Wow....I just have to post this "health" food page

[SteakNchop]

So, there's this company called Lightlife, which makes vegetarian hot dogs, sausages and meats. This is the ingredients list for their hot dogs: soy protein isolate, wheat gluten, evaporated cane juice and and a bunch of junk. Let's see...the first ingredient is soy....terrific....the second ingredient is wheat gluten....no, not wheat flour....wheat gluten....of all the things they could do, they isolated the worst part of wheat and stuffed it into this thing...then, sugar, some "natural" spices and a bunch of other junk.

This is basically the ingredient list of every single one of their products. Could you literally find 3 worse ingredients to start off an ingredient list?

Even worse, I browse around other vegeterian meats and I see the same ingredients reacurring: soy protein isolate, soybean oil and wheat gluten. Of course it's smashed with sugar or something like sugar as well. Do people really eat these things thinking they're doing themselves a favor?

[magnolia1973]

Most people who eat them think soy and wheat gluten are good foods given it has been shoved in our brains for so long. Back when I was veg, we actually called that company about GMO soy and they called us back and answered our questions and seemed to care about the quality of their product.

People who eat alot of the foods we eschew aren't stupid or reckless- they literally just get their information about what is good from a different source. Back when I was a veg I had all sorts of info on why soy is so good, and why say, bacon is not. And a lot of people swapped SAD for soy foods and saw their health improve.

I'm not so sure certain brands of meat hot dogs are that much better than a soy dog. I've seen commercial hog operations. If we are what we eat, I'm not sure what those poor hogs are.

So I dunno- I would not eat them ever again, nor would I eat a Ball Park frank. But I think vegetarianism is a reaction to SAD and avoidance of the very real issue of factory farmed meats. It's not that far off in some ways from primal. The fake meats aren't much different from bizarre primal baked goods.

Most of the vegetarians that do it for health don't like the fake meats, but do it for convenience or novelty. I don't think they eat a soy dog at a BBQand think it is the epitome of health, I think they find it a good alternative to meat that is raised in deplorable conditions and fed god knows what. I mean, primal people aren't eating hot dogs either... they are having a grass fed steak.

[Alex Good]

Arsenic, sulphuric acid and nails. Can you beat that ingredient list?

[RitaRose]

Years ago, I tried soy dogs. I'm not quite sure why they call them "veggie" dogs, because they're soy, but I guess it's like how they call soybean oil "vegetable oil". Whatever.

Anyway, I can't eat hot dogs or bacon because the sodium nitrite gives me a migraine for 3 days. Yes, even the ones made with celery salt and juice. Just not worth it. But at the same time, they taste so freaking good! It would be really depressing to go to a BBQ, smell them cooking on the grill, then see everyone else slather on the mustard and devour them, juices dripping down their chins. Sucked. So I bought soy hot dogs just so I could have one little part of it and not feel so left out.

They taste like ass. And the texture is all wrong. Kind of an off pinkish-brown color too. Just gross.

I never ate them again (or even finished the first one, for that matter). But not all of the bad food people eat is because they like the taste. Sometimes it's just because they don't want to be the only ones that can't do something so very normal and ordinary.

There's a whole lot of emotion tied in with food.

[Alex Good]

Have you tried pork belly? It doesn't quite taste like bacon but it's still good enough to substitute. It's very much akin to an extremely fatty pork chop.

[RitaRose]

Have you tried pork belly? It doesn't quite taste like bacon but it's still good enough to substitute. It's very much akin to an extremely fatty pork chop.

Yeah. Wasn't impressed.

Oh well, I've been doing without for 20 years, so I'm kind of used to it now.

[Hilary]

This is basically the ingredient list of every single one of their products. Could you literally find 3 worse ingredients to start off an ingredient list?

Quorn, quorn and quorn.

I was brought up on 'you don't have to like it, you just have to eat it' and 'no clean plates, no pudding' and all that. I have a cast-iron stomach that will take anything without complaint, and I'm not allergic to anything. Really boringly healthy. Only... back when I was vegetarian, when I ate Quorn I would feel shockingly ill a few hours later. First time I ate it was OK, but I remember the second or third time, I woke up in the night in a cold sweat with hideous cramps wondering what on earth was happening. Didn't make the connection with this pure and innocent 'health food' until a fourth and fifth experience. Apparently some people are more seriously affected and are hospitalised by the stuff - which I can well believe. It's a completely new addition to the food supply, only very remotely related to anything we'd naturally eat, and it's used as a staple food. I find it deeply bizarre that it just sits on shelves without warning labels.

Used to make whole meals out of 'mock duck', aka pure gluten, however. It tasted pretty good, as vegan foods went...

[Nady]

I have never understood imitation foods~ veggie hot dogs, burgers, whatever. If you don't want to eat meat, don't. But to create/eat a veggie version seems ~~ hypocritical, somehow

[Laura B]

I ate a veggie hot dog once. It was one of the grossest things I have ever eaten. Now if I want hot dogs I eat Applegate Farms, their dogs are grass-fed.

[RitaRose]

No more hypocritical than Meatza.