I have celiac disease and a corn allergy and a relative who wanted to try to pass off impossible burger as ground beef to prove how good meat alternatives are.
I don’t care about “gmo” and I dont care about the fact that it’s “textured protein” I care about “corn” and “wheat” and I care that people without food allergies rarely know how inescapable some of those allergens are.
“Oh, I checked the ingredients, it doesn’t have corn”
Okay but does it have maltodextrin, modified food starch, xanthan gum, caramel coloring, dextrose, or glucose syrup?
If it does have any of those things do they specifically say “from potatoes,” “from tapioca,” “from cane sugar” or “from rice”?
If it didn’t did you check the manufacturer’s website? If that didn’t say did you call the manufacturer?
Sometimes I’ll use almond or coconut flour as a replacement for wheat flour when I’m cooking. I do not try to pretend that my alternate flour chocolate chip cookies are wheat flour chocolate chip cookies because most people don’t expect to run into coconut or almond when they pick up a chocolate chip cookie. I don’t try to hand them to people, wait for them to eat a cookie, and say “hah, bet you didn’t think gluten free cookies could taste good, huh?” because if I did that to someone with a severe allergy it could kill them, but also because people should have a say in what they’re eating.
I’ve got no problem with beyond beef or impossible burger describing their products as meat alternatives, I’ve got no problem with GMOs or the fact that quorn is made out of a heavily engineered protein. That’s all very neat, actually.
But I do have a problem with people trying to sneakily serve meat alternatives without considering that doing so is shitty for a number of reasons.
