I am not a vegetarian, but I buy the Impossible Burger meat sometimes. It’s close enough that you would have a difficult time telling it apart from real meat. Not perfect, of course but I don’t mind eating it.

I eat meat and whitecastles impossible sliders are better than their meat ones. The impossible whopper is about as good as a whopper. Of course some of this is due to the quality of the meat burgers to begin with.

..what? that's just nonsense.

Now that's just incorrect. The people who enjoy the taste of plant based meat probably liked the taste of meat a lot, that's why they're seeking to replace it, but environmental and/or ethical considerations are important enough to them to justify a small loss or simply change in flavor.

For me it is the texture far more than the flavor that makes most plant based "meat" less than fun. Like how turkey bacon is a mockery of actual bacon.

That said there are a couple chicken nugget subs that are good and the impossible burger is decent with strong condiments. But most are just sad pretenders like turkey bacon.

Dishes that are not pretending to be meat are the best vegetarian dishes.

I love the taste of meat. There are very few things in world that taste as good as raw beew strips or or raw venison with a dash of salt and pepper.

Still, about 10 years ago I started eating less red meat for health reasons (both sides of my family have long history with high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases). I've always loved vegetables as well, so the change wasn't so hard.

Maybe 5 years ago a lot of plant based protein products started to show up in the supermarkets here, so I decided to give them a try. And I found out they were pretty good. I actually now prefer plant based burger steaks over the real ones, and my spaghetti bolognese is far better when I make it with the fake minced meat.

My dad used to work in the dairy industry in the early 80's and he told me thst he got to taste the early fake meat products while visiting some production plant in Denmark or Sweden. All the guests were served two minced meat steaks, of which the other one was plant or dairy based. None of them could tell the difference even back then.

I find it personally difficult to eat a meal without meat at all, and I enjoy some of the plant based meats. They aren't all great, but beyond chicken is better than some chicken nuggets, and I forget which brand it was but one of them does better brats than most grocery stores.

Edit: Hard agree on hoping for lab grown meat to progress. That feels like the actual future of meat consumption to me.

The issue I have is the inflammation it causes in my damaged hips. Every time I have all that pea protein, I have a hard time existing the next day.

It won't. At least, it probably won't. Here's a good high level explanation as to why. I've worked on software used by some of these pharm industries and have some understanding of the scale of these types of operations. Everyone who talks about carbon footprints of animal farms will have to accept the carbon footprint of a synethic meat calorie is going to be a LOT higher due to dozens of factors. If you care about the environment, even 50 years from now it's probably cheaper to have cows AND spend margins to become carbon neutral than it would be to do lab meats.

If it's about saving animal lives, that's an ethical issue and where I'm learning to stop getting involved. I have enough knowledge in ethics to stand my own on that topic, and enough experience arguing ethics with vegans to know it's time to stop trying to discuss that with them.