On ‘Plant-Based’
I share some of the concerns of the author, but I think she&#x27;s failing to &quot;never ascribe to malice ...&quot; -- in this case &quot;when there are a myriad of other, less malicious reasons that are probably the cause.&quot;<p>I suspect the biggest reason companies are choosing &quot;plant-based&quot; (and including &quot;vegan&quot; somewhere less prominent, or maybe not at all) is because they want their products to appeal to both vegans and non-vegans.  In fact, they may be making products that <i>don&#x27;t appeal at all to vegans</i> despite <i>being</i> vegan, but would appeal to non-vegans.<p>First -- non-vegans -- if I see &quot;Vegan&quot; on something, I won&#x27;t buy it unless it would only ever <i>come</i> that way (or would typically come that way, like a salad).  If it&#x27;s a &quot;Vegan Burger&quot;, I&#x27;m assuming it&#x27;s a piece of minced paper mixed with soy&#x2F;plant oils and packed with enough herbs &quot;used for grilling&quot; to make it taste like &quot;burnt grilled something&quot; attempting to hide the fact that it tastes <i>nothing like beef</i>.  If it&#x27;s cheese, I assume it won&#x27;t melt.  It&#x27;ll kind-of melt, then it&#x27;ll start to harden, brown, and catch fire.  If it&#x27;s chicken, it&#x27;s probably not vegan, but vegetarian (which are actually very good), but if it&#x27;s <i>vegan</i>, it&#x27;ll be ... wrong ... I don&#x27;t know how to describe it.<p>I was Lacto Ovo Vegetarian for a year (for health, not puppies).  I tried <i>every single vegetarian pretend-to-be-meat</i> product that Whole Foods and Kroger sold (in 2005).  Amazingly, I found a brand of sausage that <i>almost</i> passed if you squinted at it just so.  The vegetarian (non-vegan, I think) Morningstar Farms &quot;plant-based&quot; chicken was better than the frozen &quot;real&quot; chicken equivalents a few doors over.  Everything else was inedible <i>if it was trying to be meat</i>.  I like Black Bean burgers and Portabello Mushroom burgers, but you have to season&#x2F;prepare them as that kind of product.  When they tried to turn it into &quot;something beef like&quot;, it was a disaster.<p>Fast forward to today where we have burgers that are &quot;plant-based&quot; that have the right texture, taste and even <i>bleed</i>.  I don&#x27;t know if my set is skewed or if this is normal but <i>every</i> Vegan I know (out of about 6) is vegan for their own moral, not health, reasons.  Not <i>one</i> of them liked the meat-substitute products that I liked.  They think eating animals is disgusting and it makes the flavor&#x2F;texture <i>gross</i> to them.  I&#x27;d imagine a plant-based burger that bleeds would have a similar impact.<p>So marketing to vegans with &quot;Vegan&quot; prominently on the label (and any required certification&#x2F;testing&#x2F;other necessities to ensure you don&#x27;t get a class-action by accident) and there&#x27;s a good chance your <i>actual</i> market avoids the product right along with the vegans who don&#x27;t want it (unless it stops <i>you</i> from eating meat, <i>you</i> can have that crutch. :P).<p><pre><code>    &gt; I used to hate the phrase “plant-based” because I thought it was a cute way of avoiding saying vegetarian or vegan, as well as all the cultural baggage that comes with those identifiers (and I do believe some cultural baggage here can be a mark of honor).
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And there&#x27;s the last little nugget.  To those that &quot;Vegan&quot; doesn&#x27;t mean &quot;Soy Pretending to be Meat and So Not Pulling it Off&quot;, it elicits images of judgemental people being vocal (in passive-aggressive ways) about the smell of the rare, juicy, Ribeye on the plate in front of me.<p>&quot;Plant-based&quot; might be &quot;Vegan except LARD&quot; or might be &quot;Vegan except some ingredient with an unpronounceable name that is an animal byproduct&quot; (gelatin&#x2F;glue).  It probably means the latter in most cases and that&#x27;s <i>fine</i> for the people they&#x27;re marketing to.