Soup king Campbell’s parts ways with IT VP after ‘3D-printed chicken’ remarks Food company Campbell’s, best known for its soups and the iconic cans they come in, has parted ways with a vice president for IT after another member of the company’s tech team recorded him criticizing the company’s products. This story starts in September 2024 when a chap named Robert Garza, per a court filing [PDF] scored a …
Never buying their slop again due to firing Garza like that. Hope they appreciated Bally's "3D printed chicken" comment because that's what I'm telling everyone from now on. Do NOT mess with whistleblowers, it is an *unforgivable* sin. I promise to be a permanent stain on Campbell's name as long as I goddamn live. Somebody has to stand up for these people no matter how trivial the protest is. If we don't make examples out of these companies, it'll just keep happening.
How do we know that the so-called "recording" is real?
Perhaps Garza didn't get the money he was hoping for, and besmirched the name of his superior?
"Sounds like" in a recording (of unknown fidelity) doesn't automagically mean "is".
Shirley I'm not the only one who remembers back when a simple accusation wasn't all that was needed for a conviction ...
Campbell's seem to have decided that the recording was plausible. The senior manager in question looks to have gone quietly. This is a non-criminal issue so balance of probabilities and the idea of a remedy applies rather than guilt beyond reasonable doubt as in a criminal trial, at least here in UK which is a common law country.
Steering back towards a vaguely technical angle. Not sure if anyone in the US keeps mains frequency records...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_network_frequency_analysis
Icon: off out as it isn't raining.
I wasn't discussing what Campbell's did (that's up to the person who was fired's lawyers), what I was discussing was the OP's knee-jerk reaction of "somebody accused him, therefore he's guilty!", which seems to be where we are as a society these days, alas.
Yes, people in the US keep mains frequency records. Some of us do even at the household level, but usually it's not quite that granular.
Why do you think the reported story of complaints (now used in a lawsuit), and then a the release of a recording after being fired for making complaints, is less likely than someone deciding to make a false accusation, doubling down on it, and the tripling down with a fake recording?
Seems like the OP reasonably used Occam’s razor to take a position and you unreasonably undecided to bring your own issues into this.
""Sounds like" in a recording (of unknown fidelity) doesn't automagically mean "is"."
If there was a chance of it being made up, they would have smeared the ex-employee into a nothing more than a stain.
I expect the attitude and hotheadedness of the exec was already known. This sort of thing doesn't usually go from zero to a hundred in one step. Plenty of companies have had to admit they knew about harassment complaints levied against execs long before something made the front page of a tabloid. It's not hard to spot there's an issue with a rotten apple in the barrel.
"Never buying their slop again"
Really? You were eating their mass produced food in the first place?
In any event, seems to me likely that the employee engineered the encounter (which is why he was recording it) and only did so as backup for his demand for more money so should remain fired and not get a cent in compensation. The boss is entitled to have an opinion on the product behind closed doors. I hope Garza's behaviour is taken into account by prospective future employers.
There are situations where an employer should be exposed or reported to the authorities (been there, fine that myself) and this is not one of them.
Really? You were eating their mass produced food in the first place?
Nowt wrong with Campbells, can be a good base sauce if you're stuck for something and not got a lot in. (We don't all have the luxury of asking the butler to get something when peckish).
In any event, seems to me likely that the employee engineered the encounter (which is why he was recording it)
You think someone went into a meeting, at work, where having a record of things that all parties can agree on isn't a bad idea and then recorded it, but also managed to (without being heard) incite that person to openly express views and opinions that they don't hold?
How does that work? Talk me through it step by step?
The boss is entitled to have an opinion on the product behind closed doors.
He is. But 'behind closed doors' used to mean 'at home' or 'in the pub with your mates', not in a work meeting. (It's where the door is not it's open or closed state that's important).
I hope Garza's behaviour is taken into account by prospective future employers.
Do you mean his behaviour or your assumptions about his behaviour?
Not in a work meeting? Surely there's an expectation of privacy in a one on one office situation. There's a big difference between telling someone that you think they're a jerk in private and sending out a departmental communication stating the same. The former situation could be construed as timely feedback between manager and worker (because, let's face it, there are plenty of jerks around in an office situation -- its work, not a social gathering where you get to choose your friends).
