I am not vegetarian, but I have plenty of friends who are for a wide array of reasons (moral, religious, environmental). This burger has come up with a few of them, and so far they are just happy that there is vegetarian option. They see it as important that a company like BK is offering a progressive vegetarian option. Not one of them has complained that there is a miniscule amount of non-vegetarian contamination.
Of course I see why some would complain, and it is important that there are always people pushing for progress. But lets not pretend that _this_ isn't progress.
I dated a vegetarian many years ago. It was my first exposure to that lifestyle. She was not against me eating meat even in front of her. She didn't politicize her choice, it was for her health and nothing more. Luckily some fast food places serve salads and so on trips across country we could stop at those places where I could eat a burger and she could eat a salad. Alternately I would go with her to a local Austin burger joint that had a vegetarian night on Wednesdays. I would eat and enjoy a veggie burger with her. We both were willing to meet each other half way.
options like a veggie burger at Burger King give options to people like her. Not every vegetarian is a vegan who makes all meals political. Burger King serving a veggie burger doesn't have to be political. Not every vegetarian surrounds themselves with only other vegetarians.
I'd like to add that I see a lot of people saying, "If you're vegetarian/vegan why are you going Burger King?" - Well, I don't go often, but on the off chance that I'm with some friends and they go to a fast-food restaurant, it's much easier and less awkward if there's something I can eat too.
> it's just weird to me that that's what other vegetarians would care about
As others have replied already, pure vegetarians aren't the only audience for these products. You have plenty of people (like myself) who still enjoy meat but will happily opt for the replacements when available because of the environmental/ethical/health benefits, and I'm sure they've also lowered the barrier to entry for many people making the leap into full vegetarian diets for the first time.
I've been finding myself opting for the Impossible/Beyond options on menus more and more lately (even at fast food joints, e.g. Starbucks or Burger King), and I'm grateful for the options being there.
I think the people who are concerned with this are familiar with how food is made at restaurants. For example, I worked at a pizza shop in high school and occasionally someone would request we wash our pizza cutter so that their veggie pizza would not be contaminated with meat from previous pizzas. We, of course, accommodated their request without issue. But I worked there for years and saw this request maybe 2-3 times. And that may have been the same customer. The people who take that level of constraint are a tiny, tiny fraction of the already smallish customer base seeking meatless/vegetarian food.
I've gone vegetarian, except for a single grass fed animal I bought from a local farmer. (I live in a city, it was easier than I thought it would be to connect with a farmer out in the rural part of my state.) The transition was way, way easier than I thought it was going to be. I didn't guilt myself when I made mistakes, just stopped eating meat unless I was sure the provenance of it was sustainable and free from cruelty.
There's so much amazing vegetarian cuisine, and things like the Beyond Burger and Impossible Burger both fill that 'gotta have a burger' feeling. I hope we see more like them, and I'm really looking forward to being able to try 'clean meat' from some of the labs who are exploring that.
Are you absolutely certain this is the case? The majority of my vegetarian friends would be upset to find their vegetarian dish was contaminated with meat if they ate out in a restaurant. I don't see why it would be any different in BK?
Well, recreating a hamburger without an animal having to suffer and die for it. People enjoy hamburgers. They just don't want to think about cows while they do.
It might be better for their health and the environment if they learned to eat a wider variety of foods. Vegetarian food is incredibly diverse; more so than the fake diversity of putting 20 toppings in 2^20 different combinations on top of ground beef. But that's not nearly as strong as cognitive dissonance people have to sustain around knowing that animals suffer and die for their dinner.
I know it's kind of offtopic, but having gone vegetarian around 2 years ago, it's amazing how many times I heard this argument presented in the way you SHOULD NOT want to replicate meat, you can't call that a burger if it doesn't have meat, I'm not one to get offended but I find it so weird.
To this first one I have 2 points, 1. don't tell me what I want and don't want to do and 2. don't tell me what I want and don't want to do. For the second point, when did you become a burger defender.
Before being vegetarian I've always heard how annoying are vegans trying to convince you bla bla bla, while I know it's circumstantial, I've almost never had that experience, but when I stopped eating meat, I've had dozens of people tell me I'm wrong, doing harm, it's stupid, pointless and that I should reconsider my personal dietary choices.
As a vegetarian who makes a point of being low key about it, not bringing it up unless asked, etc, there is almost endless judgment and questioning put forth in my direction. Every time I go out for a work lunch and order the black bean burger, or meatless sides at a BBQ joint or whatever, people want to dust off their freshman philosophy class ethical arguments.
People with non-normative beliefs stand out from the normative culture just by virtue of existing. If we must defend ourselves constantly it sounds louder. I understand that can be annoying to people like you.
I’d add to that: big brands make vegetarianism more palatable to everyone. If I’m stuck ordering a salad at a bad restaurant, I’m more likely to be mocked by meat eaters than if the restaurant sells good burgers (esp in the US). When I was in the states recently and the restaurant had an impossible burger, instead of people saying “why are you vegetarian? Where do you get your protein?” people said “oh, the impossible burger, yeah I tried that recently and really liked it”. It was a very pleasant change.
Some people just don't care about the same things. And some people also don't have the creativity, joy or whatever to cook a vegetarian meal. People are just different and for some, biting into a burger or eating a piece of chicken gives them some kind of joy. Maybe they even associate some kind of lifestyle, identity with that.
I think there is no point arguing these principles over and over. People are different.
They probably don't want to have to deal with all the animal rights ideologues nitpicking them and starting drama, so they're just saying they don't care about the politics, and they can mean that by saying it's not vegetarian, so eat it if you want, otherwise go somewhere else.
Of course I see why some would complain, and it is important that there are always people pushing for progress. But lets not pretend that _this_ isn't progress.
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