Vicarious vegetarians
It's been clear from the start that Tesla cultists are not truly green. They're rich fuckheads who fly and drive all the time. Owning a Tesla is a plenary indulgence that shortens their time in Gaian purgatory.

The latest Innovative Disrupter shows the same disconnect. BYND is a "new" fake meat made from soy and other stuff. BYND is claiming that its form of fake meat is new, and above all it claims to make the product more available by placing it in the meat department.

Real vegies with real experience know that both claims are false.

How do I know? I've been mostly vegy for most of my adult life. Vegy from 1970 to 1990, then part carny from 1990 to 2010, and now vegy again. The weakly carny period exactly corresponded to my TV-watching period and my neocon period. Not surprising. When you're locked into TV's forcible injection system, you aren't running on natural tendencies.

Though I pretended at first to be following "moral" principles, vegy is just easier for me. My guts don't like meat and don't handle it well. I'm healthier without it. I don't claim or believe that everyone should be healthier without meat. PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT.

During the 1970-1990 period I used fake meat made by Morningstar. It was easily available in regular grocery stores everywhere, including beef-loving Enid and OKC. When I resumed vegy in 2010, I started using the stuff again, then a quick experiment proved that it wasn't adding any nutrition, so I stopped. It's pretty damn expensive for nothing more than taste and texture.

Morningstar is a big company that has dominated the niche for 50 years because its products are EASILY AVAILABLE and good. Not all of the items taste convincingly like meat, but all of them are easy to cook, tasty, and satisfying to eat.

So the traders and cultists who are boosting BYND clearly don't understand the market. They don't know (1) the niche is already occupied (2) vegies are satisfied with Morningstar (3) serious vegies won't buy fake meat from the meat counter because they don't want to endanger their souls by touching the real thing. This is true of genuinely religious vegies from Muslim to Adventist.

In other words, there's a damn good COMMERCIAL reason why fake meat isn't sold in the same freezer with pig knuckles and T-bones. Stores and distributors haven't simply been missing an opportunity for 50 years.

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Two minutes after posting the above, this appeared in Youtube's Suggested For You:


And three minutes later, this ad popped in RealClearScience:



Apparently I confused Google's algo with the discussion of part carny and weakly carny, so it decided to hit me from both flanks.

Labels: Bemusement

  ¶ 6:22 AM