"Not in a work meeting? Surely there's an expectation of privacy in a one on one office situation. "
I'd be recording a meeting if I knew the person was a complete prick and it might come down to my word against their's. It might not be admissible in court, but it could be a good defense if I got called into a meeting with HR about my attitude.
My usual path is to just get the hell out and find a better job someplace else. It's another reason to build up a good F-you fund so you aren't trapped in a job you hate but can't leave and continue living indoors.
I have already done this. HR lost their shit over me making a recording (citing a dozen privacy laws) but it proved that she was a bare-faced liar and was fabricating a complaint against me out of thin air.
I got told not to do it again, she was asked to leave. Pretty good considering that she was trying to get me fired because "reasons" (I have no idea, most of what she said made no sense). But I did record her saying she was doing this on purpose and the company would believe her over me so she was say whatever she wants. Uh-huh.
If I ever run into somebody that malicious again, you can be certain I'll be recording every interaction.
seems to me likely that the employee engineered the encounter (which is why he was recording it)
The original Reg report a few days earlier is a little more detailed and says that the recording was started partway into the meeting in reaction to what was going on: "Garza claimed that, after he sensed something was off during a September 2024 restaurant meeting to discuss his salary, he began recording Bally's alleged remarks."
Why the meeting to discus salary took place in a restaurant seems a little strange to me but maybe this is normal in US business. Or perhaps it was what I'd call the staff canteen.
The boss is entitled to have an opinion on the product behind closed doors.
This was being expressed in a restaurant which, irrespective of the state of its doors doesn't fit the usual meaning of "behind closed doors" especially if it was a public restaurant. His views seem to have ranged well beyond the product.
I don't care if you like Campbell's products or not, but how on Earth do you get to VP status in a company if you don't believe in its products ?
If you're a VP, you're supposed to uphold the company's values and demonstrate that in everything you say. If you're a floor worker canning the stuff, you can make your snarky remarks (far from your manager's ears), but if you're a VP, your duty is to represent the company and its values.
If you don't believe in them and are just there for the paycheck, you have nothing to do there and should resign with immediate effect.
"how on Earth do you get to VP status in a company if you don't believe in its products ?"
"VP" is an honorific title, really signifying "top donkey", particularly in the IT arena, where the buck tries to stop first whenever there's an incident. It has been noted in the past that the average life of a CISO is 2.5 years (i.e. until the first data breach). And it's interesting that IT "directors" don't often have a seat on the board.
Maybe he's useless but ended up as a VP because he was in the right place at the right time or licked the right arses or got the credit for some great work done by others and realized that, although he didn't much like the company or its products, he was earning shitloads more than he deserved or could get elsewhere so, what the heck, why not stay?
It's a very, very, unlikely scenario - I know. Hard to imagine that there are loads of senior people earning big wedge who don't deserve to be there and don't like the company's products.
" earning shitloads more than he deserved or could get elsewhere so, what the heck, why not stay?"
It could be the Mrs's daddy that put in a good word and not taking the job could lead to marital issues before said old man kicks it and wifey inherits loads. The job going to said person so he's earning enough to keep daddy's little girl in pearls and diamonds while not leaching from the family for living expenses.
"how on Earth do you get to VP status in a company if you don't believe in its products ?"
Because a VP of IT doesn't have anything to do with making the food, likely doesn't understand how the food is made, and (so long as they can avoid be recorded and making derogatory comments) no-one cares about their opinion of the food.
They pay someone to do a job, they do it. You shouldn't have to have some kind of religious passion for your employer's product. Sometimes a tin of soup is just a tin of soup.
> "You shouldn't have to have some kind of religious passion for your employer's product. "
Quite the contrary. Arguably *the* most obnoxiously overused cliché of sales blurb and corporate PR during the past fifteen or so years has been the word "passionate" and the need for *every fucking company out there* to pretend that they and their employees are "passionate" about what they do.
