My point was that you _don't need_ stuff to taste like meat in order for them to be good. People couldn't afford meat so they had to invent tasty food without it, and they largely succeeded at that. Meat got so popular and common not only because it tastes great, but because it's easy to prepare and was associated to a higher status compared to more humble dishes. Several food historians theorised that the birth of many Italian-American dishes can be explained with the extreme poverty most emigrants were escaping from. people got euphoric from finally being able to afford all of the meat they wanted, so they started putting it everywhere just because they could.

The problem is that for too many people having meat is a necessary condition for something to be tasty, which isn't the case. And no, fake meat doesn't really taste like meat unless you haven't ever had meat before. It tastes good, but definitely not like meat. There are other traditionally vegan things that taste way better to be honest.

> great nutritional value

as a meat eater, this is somewhat debatable tbh. Sure meat contains lots of protein, but you can easily get it from other sources both plant and animal based (like eggs, for instance). Red meat is also pretty unhealthy, too; I eat it because it's tasty and convenient, not for the nutritional value it provides.

What else would you call food that comes from plants? That's the technical term. I refuse to call my traditional foods "vegan food" because they are not.

> This is a flat out lie. They couldn't afford the choicest cuts but they ate meat and they certainly weren't plant-based.

My grandma was born in 1922 in Northern Italy. She ate meat once a year. She was neither poor nor rich. That's just what peasants could afford back then. Same for my other grandparents. There's even an old aphorism from a XIX century Roman poet that described a guy that ate two chicken a year as "rich".

> What you described isn't a "planted based diet". "Bad" cuts of meat, offal, etc aren't "plant-based". Cheese isn't plant-based. Neither is milk or eggs or anything.

People back then ate whatever they could grow in their garden, salt cod once a year if their landlord gifted them one, beef basically never (and if any, shortrib or bad cuts, boiled). What would you call a diet where you eat meat twice a year? You can't rely on it for nutrition, you need to get most of your nutrients elsewhere. Pulses, grains, vegetables if you're lucky. They had cheese, too, but it was crazy expensive, so it had to be used sparingly - basically like you'd use a spice.

> Right. A peasant without access to chickens, pigs, etc? So your grannie ate a plant-based diet? Is that what you are telling me?

Are you American perhaps? because I think you don't really understand how crazy poor most of Europe was before WWII. Of course they had chicken, but they were for eggs. They sold the male chicks and all of the eggs. they ate boiled hen when one died or got too old, and that was it.

People back then didn't usually own the land - they rented both the house and the land from a landlord and repaid him back through their work. 3 of my grandparents grew up in the '30s in such a household; the fourth ate meat every once in a while (like 4 times a year) because his father owned a small plot of land - and he was among the richest people in his tiny hamlet! Still due to being the seventh child he kinda had to make do with what he had. They slaughtered pigs to make salami and similar stuff once a year in November, one per family. My grandma fondly remembered how they ate one slice per person per week (she had 8 siblings), and how special that occasion felt. Still not very relevant on her overall nutrition.

> You do realize that you aren't special

I am well aware of how ordinary I am, you don't have to remind me. I can't do much except telling the tales that were told me by my relatives that lived through all that.

> None of them were plant-based or mostly plant-based

Again, how would you call a diet where 99% of nutrition comes from plants? My argument was that people had to do what they could to make the vegetables they had tasty without relying on expensive meat products.

> Your argument went from plant-based to my granny only ate "prime roast" on chistmas.

My argument is clear: people back then had to find ways to make bread, vegetables, pulses and porridge tasty without meat. The proof is both "people telling me that in person" and "open a recipe book from Italy/Greece/Turkey/whatever". There are still nowadays hundreds of recipes that don't involve animal products, or where animal products are a later addition. Every family had one.

Also granny didn't eat prime roast on christmas. She ate an old chicken, boiled. Maybe some boiled rump too (for soup)

It's you that decided to get all confrontational and cast doubts on my personal account of what old people told me and my culture, tbh.

> But you for sure aren't vegan or vegetarian. Absolutely not.

I ate yogurt for breakfast this morning and I just took pork chops out from the freezer for dinner. I'm pretty sure that kind of makes me not vegan.