Comment by mapotofu
6 days ago
They are focusing on an American palette, which is averse to things like tofu, seitan, or tempeh as they are considered not masculine enough by a significant portion of the population. This is reinforced by both genders.
Tofu is so ridiculously OP in terms of nutrition, production costs, and culinary versatility. It's a shame society here in the US is so strongly stymied by the manipulative meat lobby.
As someone who is frugal AF and open minded...
I think you are overstating Tofu.
But honestly I'm mostly eating for nutrition rather than taste. Tofu doesnt hit the numbers I need.
Tofu uses about 50x less land, 5x water, and produces 15x less CO2 per gram of protein compared to beef. It's pretty remarkable by these metrics even compared to other plant foods. Tofu would certainly be understood as "OP" in any simulated game like civilization. We in the US are disadvantaged just for our intractable attachment to beef.
Plus, all the other nice things about it (high in fiber, doesn't incur the bodily damage associated with red meat and saturated fat, is complete protein, lasts for over a month in the fridge, can be produced shelf-table, etc.) And it's not like you have to choose one or the other.
Meat is subsidized in the US, so while tofu is usually cheap, it's not by as much as those numbers would suggest. (About 3x, for those just tracking protein. At my Costco, it's about $30 for 4lb of 85% ground beef or $7 for 4lb of tofu. That works out to $0.10 per gram protein for the beef, or $0.03 per gram of protein for the tofu.)
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What do you mean by overstating? It has really good protein numbers. The protein itself has an evenly balanced amino acid profile (or in other words - a "complete" protein). It has a good amount of calcium, iron, and low fat. You can technically make it yourself and there's numerous ways of cooking and flavoring it.
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There's no hope trying to sell "plant-based hamburger" with any name to toxic masculinity advocates who think soy feminizes you (even though seitan isn't soy). These guys are getting hospitalized from eating all-beef diets because chicken is "too feminine".
They could wash it down with some Brawndo I suppose
Back in Europe I had many good meat alternatives in grocery stores that were quite budget friendly as well. Like vegetarian 'Schnitzel', 'chicken', 'fish'. Here in NA, most of the meat alternatives are breaded, or high in fat and salt. It's disappointing.
Great news, thanks to some fantastic "journalism" about estrogen contents, artificial meat is now viewed as being feminizing in a very literal way.