This gushing, insincere, spray-on faux enthusiasm is everywhere. If you (e.g.) search Tesco's website for "passionate about", you'll come across page upon page of products from countless companies telling us how they're "passionate about" the most mundane, mass produced corporate junk.
And remember that Tesco want employees who are "passionate about" helping customers as part of their part time, minimum wage job.
Obviously Tesco aren't the only offenders here, quite the opposite- this shit is everywhere.
The idea that one should be "passionate about" a job has really become common in recent years. It's not propaganda, it's just a convenient coincidence that this also distracts from and delegitimises the idea that one might have the audacity to be doing a job for the money and expecting to be paid more when they should be doing it as a labour of love.
I'm rather fond of my salary. So I'll turn up on time, do my work, do whatever other weird/dumb/this-is-somebody-else's-job stuff I'm asked to do, then I'll go home. Rinse and repeat, and every so often they throw some peanuts in my direction. Peanuts equals tea and linguine, and that's about as close to passionate as I get.
The company's products? They're okay, not my sort of thing, but refreshingly free of artificial junk (so yay for that). But I'm not passionate. I'm not passionate about anything really, to the point where I'm not even entirely certain what I'd need to do in order to fake being passionate. If we made cupcakes... Am I supposed to make out with one of them? Lick the icing tenderly? What? What does "being passionate about..." even mean?
That would be a lot closer than the soup example, but why should that be an instant reaction? Unless those execs had previously said that iPads were great for children, then they're not being hypocritical. There are plenty of things that I think are fine for adults but would either limit or prohibit for children until we figured out the specifics. Now if they said they wouldn't use them or want anyone they know to use them, that would make more sense, but otherwise, it's a parenting matter more than a tech one.
His job was making the computers work. Well, his job was managing the security subset of those who make the computers work. Neither set of people have to care about whether the soup produced by the people at those computers is good. Unless he considered it so bad that it was criminal to make it, he doesn't have any mandate to enjoy the products of the company in order to be capable of doing what the company needed (assuming he was, which isn't stated or very important in this discussion).
The more fundamental question is..."how do you get to that position and not realize you're a moron for badmouthing your company's products to your subordinates?"
That's the problem here. Buy the products or don't. If you're in the US, you probably buy more of Campbell's products than you realize .....(their line of products is pretty wide):
Among their brands:
Pepperidge Farm cookies, crackers and breads
PACE Foods (salsas)
Cape Cod and Snyder's chips and pretzels.
"I don't care if you like Campbell's products or not, but how on Earth do you get to VP status in a company if you don't believe in its products ?"
Go to the right college, wear the right tie, know who's closets have what skeletons. There's also the classic nepotism to factor in. A previous company the person worked for was legally prohibited from saying anything negative about them so the entry on the resume might be technically correct.
I don't think Campbell's are capable of coming up with something as advanced as 3D printed chicken.
It's more likely "mystery meat", something similar to the rodents thay also serve up at KFC or maybe they've finally worked out how to breed chickens the size of those in the film "Sleeper". http://kaiju.wikidot.com/wiki:chicken has the full info (2nd picture down).
El Reg story says "The company has since pumped out plenty of posts pointing out that its poulet is proper repast, made of actual chicken from well-run farms."
Errm, not quite.
Per company statement https://www.thecampbellscompany.com/newsroom/news/company-statement-on-the-garza-lawsuit-and-alleged-audio-recording/ says:
“The chicken meat in our soups comes from long-trusted, USDA approved U.S. suppliers and meets our high quality standards. All our soups are made with No Antibiotics Ever chicken meat. Any claims to the contrary are completely false.”
They said ‘chicken meat’, not ‘chicken’. Would you say "Honey, we're having chicken meat for dins"? No. You'd say "Honey, we're having chicken for dins". That qualifier word 'meat' is hiding something.
The qualifier ‘meat’ could also suggest they’re not using non-meat parts of chickens (such as finely ground up bones) to make the product. What they don’t say is if the chickens are free-range or battery farmed, how the chickens are slaughtered, where they’re slaughtered (i.e. how fresh is the product) whether they use decent cuts of chicken or whether it’s mechanically reclaimed meat going in there, and many other quality related questions people could legitimately ask about.
