TLDR: lots of salt and artificial flavourings. But a lot of interesting chemistry goes into it too. There are annealing steps, and many other processes I don’t understand.
TLDR: lots of salt and artificial flavourings. But a lot of interesting chemistry goes into it too. There are annealing steps, and many other processes I don’t understand.
Getting pretty sick of this “vegan fake meat bad” fear mongering. Just because it’s artificial does not mean it’s harmful, or at least more harmful than something natural, and vice versa.
Also, artificial flavouring does not automatically mean that chemical doesn’t exist in nature. It just means we didn’t extract it from a biological product and instead synthesized it from the ground up. It could very well be the exact same compound that give the food being mimicked its flavour. For example, benzaldehyde smells and tastes like almonds, so it’s mass produced as an “artificial almond flavour”. Surprise surprise, almonds actually contain benzaldehyde and “all natural” almond essential oil is nearly all benzaldehyde, pure enough that chemists sometimes use it as a cheap source of reagent! And obviously there are artificial flavours in vegan meat substitutes, it’s not like they can just extract it from real meat and still be vegan!
Real meat is rotting flesh, which may have traces of antibiotics, growth hormones, bleach in it. Let’s not act like animal flesh is wholesome. https://theconversation.com/chlorine-washed-chicken-qanda-food-safety-expert-explains-why-us-poultry-is-banned-in-the-eu-81921