesh" for things that don't come from animals. For example, the common name for the edible solid and liquid parts of coconuts are the coconut meat and milk respectively. More broadly, it's common to refer to the pulpy edible part of fruits as the fruit's "meat" or "flesh" respectively.
Other examples of food names that could be misleading or where changed for marketing purposes: orange roughy, Chilean sea bass, headcheese, mountain oysters, crab sticks, fruit leather, black pudding, and astronaut ice cream.
There's already legislation that says e.g. if you advertise "strawberry yogurt" you must include actual strawberry, otherwise it has to be "strawberry flavor yogurt".
Should manufacturers be able to create entirely synthetic food that doesn't contain the core ingredient you might otherwise think it does?
> Do people confuse motor oil, olive oil and jojoba oil? I think not. No more than they confuse vegan steak from beef steak.
No they don't confuse them because there's nothing to confuse, they _are_ all oil, just different types.
Plant meat however, is not meat. I can absolutely imagine someone confusing vegan steak as real steak, because I see people do far stupider things on a weekly basis.
But my question is: if they don't care at all to look at what they're buying, why do they care that they bought a vegan steak? It's still their fault and it's still food.
> if they don't care at all to look at what they're buying
If you mean they don't care enough to check what they're buying, I'd say they care, and have "checked" to a _reasonable_ degree. This is the crux of this entire issue: The "reasonable" part is moving to small print, where as people are used to the words "steak" and "meat" meaning something different to what marketers are using them for now.
> This quote puts it quite succinctly: “Do people confuse motor oil, olive oil and jojoba oil? I think not. No more than they confuse vegan steak from beef steak.”
I've met people here in France who did not know what "vegan" means. They also have the word "végétalien" (as opposed to "végétarien"), even less known. So "vegan meat" might not register with a lot of folks.
A lot of commenters here don't seem to get it. France has a strong culture, and a strong food culture in particular. They've determined as a society that they wish to protect it and therefore names of things, matter.
Same discussion in Germany and I wouldn't say we have a strong (food) culture, surely not to the same level as France. This is simply protectionism by the food lobby, I know zero people who take offense at calling oat milk oat milk.
This is a bit racist, but you'll likely find that those who don't get it are Americans. And it's not so much that they don't get it, but rather that _every goddamn thing is a fight with these guys_. You can't just have an opposing opinion that can be thought about, you have to be wrong, and then beaten.
I understand why vegans want meat-free foods, and I support them in that. As a meat-lover, I'm happy to admit that there are some amazing vegetable-only dishes.
I've absolutely no idea why they do their very best to pass their stuff off as meat. I've seen things in the sandwich fridge in supermarkets with massive high-contrast letters saying CHICKEN and then in a tiny, barely legible yellow on light background "plant-based" above it. This kind of nonsense doesn't help vegetarians find the non-meat options available to them, and it just annoys people who want an actual chicken sandwich and they bite into it and find something else.
Some people love the idea of plant-based food, others don't. Let them make an informed decision, don't let companies rely on trickery to sell stuff.
Of course, there's the aspect to this that it's a lot cheaper to make something out of chickpeas than meat, so they're probably relying on people buying it in error and paying what they think is a fair price for a meat sandwich rather than realising it's an over-inflated price for what the food actually is.
Plenty of vegans are vegan because of ethics but still miss the taste of meat, so substitutes make perfect sense.
It also makes sense from a recruiting standpoint. There's a cultish aspect to veganism, which is why vegans are notorious for announcing that they are vegan, and they need new members to join their religion in order to maintain their sense of superiority. Their thought is that if meat eaters can be satisfied by fake plant-based meat that they might give up eating meat and become vegan.
They want to convert more meat eaters, or at least get larger addressable markets to to try. Which is fine by me. Instead of meat industry bitching and legistlating vegetarian products co-opting meaty language, IMO meat products should just slap on MEAT BASED in big letters.
Europeans generally take food and branding seriously. There was an article recently about how some Miller High life beer, a low end beer, was not allowed into Belgium because their slogan is "The Champagne of Beers" https://www.npr.org/2023/04/22/1171460421/miller-beer-champa...
It's a cultural difference but seems like a fine one that just emphasizes food quality. People are just upset because they think vegetarians should have some special status and don't like anything that opposes such an agenda.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 236 ms ] threadI wonder what is the approved alternative for grilled vegetables.
