cheryl
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What Does ‘Plant-Based’ Actually Mean? - Eater
“Plant-based” is now expanding from shorthand for “meat substitute” to refer to just about anything a marketer wants
Though plenty of vegetarian and vegan diets don’t include anything made to imitate meat, “meatless meat” and “plant-based protein” are nothing new. Ask anyone who’s ordered mock duck (aka seitan) in their pad Thai. Cartoonist Maki Naro outlined the history of mock meat for The Nib, from tofu in ancient China to the peanut-butter-and-seitan mix Protose, developed by John Harvey Kellogg (yes, the Kellogg of cereal-brand fame) in the early 1900s. But in the past few decades, as Naro points out, meatless meat has gotten a boost from “unabashed capitalists,” who sensed a growing interest in eating less meat and “flexitarian” diets and decided the existing beans and lentils and seitan weren’t enough.
Hence the rise of “plant-based meat substitutes,” which promise to mimic the texture, and even the bleeding, of “real” meat for those who can’t do without those specific oral sensations. In the public imagination, the term came to the forefront mostly where applied to fast-food patties, with Impossible Whoppers and Impossible White Castle sliders, Dunkin’ Beyond sausage breakfast sandwiches and KFC plant-based fried chicken. A decade ago, a meatless burger patty would have been advertised as “vegetarian” or “vegan” cuisine, but now, it’s all “plant-based.” And that has turned it into a phrase that means everything and nothing.
“Plant-based” is now expanding from shorthand for “meat substitute” to refer to just about anything a marketer wants
Though plenty of vegetarian and vegan diets don’t include anything made to imitate meat, “meatless meat” and “plant-based protein” are nothing new. Ask anyone who’s ordered mock duck (aka seitan) in their pad Thai. Cartoonist Maki Naro outlined the history of mock meat for The Nib, from tofu in ancient China to the peanut-butter-and-seitan mix Protose, developed by John Harvey Kellogg (yes, the Kellogg of cereal-brand fame) in the early 1900s. But in the past few decades, as Naro points out, meatless meat has gotten a boost from “unabashed capitalists,” who sensed a growing interest in eating less meat and “flexitarian” diets and decided the existing beans and lentils and seitan weren’t enough.
Hence the rise of “plant-based meat substitutes,” which promise to mimic the texture, and even the bleeding, of “real” meat for those who can’t do without those specific oral sensations. In the public imagination, the term came to the forefront mostly where applied to fast-food patties, with Impossible Whoppers and Impossible White Castle sliders, Dunkin’ Beyond sausage breakfast sandwiches and KFC plant-based fried chicken. A decade ago, a meatless burger patty would have been advertised as “vegetarian” or “vegan” cuisine, but now, it’s all “plant-based.” And that has turned it into a phrase that means everything and nothing.