this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Absolutely OK. If "something something X" is the name of your product, it needs to contain X to a certain degree. If there was no strawberry in strawberry jam, you would complain. If there was no cinnamon in a cinnamon bun, this would be wrong, too.
The term "Vegan Chicken Chips" for a product that does not contain chicken is simply like "Apple Sauce" without apples.
Rocky mountain oysters contain no oysters. Head cheese is not cheese. Hen of the woods is not a bird. Welsh rabbit includes 0% rabbit. Ants on a log, Cowboy caviar, Bear claws... refried beans are.. gasp.. only fried once.
Its all made up and the points don't matter, until you start threatening profits.
Jerusalem Artichokes are neither artichokes nor from Jerusalem.
Indeed. Time to clean up some of those names, too.
Or just accept that that's not how language works?
Part of the problem is with discoverability. If you make a completely new word, people have no idea what your product is like, so they're unlikely to try it.
I think the best solution for them is to use words similar to the animal product, but obviously different, like "chick'n" or "chickenless" for example. I prefer the latter because it's more explicit about not being chicken.
But yeah, getting some standardization on it would be a big step in the right direction.
I had vegan bacon at one point, and it was NOT bacon, not even close. But it WAS good, it just needs an entirely different name.
In my experience vegan food is a lot better when it's not trying to pretend to be meat
I very much agree, but having these "substitutes" was something that facilitated cutting out meat for me, as all cooking I used to know revolved around meat as the main ingredient. In that sense these product serve a usefulness in reducing the threshold to move away from meat in the first place.
I guess it makes sense from a transitional perspective and I imagine they've gotten better over time. The last time I remember having a substitute it was much worse than the actual thing though.
Absolutely fine with that idea.
the problem is that they're banning words like "steak" which isn't about ingredients
The point here is that nobody really cares for middle English name origins. Ask 100 random people what "steak" is, and I'd be surprized if you did not get at least 99 answers that it's meat.
Anything to maintain to Carnist-centric view of the world.
How much butter is in peanut butter?
Or in Shea butter, yes.
That's why it shouldn't be called peanut butter anyways. Let's name it something logical like peanut cheese (pindakaas)
There aren't even any nuts in it! It's all a lie!
What about bacon chips that contain no bacon?
Or that's alright because it's bacon spices?
Lmao people are stupid.
I've seen those in a shop once. I consider them an abomination. They are basically a maize flip with brown stripes and some ominous "bacon flavor". And it was labeled as "vegan", so whatever this "bacon flavor" was made of is suspicious at least. Probably something like "natural strawberry flavor" which is made from wood...
Buffalo wings.
Indeed a shitty name, too.