GRILLADE, noun, feminine A. The act of grilling. "One also had to endure the smell of the kitchen, the heavy scent of wine in the sauces, the nauseating grilling of onions in the frying pan" (HUYSMANS, Marthe, 1876, p. 62).
http://stella.atilf.fr/Dendien/scripts/tlfiv5/visusel.exe?12...
Also anecdotally as a French native, grillade = meat for me.
However what's discussed here is a case of legislators deciding what shape language should take, not usage !
That’s not that simple. The English word "grill" comes from the French "gril", a word that has been in used for more than a millenary. Only the orthography "grill" with two "l"s comes from English, but the rest is plain old French. It also makes sense: "gril" comes from "grille", which also gave "griller".
- Grill => noun => Grillade
Arbitrary nonsense serves no one except those paid to put it in place.
Joking aside, I need to see if I can make spicy bean burgers at home — they were a thing back in the UK that I can't seem to find since moving.
I wouldn't call myself a vegetarian per se, but I've explored more foods without meat in the past years, and it's been quite pleasant! Actually, even when I was a student, this burger chain that we have here had what they call VEKE burgers, which were also somehow cheaper than burgers with meat, and also tasty: https://www.hesburger.com/products/hamburgers/veke---cheese-...
I actually tried making some bean burgers myself recently - which went pretty okay for an experiment. You do need something that adds a bit of a crunch in the recipe though, like some bread crumbs on the outside, and things can be a bit dry depending on how you make them, so adding onion, tomato, cucumbers etc. to the burger itself in ample amounts is also a good idea!
Can't really talk about France or the naming idea in the article, but exploring all sorts of foods is nice! Even the plant based "milk" varieties are interesting, especially since regular lactose free milk isn't something you always find over here, at least not in all stores.
Ahh I too have fond memories of Wimpy/Burger King Spicy Bean Burgers
I'm not sure what this adds to the applicable law already. But then again, we love creating new laws.
[1] (https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000045978360)
The only instance where manufacturers try to trick consumers are hamburgers that are part meat and part soy; and those aren't vegan or vegetarian to being with.
Not so at many stores and with many brands. Trader joes has tricked me two or three times, now I know to read all product packages carefully. [This is the point where you insult me for shopping while groggy and not paying close enough attention!]
If these food producers aren't being deceptive, then the law won't effect them or their bottom line. But of course they are, so it will.
I'm not convinced this is entirely meritless either. The packages of meat-replacements are usually right next to the ground beef in my store, and it's not trivial to pick them out from the just "Artisanal" ground beef products, unless you pick up and carefully read each and every package. Maybe they need a protected word they can use to clearly self label as a meatless product.
I'll reiterate my point since you missed it by a mile the first time: Ethical vegan internet commenters defend deceptive branding in this context but not others because they think tricking meat eaters into eating vegan food is an end that justifies the means.
If clearing up confusion around naming was really the goal they'd put forward legislation stopping people from calling a chicken sandwich a "chicken burger".
Democracy is not a binary thing, that’s here or not here. It’s a spectrum. Yes, last time the French people had to vote and had the choice between someone they really didn’t want and someone they didn’t really want but had no choice they voted for the later. Does that make every governement decree an expression of the French people as a whole? Of course not. Decrees like this tell you more about the political power of the meat industry than anything about the culture of the country.
> Ironically, in many contexts you are required to wear less clothes, such as at the beach or in a swimming pool.
Citation needed. There isn’t any law requiring you to wear less clothes on the beach; it would be ridicule and contrary to the Constitution.
Burkini ban: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/france-court-rules-burkin...
And in that article, on swimming pools:
> Clothing rules in public pools in France are strict, for what authorities say are reasons of hygiene: caps are required, and baggy swim trunks or other voluminous clothing is generally banned. Wetsuits are not allowed in many pools too, as are some sun-protection suits.
Officially this is a matter of public health, but it's a pseudo-scientific law that likely has more to do with French culture and national identity as a more libertine place (or else)
It’s a law from 1981 that says that for hygiene reasons bathing clothes must adhere to your body. Burkinis were invented in 2004.
Tell that to the courts.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61883529
"So far a small number of women have been fined (€38 in Cannes - £33; $43) for wearing a burkini on the beach at Cannes."
What an awful place to live. I was commenting with a friend the other day who was claiming the old "food in Europe is better for you because they have more regulations". I countered that they also have the most regulations about all the ways a website has to harass you with absolutely Zero (0) legitimate justification, so why should we expect their food regulations to be any better founded? He seemed to find that line of reasoning well founded.
