Why do you call your fake vegan chemical food “meat”?
This is one of my favorites. Anti-vegans get triggered because plant-based meat substitutes are sometimes referred to as “vegan meat” or “plant-based meat.”
The irony of course is that many food products have names that don’t accurately reflect what they are:
Chicken fingers aren’t made of fingers
Peanut butter isn’t butter nor is it a pea (and a peanut isn’t a nut either)
Hot dogs aren‘t made out of dogs
Buffalo wings aren’t made out of buffalos
Shepherd’s pie isn’t made out of shepherds
Rocky Mountain oysters aren’t oysters
Many fruit-flavored products such as sodas and candy have fruit names like “grape” or “cherry” in the title, despite being artificially flavored and not containing any grapes or cherries.
Of course, none of these bother them, because they’re not vegan foods. It’s selective outrage.
The second claim is similar, where non-vegans say “vegan food is all fake synthetic stuff with chemicals.” But in reality, all food (and everything in existence) is made of chemicals. Even animal flesh and apples are simply a combination of chemicals and minerals. See the images at the bottom of this page for examples. You’ll sometimes hear them say that plant-based meat substitutes are toxic and carcinogenic, yet when you ask them to cite their sources, they don’t have any, because it’s simply not true. The irony here is that the World Health Organization has classified some types of meat as carcinogenic.
Check out my article about how veganism is healthy, and you’ll see that there are many studies showing that plant-based meat substitutes are healthier than animal meat.
