Don't know why you are being down voted. As a vegan, one of my biggest gripes with the recent movement is the marketing of new products and the obsession of replacing meat with vegetables.
To further illustrate your point, imagine trying to replicate carrots using only veal and calling it something like "calf-rots", it absolutely makes no sense. Your issue is primarily with the false representation, my issue is that we're intentionally making it harder to sell vegan/vegetarian alternatives by trying to replicate something unachievable instead of coming up with entirely new products. For example, I highly suspect there's an entire food category like bread that we haven't discovered yet.
Vegans (especially long-time/lifetime vegans) aren't so much the target market of these new products, the target market is more flexitarians and omnivores who are open to the idea of reducing their meat intake yet don't want to give up familiar textures and flavors.
Veal carrots are not a thing only because there's no market for veal eaters who enjoy eating carrots yet have ethical and environmental concerns about it.
> my issue is that we're intentionally making it harder to sell vegan/vegetarian alternatives by trying to replicate something unachievable
I'm a meat eater who's never opted for a meat substitute in my life until these options. They absolutely have started to achieve being a replacement. I don't need it to reliably pass as beef in a blind taste test, I just need it to be good while being essentially a burger. (Or whatever.)
I was never going to try a chunk of tofu no matter how many people insist that it can be great. I tried this because people say it tastes like a burger. Some people want a new experience and some people want a familiar one.
Maybe this will be a gateway item that will demystify plant-based food for me and others and make me more likely to try future products that don't mimic meat.
> my issue is that we're intentionally making it harder to sell vegan/vegetarian alternatives by trying to replicate something unachievable instead of coming up with entirely new products.
Except they are achieving it. I've eaten Beyond Meat patties and they are close enough and good enough. As a 'vegan-curious' eater, products like Beyond Meat are a halfway point which eases the transition to a vegan diet (or at least a diet more balanced towards non-meat products).
As more people become more comfortable moving from 7-days a week meat-eating to something less, that is only going to help the vegan market.
Beyond Meat will do more to shift a portion of consumers across to vegan diets (at this point in history) than making new 'pure' vegan products.
That's the general line of reasoning. I don't really buy it since a well cooked meat burger is going to be better than the beyond meat at a much lower cost. For perspective, the price per lb is more than a sirloin steak.
Very few people eat sirloin steak everyday and so Beyond Meat isn't going to do much for the in terms of transitioning people who primarily eat cheaper meats.
On the other hand, Margarine (invented in the 1800's) converted tons of people from a purely animal product to one that doesn't need animal products without marketing it as "plant based".
> Beyond Meat isn't going to do much for the in terms of transitioning people who primarily eat cheaper meats.
That's not really their target market at the moment though. They are aiming their product at 'vegan-curious' people. People who are not adverse to eating more vegetarian products, frequently want to because of environmental/animal welfare reasons, but don't want to cos they like the taste of meat.
Also, it's still very early days though - Beyond Meat can barely keep up with demand and haven't optimised their production at all. I see no reason their price curve wouldn't follow the traditional curve of almost any product where the early premium prices drop as production process matures and output ramps up.
It seems like the makers of these products have a dilemma between trying to describe a product in relative terms to meat in which they set themselves up for an unfair comparison or describing their product with no reference to meat ("texturized vegetable protein") and have the customer not have any idea what it is or balk at the phrasing.
It certainly is a dilemma but I feel choosing the first option is myopic (I want my customers to know "today" what this is) as opposed to long term strategy. If tofu was invented today, would we market it as soy cheese?
To further illustrate your point, imagine trying to replicate carrots using only veal and calling it something like "calf-rots", it absolutely makes no sense. Your issue is primarily with the false representation, my issue is that we're intentionally making it harder to sell vegan/vegetarian alternatives by trying to replicate something unachievable instead of coming up with entirely new products. For example, I highly suspect there's an entire food category like bread that we haven't discovered yet.