For the hundredth time, the regulations do NOT tell companies to harass you. They do that to make you angry at the laws that prevent them from data harvesting you to the extent they do in the US. It's that simple. You can comply with GDPR and the cookies law 100% without ever asking the user anything.
If a website is asking you for consent for anything, they're trying to treat you as cattle they can harvest data from for sale. That's the only reason. That or utterly incompetent lawyers.
Any website who asks you about cookies or tracking thinks they are collecting more information about you than they need to do their work. Meanwhile the EU has signaled through lax enforcement that they aren't interested in going after anyone but the largest players, and seemingly more for recovering lost tax than shutting down their data collection.
There is no justification for the cookie and tracking prompts. By definition, they are direct evidence of a website trying to track you in ways they aren't allowed.
Also fun fact: just navigating to https://www.lemonde.fr/ already sets the cookies (which don't matter at all and are a 100% non-issue to everyone else in the world) without you interacting with the popup at all.
All in all a complete shit show. Kids of today will never know what it's like to go to a website and just. see. content.
Also, never underestimate the ability of lawyers to be utterly incompetent.
That was illegal and the city has been forced to reimburse the people it fined.
https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/arret-anti-burkini-la-ville-d...
> And the point still stands for swimming pools, which is basically the same.
There’s no point here; for hygiene reasons you are required to wear clothes close to the body in public swimming pools. As I wrote in another comment, this is a law from 1981, while the burkini was only invented in 2004. You are free to wear religious clothing (some do), but it has to respect the basic hygiene measures.
A precinct where tradition prevails over reason would find "ah-ha!" gotchas from over 40 years ago as justification for their inherit sexism/racism and refuse to budge on them (so long as only the "inferior" race/gender/religion is affected).
Various spokepersons from the French muslim community have repeatedly said that it’s ridiculous to make a controversy out of the burkini because virtually nobody wears it. When the numbers are so anecdotical that estimates are impossible to make it’s hard to speak about "changing demographics".
Also, "the people who might disagree with me probably don't actually exist" is the lowest form of argument, combining it with an unlawful activity is rhetorically ridiculous. You are saying, quite literally: "People haven't been free do this, and they (mostly) haven't done it, therefore they (all) don't want to do it, so we shouldn't let them be free to do it".
It would be illegal for the police to do so, so no that’s not a valid argument.
> Also, "the people who might disagree with me probably don't actually exist" is the lowest form of argument, combining it with an unlawful activity is rhetorically ridiculous. You are saying, quite literally: "People haven't been free do this, and they (mostly) haven't done it, therefore they (all) don't want to do it, so we shouldn't let them be free to do it".
All I’m saying is that people who know the matter say this is an anecdotical thing.
"People who support my side say they support my side, so my side is right". K.
Also your entire argument is "the Government would never do something illegal! That'd be wrong!"
But I don't really care about France, the French, or their burkinis. Good day.
France is simply more authoritarian. It does ban burkas but it also bans hate speech. The US bans neither.
I think this particular implementation is going too far but I can definitely empathize...
I'm ashamed to admit it but I was fooled more than once into buying plant-based burgers. My grocery store puts them next to real meat, the packaging has the words "beef" and "burger" on it and they're larger font than "plant", so in a hurry I got confused.
It was just a means of avoiding each other while occupying seats. It's nonsense that people actually believe political opinions align to a single dimensional spectrum.
If that was the case, the US would be the bizarre country because it has no right wing: there are no supporters of monarchy.
There is a significant amount of people in the US who believe that their guy should've just taken power when he lost
The issue is that my wife hates the flavor and texture of meat; and the "plant meat" industry is really trying to shove traditional vegan proteins out of the way.
It's a familiar refrain for us to show up at a restaurant that used to have a tasty veggie burger, only to have the staff complain that it's been replaced with a "plant meat" that, to my wife who doesn't like meat, is just gross.
IMO: I think "plant meat" is an idea that's ready to die. I'd rather eat real vegetarian food when I eat plants, and cultivated animal tissue as sustainable meat.
I think they have both plant meat and real veggie burgers at different shake shacks, and I always look for the real one
This is very common. A lot of people just keep that part of the meat industry out of sight, out of mind. I'm not sure which is worse, ignoring the killing or accepting we are omnivores and making substitute foods.
Imagine Hanibal crafting some very convincing plant based fake people :-) I'm not sure that's an argument for or against...
I am not vegan (and yes I accept we are predators and kill other animal to eat their cadavers), but I also do like some of the vegan substitutes...but for the very reason they taste differently. They don't even taste close, they are all very far and taste closer to a lix of lentils and chickpeas than any meat.
