If vegetarians are so against meat why do they make everything taste like meat?

[Maggie]

I for one would NEVER want my food to taste like raw meat, ever. Raw meat tastes and looks jiggly, bloody (metallic iron-like taste) and like salmonella and E.Coli.

What makes MOST meat taste tolerable is the way it's prepared - what it's fried or baked in, the onion and garlic powder, the salt and pepper, the chili flakes, tomato and oregano flakes, savory marinades and sauces. Heck, it could be argued most people want their meat to taste like plants (spices, seasonings, veggie add-ins, vegetable oil). Unless you eat all your meat raw and unseasoned, that's quite what it looks like to me. I can make a chicken breast or a slab of tofu taste the same as long as I use the same plant-based seasonings to flavor it, after all.

I'd rather eat plain unseasoned, raw veggies and raw fruit any day over a hard, solid hunk of raw pork. It's nothing but flavorless sinew and muscle.

And no animal comes in a sausage or burger shape. Cows and pigs and chickens come as they are, feather and bone and blood and flesh. People have invented ways to make them convenient and fit them into their pasta, hide them in their sandwich bread, put them on their pizza, stick them in a bun, put them on a shish ke bob.

I as a vegetarian have the right to make my fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains, beans and legumes fit into my hamburger bun too so I make a patty. I make a link if I want to put it in a hot dog bun. That's not an animal, it doesn't represent an animal to me.

The day I go to the store and see a seasoned and flavored pig made out of tofu, made to look like a freshly slaughtered pig, raw and unseasoned, is the day I believe most vegetarians want their food to taste like meat.

Until then, we all just cook and season our food and shape it so that it's palatable and something familiar.