In a bid to do his part to encourage less meat-eating in his household, Spinoff journalist Chris Schulz ran a week-long trial of plant-based meals.
He had a tough time winning over his whānau, and calls the experiment “a bit of a fail”.
Beyond Meat sausages Photo: Beyond Meat
Schulz had been watching plant-based trends grow for a while and had written about them, too.
“I went to the supermarket on the weekend and saw I think three different departments devoted to plant-based products.”
A lot of them are trying to mimic the look, taste and texture of meat, he says.
“In Countdown, one day I was buying some steak and sandwiched between the steak and the chicken was a whole section devoted to fake steaks, fake chicken, fake bacon.
“I just thought, wow, these products really aren’t going for vegans and vegetarians, they’re going for people like me, someone who eats meat maybe three, four times a week and is very conscious of how those choices impact the environment.”
Schulz decided to spend the week replicating what he’d usually eat using meat-free products – his kids were far from impressed.
“I’ve got a 12-year-old and an eight-year-old and any changes to their diet, no matter how small, are met usually with derision and a lot of complaining so I didn’t actually tell them until the day we started doing it.”
One day he tried to make his son hotdogs, which were "very much like biting into a soft Weetbix.” Fake bacon was "terrible”.
Things did taste a bit better if you drowned them in condiments, he says.
The star of the week was diced ‘beef’ made into a Malaysian curry. “It’s not like the real thing but the flavour’s there, I think the protein’s there too...that was probably the highlight of the whole experience actually.”
The family did have some interesting conversations throughout the week about meat and its impact on the environment, he says.
“This wasn’t trying to make my family go vegan, it was more trying to replicate the average seven days' worth of meals using fake products – these ones that kind of purport to replace meat.
“I think we’re definitely going to keep trying this kind of stuff to see how it develops.”