And I don't need them to be named like meat, I am buying them because they are not.
I mean, you can't push beans and tofu out of the way, but you also can't make a big profit on them, so it's natural that companies are investing in highly processed foods; not sure what else you expected? It's great to have options to eat vegan junk food, not everyone wants to eat 100% WFPB every day.
There's not enough pure veggie dishes out there. I've been turning to Indian cuisine because they're the few options that don't have their entire veggie menu be "fake burger, fake hot dog, fake chicken nuggets, salad". It's like we can't conceive of eating a meal unless it has meat in it.
However, as an omnivore myself, I have no interest in the imitations I've tried— Beyond's fake beef has an oily odor that is extremely off-putting to me. When I want a hamburger, I want beef, and if I don't want beef then I'll have a falafel sandwich or tempe or roasted zucchini or slices of crisped up tofu or whatever other "authentically" vegetarian options.
But companies selling "vegan sausages" or "vegetable steak" aren’t trying to trick anyone, they just sell an alternative to a common meat-based product and so call it that way. It would be like forbidding e-cigarettes to be called "cigarettes" just because they’re not the same thing.
Edit: according to this comment they do try to trick consumers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37392099
> I see no problem in "oat drink" vs "oat milk"
Sounds like you think it's ok they forced the name change to "oat drink"
> milk also has a definition as "milky white opaque substances" which an oat drink is
Sounds like you think the name should have stayed as "oat milk"
The vegetarian sausage/patties and similar sorts of products do the reverse. They mimick meat products as closely as they can and relegate the vegetarian part to the small text. It's a basic truth in advertising/fraud thing. Obviously not a mind reader but sure looks like these companies are at some level trying to trick people into buying their product.
Yes. And the mistake can be fatal given some allergies.
What if you thought you were getting the same thing you always get, assuming the packaging only changed slightly?
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Field-Roast-Refrigerated-Classic-...
They relegate any mention of not being meat to the third most prominent text.
Hilariously they even split the plant based from the meat and cheese co with the intention to fool you. The text is:
(Small text) Plant Based
(Big text) Field Roast
(Small text) Meat and cheese co
Like they're not even trying to hide that they're hiding what their product is.
ETA: Contrast with coconut milk:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Silk-Dairy-Free-Gluten-Free-Unswe...
Any mention of "Milk" is like the 4th or 5th most prominent text. This is clearly a product that is not cow milk and doesn't want to be mistaken for cow milk.
It's literally called "meat and cheese co". You have to look above the branded and bold FIELD ROAST to see that it's a "plant based meat and cheese co".
You've gone from:
>Vegan products enjoy a healthy markup, and vegan stuff sells nicely. No producer is relegating the fact that their product is vegan to some fine print
To quibbling about whether clearly secondary text counts as "fine print". It's not an honest argument. To further illustrate, I never said "fine print". I said "small text". You're trying to shift my goal posts in order to find some fig leaf to be right.
Nah, the chain was:
Me: They mimick meat products as closely as they can and relegate the vegetarian part to the small text
You: Vegan products enjoy a healthy markup, and vegan stuff sells nicely. No producer is relegating the fact that their product is vegan to some fine print in the hopes to trick someone trying to buy animal meat
Anyone engaging in honest debate would look at the package I linked and see that it doesn't look like anything you describe. They also wouldn't say "No-where does it mention meat" and then completely ignore the fact that "meat and cheese co" is on the package when pointed out.
Yes, I was in Portugal this summer for vacations. I don't know the language and was shopping for groceries. In the meat aisle I saw a package and recognized the word for "sausage" in big so just bought some. Later at home I discovered that it was a vegan product.
I did not really mind, but the packaging felt quite deceptive. Obviously it's not an every day occurrence to shop in a foreign country, and it would have been solved if I carefully analyzed the products I pick; but I just wanted to get some groceries quickly. There were no illustrations that would hint to a vegetarian composition.
I am not some sort of traditionalist but the food industry hasn't regulated itself on things that deeply annoy consumers (given how retail shelf stocking works, consumers aren't the ones buying from food producers directly - it's the megastores). Absent shaking up retail business model, we need regulation so consumers' needs are represented.
Also was this actress they used just laughing at how ridiculous the milk companies were being or was she genuinely anti-milk? Not that it particularly matters.
So if that's a thing you only do every once in a while, you are a prime candidate for confusing advertising. You don't already know what the thing you want looks like, and you probably weren't expecting the ambiguity, because "meat" has meant one thing for thousands of years.
