The experimental fake meat of the '70s
2My habit of scanning the ingredient lists started when my mom said I pick any cereal I wanted, as long as sugar wasn’t in the first two ingredients. It’s absurd how hard that is. But it’s continued on through my vegetarian years and into hunting for food allergy issues. Have you lived blissfully unaware of the ingredients lists on everything in your pantry? Or do you have your own reasons you’re checking those side panels? Let’s hear about ’em in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat.
- 5 comments, 3 replies
- Comment
I’ve been doing that for a very long time. My first ex and I were married in 1981, and we used to make a game of looking up the “it sound like it came from a lab” stuff on ingredient lists to see what they really were. I’ve never stopped. One of the first things we dropped as a result was Mountain Dew; I don’t recall if it was because of PEG or brominated vegetable oil, but both of them ended up on the “nope” list. There is an absolutely stark difference between Fanta Orange in the US (contains no OJ) and the same named product in the UK and Europe (contains OJ and isn’t dark orange), by way of just one example of how what we are sold is Just Wrong. The food in the UK and in New Zealand is just better than it is here.
I buy my MSG now in bulk because “they” have removed it from so many delicious things.
@therealjrn They’re just hiding it by using “maltodextrin” or “celery seed” or any of a number of other glutamate-rich things instead. It’s still there, they’re just lying about it. But they’re cheaping out on everything else, and glutamates can’t enhance what isn’t there to begin with. That’s part of why we’ve been trained to think of “excessively sweet” as “good”; sugar is cheap.
@therealjrn I do the same! I use MSG in many dishes (1/3 the sodium of table salt for those that don’t know) sometimes as a supplement, and sometimes as a replacement. I found it to be more equitable than buying the little 4.5 ounce Accent bottles.
Funny how everyone used to be so afraid of the word “sugar” and now we are finding issues with its replacements like high fructose corn syrup. Just go back to natural ingredients.
Relatively new to “fake” meat (only about 4 years into my plant-based journey) so I didn’t even realize that Bac-O’s weren’t dehydrated bacon!! This was a fun article though, so well done Jason Toon! (PS: You can count me in as a proponent on TVP! I use it at least weekly.)
I usually make a lot of our food, so I know what goes into it. Being a total flake, I even mill my own flour from organic wheat for breads and baked goods.
@krez56 My stepdaughter has problems with modern wheat, so we’re going to be milling heritage-variety flour for her. Finding the grain is tricky; the yield per acre is about a third of the superdwarf, so only a few special-interest farms grow it at any scale.