Of course, this kinda ignores the fact they use much cheaper GM crops for all the non-chicken parts of their food, so if that’s something which bothers you then you should avoid anyway.
The qualifier ‘meat’ could also suggest they’re not using non-meat parts of chickens (such as finely ground up bones) to make the product.
Soup might be one of the more honest meat products, ie compared to MRP sludge that gets reformed into meat-like substances.. Often heavily breaded or squirted into a casing to disguise the lack of cuts. But anyone who's made soup or stock should have a reasonable idea of how it's probably made, but that would require people to understand some basic cooking, which many people sadly don't. So taking the carcass of a Sunday roast or Thanksgiving turkey and pressure cooking it for a few hours to extract the flavor. Personally, I think a bigger scandal was being pushed to cut salt content, but that's also back to cooking and people not understanding seasoning.
No, it's specifying more narrowly than just saying chicken. In case you were worried that they were taking beaks and wing bones for the soup, indicating "chicken meat" excludes those. You usually don't need to specify this because you usually don't find anyone who does want to use those, but since this came from an obviously wrong claim that it wasn't even from chickens, then the reaction makes sense.
In reality, printed meat would have been a lot more expensive, difficult to get past safety inspectors, and if they had a solution to both of those, they would be rather happy to announce it at least as a subset to attract the market of people who don't want to eat meat for various reasons but are fine with a substitute made without killing chickens, and other companies that are aiming for the same market would be asking for the recipe for that substitute. I don't think it was the serious belief of the person saying it either, as it was more likely a hyperbole expressing his distaste for the product rather than expecting to find a real lab growing mystery meat-like product.
.. and ironically, if you are a non veggie making a "meat" soup at home, then you will generally have thrown bones into the the stock base (bones which will be removed after the stock base has gained flavour from them* and is strained).
A good home made (meat flavour) soup will have included bones in the preparation (but you do not want the bones ending up in someone's bowl))
* and, if you ensure stock base slightly acid, can dissolve additional Calcium from the bones (not for flavour, just as a useful trace element we need in our diet)
One wonders if it is what gets described over here as "mechanically separated meat". Basically blasting the carcasses with high pressure water, grinding up everything extracted (which will have more odds and ends than just left-over meat pieces), squashing it into a 'cake' with the consistency of chipboard, and then cutting it into shapes. A lot of budget price nuggets are made like that, which explains the really weird polystyrene-like texture. Meat is a muscle, so if you can tear a strip down your nugget (or meat piece) then it's made from "real meat". If it just sort of pulls apart (or, worse, snaps), then it's chopped-and-reformed slurry. But it contains proteins and it is from the animal so, yeah, legally it is "meat". Note the scare quotes.
Ever since learning about that process and how the stuff gets made, I avoid the low-price offerings. Because, bleugh!
If it just sort of pulls apart (or, worse, snaps), then it's chopped-and-reformed slurry. But it contains proteins and it is from the animal so, yeah, legally it is "meat". Note the scare quotes.
They've got sneakier, so kinda extruding MRP out of spineret nozzles to create more of a meat-ish texture. But YT can help, or turn consumers into Bismarks. I watched a video with a factory tour showing how Butterball turkeys get made and had been expecting that to be big on MRP, but instead showed them deboning turkeys & packing the birds into balls. I guess Cambells could respond by showing how they make their soup and if they're starting with whole birds, or buying from poultry processors like Tyson. But I'm guessing it'd be much the same process as used to make cartons of stock.
You may want to research a bit more on Råtner.
It was a complete witch hunt by the media and the established elite jewelry trade.
They all looked down on him as he was a genuine self made millionaire who completely obliterated every other high street jewellers out there. People knew their products were cheap tat, but they gave the illusion of being expensive, which is what most people were happy with.
The wikipedia link which I supplied does in fact address that point. I "did the research" and it was literally a click away.
Yes, it was a joke he'd used before without repercussions and it blew up this one time. The UK gutter and not-so-gutter press can be ruthless if the fancy takes them, or if someone makes it worth their while to hound some guy.