But yeah, that's why said it less of an argument, more of a fun fact. I honestly couldn't tell you if the regular supermarket I usually shop at has patties, I think not. The large one usually has everything though.
That's super funny that you wrote that because actually "meat" comes from Old English "mete" which referred to food in general.
The real issue is making the plant stuff look like the animal stuff and then naming it that way. That's just deceptive. In that regard most of the "milks" are fake.
There is also an issue around food allergies, which can actually kill someone. Don't forget to tell people your nut-based milk isn't just dairy. It's sad that we now have to ask what's in everything because the words are starting to mean nothing.
To people who think otherwise, how would you like it if I sold real sausages as "vegan sausages"? If you can call plants "bacon", you should be able to call meat "vegan", right?
Nobody seems to actually be confused into thinking these products came from an animal, though, and the labeling does not seem to be designed to fool anyone. If the taste is designed to mimic a cow burger, then calling it a burger is genuinely descriptive.
When I point this out though, people just switch gears and start making up other arguments instead. The emotional response seems to be coming from somewhere else, but I haven't figured out where.
Meanwhile, hamburgers aren't burgers made from ham, and milk is a word used to describe a liquid available from several animal and plant sources.
People are losing their minds over trivial nonsense. It's the phenomenon of our time.
Perhaps I don't care enough either way. Even if the metaphysics of language different such that words could only ever have one very specific immutable meaning, I can't imaging caring enough that I would object to something being referred to as "oat milk."
There is something to be said for basic truth in advertising law, though. There is a fundamental difference in quality between what meets the requirements for "ice cream", "frozen dairy dessert", and "frozen dessert".
Right? Who wouldn't go for some city-raised[1] pork?
(A clarification, to reduce confusion for readers not well-acquainted with Western meat dishes: Hamburgers are named after the city of Hamburg, and are always made from beef.)
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgher_(social_class)
Multiple people here have, presumably because it is
On a serious note, an obvious solution to prevent consumers from being confused in their tiny little precious heads is a EU-wide standard vegan/vegetarian label and make it mandatory in any vegetarian analogues. But of course this isn't about consumers at all, no one ever bought a vegan patty thinking they were buying beef.
I know people who did, but this is a crime? You cannot read and think properly, maybe you should not be allowed out?
I bought vegan sausages thinking they were real. They were placed next to real sausages and I thought I should try something new.
I'm sure geniuses like you always read the full packaging before buying but poor untermenschen like me need protection from capitalists who sell us vegan poison.
But of course you would oppose that, because if consumers made informed choices hardly anyone would buy vegan stuff.
It's the reason people sell shoes labeled Niko or Abibas.
I'd be really interested in meeting someone who was legitimately confused by the notion vegetarian meat.
How poor would someone's lateral thinking skills need to be that they can't manage to square "vegetarian meat" on the fly?
They'll be demanding that they take a separate section in the back of the supermarket next. Then, lobbying to make sure that a certain percentage of plants grown must go to animal agriculture for "tradition and heritage" or some such shite. I'm sure banning plant-based meat alternatives is somewhere on the wish list too.
Auf Wiedersehen Schnitzel: Meat consumption hits record low in Germany
More and more Germans are swapping meat products for plant-based proteins, according to Germany's Ministry for Agriculture, but not everyone is ready to give them up.
Today 10 per cent of Germans opt for plant-based foods compared to six per cent in 2018.
https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(23)00347-...
Public policies and vested interests preserve the animal farming status quo at the expense of animal product analogs
Best report I can find with data listed is from the Boston Consulting Group: https://web-assets.bcg.com/a0/28/4295860343c6a2a5b9f4e343611...
> How poor would someone's lateral thinking skills need to be that they can't manage to square "vegetarian meat" on the fly?
Of course you have to insult the victims so we don't show up, but I don't care if people think I'm a moron.
The botulism outbreak of the 1920 gave rise to the US's food and safety system. People called those who consumed those cans and died idiots too, because contaminated cans swell up, so imagine how "how poor would someone's lateral thinking skills need to be that they can't manage" to figure out that swollen cans are dangerous.
But that incident led to better food safety. Society advances with every man that gets called an idiot.
You can +1 me to your lonely list, and I don't care either.
The rainforest is burning (or rather it's being burned) so that the world can have more and more beef. We cannot sustain the entire world having a Western diet of way too much animal protein. And I say that as a guy who loves a good steak. We need to cut back, and we'd be healthier if we did.
