Where’s The Beef?

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's probably a duck right? Now, if it doesn't look like a duck, doesn't quack like a duck and doesn't walk like a duck, it's probably not a duck. Right? So why is it that people insist on trying to pass off things that are not meat as meat?

In the quest to provide ever healthier foods for our consumption someone got the bright idea to try and trick us into eating things that in no way resemble the item we want. Have you heard of dehydrated vegetable protein? Kind of looks like sawdust. You're supposed to be able to make meatballs, burger patties, sausages and the like out of it. Guess what? Not meat.

Last summer I went to the grocery store for some hamburger patties for a barbeque we were hosting. I was in a hurry and grabbed a box of patties. On the box was a beautiful picture of a juicy hamburger with all the fixing's. When I got home and cooked them up they tasted kind of strange. On the chance that they were bad, I went back to the box with the nice photo to find that the patties I had purchased were in fact not hamburger patties, but soy burgers. Guess what? Not meat.

Then there is my favourite gross thing in the grocery store. Tofu, a blob of pasty greyish goo. I mean, YUCK! Just cook it in with what ever you are making and it will take on the flavour of what you're cooking. Why not just eat what it was you were going to eat in the first place? Tofu-- REALLY not meat.

Let's make a deal. If you are a person who likes to eat some of these things, fine. You eat them and enjoy. But let me eat what I like in peace. Don't try to trick me into eating something that I would not willingly eat on my own. I like my steak to look like a steak. I like my hamburger to contain ground beef. I like my turducken to be a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken. To each their own. Now please pass the barbeque sauce.