[screwt]

Easy! People have lots of different reasons why they may choose not to eat meat or dairy. "Not liking the taste" is one possible reason. If that particular one isn't your reason, then you may still miss the taste/texture of certain foods, so having a substitute helps.

[cheese_goddess]

Who said anything about liking or disliking the taste of meat? If you're vegan, you don't want to eat meat, for whatever reason. What sense does it make to then pretend to eat meat anyway?

If you like meat so much you just have to have it, then what sense does it make to be vegan? Be flexitarian. Eat meat once a year, every Easter Sunday. Eat vegentarian. I don't know! But at least accept the fact that you can't stand being vegan because you really want to eat meat and dairy.

For me, anyone who eats pretend-meat or pretend-dairy is a pretend-vegan. If you're going to go off meat to save the planet, or because you think meat is murder, then stick to your own morality and go without anything that is in any way "like" meat. Otherwise, you're just advertising the need to eat meat and justifying everyone else to keep eating it and ignore your pleas for the environment and the baby calves.

If you tell me "I'm vegan, but I have to eat something like cheese", the easiest thing for me to reply is "I'm not vegan and I have to eat cheese". It just makes a joke of the whole idea of being vegan.

[hjek]

> For me, anyone who eats pretend-meat or pretend-dairy is a pretend-vegan.

I love that you can get all the taste without the violence and suffering. Eating is not always a single-person activity, so having vegan substitutes for meat and cheese is great when eating together with non-vegans who may be wary of falafels.

There are very few vegans who are vegans because of taste. Many are worried about the environmental impacts of mass animal agriculture killing trillions of animals every year.

The most prominent and outspoken animal liberation advocates — Ali Tabrizi and Ed Winters come to mind — are strong proponents of vegan-dairy, vegan-seafood and vegan-meat. It really doesn't make sense to call those people "pretend vegans". Check their talks and films[0][1], they aren't "making a joke of the whole idea of being vegan".

I don't get why carnists place such importance on real suffering and real death. Is it not real Adidas shoes if it isn't made by slave labour or something? Is it not a real car if it's not guzzling diesel? Why not cut down on causing harm when it's so easy? I don't get it.

[0]: Earthling Ed vs Infowars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScbeMdYkKDc

[1]: Land of Hope and Glory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF3VOpa3a7c

[missblit]

I mean maybe they just like the taste?

I don't really understand it either because I'd usually rather have tasty veggies than imitation meat, but what someone finds tasty is what they find tasty and they don't need to justify it.