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!

My local burger place has Beyond patties as an option. I tried it once and… it’s not for me. The taste is what it is, it tastes a bit different than beef, but it’s by no means bad. Trouble is, my digestive system does not seem to like Beyond burgers . Nothing serious, mind, but whenever I ate a Beyond burger, I got flatulence that lasted for some hours.

The same place also had another vegan patty available, which was, from what I can tell, beetroot, beans and something else mashed together and it was awesome and filling. Unfortunately, they removed it from the menu last year.