I truly want to see a world where plant-based is cheaper and tastes even better than real meat.
Why oh why does France want to fight this? No one is being 'fooled'. It's just a meat industry lobbying law to fight competition.
> We need to cut back, and we'd be healthier if we did.
Why do you think that meat is the problem when it comes to health?
> I truly want to see a world where plant-based is cheaper and tastes even better than real meat.
I would not object to this, so long as the meat substitute is also as nutritious as real meat, or at least less nutritionally-offensive than current meat substitutes. Current generation plant-based meat are not only less nutritious than real meat but contain ingredients that people have no business consuming if they can avoid it.
I agree with the actual point you're making — though I can imagine a DnD-style alignment chart with one axis for substance purity and the other for functional equivalence, such a chart has both soy milk and peanut butter in the "functional purity, ingredient rebel" corner.
https://www.tastingtable.com/893109/the-unique-history-behin...
The same thing as in France has happened in the UK. Social media was inundated with tweed-wearing, flat-cap touting, Jeremy Clarkson idolizers who seemed utterly outraged at the idea of someone using "sausage" to describe something shaped and tasting like a sausage. Some so frothing berserk over the idea, that you'd think that plant-based food producers were planning to take these people's children in the night and make sausages out of them. Utterly unhinged.
It's Orwellian newspeak in a new form; just driven by lobbyists and think-tanks from the animal agriculture industry, rather than the Party. The language came organically and is being clamped down artificially. It's pathetic, and I despise the fact our supposedly "liberal" governments are backing into this pressure. People should be able to call their food whatever they want provided the ingredients are included on the package. No one needs "protecting" from this, and the value-add to society is less than the cost of ink that went into signing the policy; probably less that the computing power required to type this comment.
However, I don't think this sort of law that tries to proscribe for every situation is needed. The majority of vegan meats that I've seen have been obvious.
Or at least a product in Finland had to go from "voi"mariini to "oiva"riini a years ago. From butter to fine. And this product was mix of butter and margarine. (BTW, for my taste superior to butter).
Maybe we can call vegetable products that try to emulate meat: veat, in English anyway. There's probably already a term that has fallen out of common usage, maybe we can look it up.
Pronounced as wheat? Pick something else please.
The soft part of a fruit or a plant that you eat is also called flesh.
The soft part of a nut that you eat from inside the shell that you is called nutmeat.
In English we've used 'meaty' words to describe plants for over a century.
Should manufacturers be able to create entirely synthetic food that doesn't contain the core ingredient you might otherwise think it does?
You should, since "sausage" is the container, not the ingredient.
No they don't confuse them because there's nothing to confuse, they _are_ all oil, just different types.
Plant meat however, is not meat. I can absolutely imagine someone confusing vegan steak as real steak, because I see people do far stupider things on a weekly basis.
If you mean they don't care enough to check what they're buying, I'd say they care, and have "checked" to a _reasonable_ degree. This is the crux of this entire issue: The "reasonable" part is moving to small print, where as people are used to the words "steak" and "meat" meaning something different to what marketers are using them for now.
I've met people here in France who did not know what "vegan" means. They also have the word "végétalien" (as opposed to "végétarien"), even less known. So "vegan meat" might not register with a lot of folks.
I've absolutely no idea why they do their very best to pass their stuff off as meat. I've seen things in the sandwich fridge in supermarkets with massive high-contrast letters saying CHICKEN and then in a tiny, barely legible yellow on light background "plant-based" above it. This kind of nonsense doesn't help vegetarians find the non-meat options available to them, and it just annoys people who want an actual chicken sandwich and they bite into it and find something else.
Some people love the idea of plant-based food, others don't. Let them make an informed decision, don't let companies rely on trickery to sell stuff.
Of course, there's the aspect to this that it's a lot cheaper to make something out of chickpeas than meat, so they're probably relying on people buying it in error and paying what they think is a fair price for a meat sandwich rather than realising it's an over-inflated price for what the food actually is.
Plenty of vegans are vegan because of ethics but still miss the taste of meat, so substitutes make perfect sense.
It also makes sense from a recruiting standpoint. There's a cultish aspect to veganism, which is why vegans are notorious for announcing that they are vegan, and they need new members to join their religion in order to maintain their sense of superiority. Their thought is that if meat eaters can be satisfied by fake plant-based meat that they might give up eating meat and become vegan.
It's a cultural difference but seems like a fine one that just emphasizes food quality. People are just upset because they think vegetarians should have some special status and don't like anything that opposes such an agenda.