And also it was a damn stupid thing to say about your product and your customers. Regardless of the circumstances, saying in a public space that your products are overpriced crap and your customers are knuckle-draggers is never a winning strategy.
Both statements can be true at the same time.
"People knew their products were cheap tat,"
Clearly they didn't, otherwise they would have continued buying them after Gerald Ratner referred to one product as "total crap", and Ratner's would possibly still be around today. It is significant, because almost all of the other jewellery chains that were also part of Ratner Group at the time, are still commonly found on UK and US high streets - H.Samuel, Ernest Jones, Watches of Switzerland inparticular. Ratner Group still exists, but a year after the fateful remarks by Ratner and after his resignation was renamed the named Signet Group.
Presumably you were not around at the time, but to try and dismiss it as being a media witch hunt is risible.
The competitors will always try to use anything against their competition, and giving them ammunition to do it with is a bad idea. He could have been boring and said that the products were a good blend between quality and price. He could probably have even said that they were cheap and let it end. When he decided to deride his products and customers, that was a valuable thing for anyone else to use. All they had to do was publish and promote his own statement. Unless they had some way of forcing him to say it, that was his failure and their stroke of luck, not a witch hunt. The same would be true if he said any number of other unpopular things.
Is no doubt "mechanically separated chicken", which is used across the industry (even in the EU I imagine) for making stuff like chicken nuggets - because chickens may have wings and breasts but they don't have nuggets lol
It is hilarious that the Florida AG immediately decides to pander to his followers with fake concerns over "lab grown meat"
Also referred to in UK industry speak as MSM or MRM (mechanically recovered meat), and its the scraps of flesh left on a carcass after all the muscle tissue has been conventionally separated. Can be produced by wire brushing the carcass, using a pressure washer on the carcass, or shoving the whole lot through a high pressure sieve and collecting the sludge that drips out. Not permitted (officially) to produce "beef" MRM for human consumption in the UK, although it's allowed for other meats. Other comments about mystery meat apply, as the horse meat debacle shows. Also worth pondering what happens to all the less popular bits of animal like rectums, spleens, eyeballs, gizards, udders, etc.
Anybody choosing to buy processed and supermarket packet meals or many fast food offerings is voluntarily eating this stuff. Bleuch!
If it's not particularly less healthy (and not likely to spread brain-destroying prions) than the rest of the animal and can be made tasty, then why not eat it? At this rate, I'm not likely to become vegetarian, but I'd rather reduce the proportion of animal that is wasted whilst producing my food.
Having said that, I did once eat tripe in Madrid, and I thought it tasted disgusting.
jpennycook,
I've had tripe, and it was mostly tasteless. Like snails. The taste comes from what you cook them in. The texture of both is pretty awful though, they were just a cheap source of protein, that have now gone "posh" in some restaurants. The same path that oysters have taken in UK food culture.
"If it's not particularly less healthy (and not likely to spread brain-destroying prions) than the rest of the animal and can be made tasty, then why not eat it?"
In principle I'd agree, in practice "made tasty" seems to mean a four part mix of raw leftovers, industrial additives, salt and added fat.
I'm not sure I'm up for eating cow rectums however cooked, but I suppose they could be deep fried and sold as a Meat McDonuts.
"Also worth pondering what happens to all the less popular bits of animal like rectums, spleens, eyeballs, gizards, udders, etc"
Pet food, as a general rule. Or more obscure foodstuffs like Haggis or blood sausage. You won't usually find these things in your average frankfurter or frozen hamburger.
Probably not even in pet food...at least here in the UK, pet food is extremely tightly regulated. In some cases more so than human food. Things that can just give us the shits can be lethal to pets. That's why it's tightly controlled.
Gizzards are probably more often turned into fertilizers and plant feeds (brains and livers contain a decent amount of phosphorus and potassium and various other minerals, important for fertilizing, especially in commercial farming).
Definitely haggis, that's basically an arsehole stuffed with arseholes. It's the maximum density of arsehole one can achieve.
I'm glad the Scottish take credit for that. Frankly, I think the English should burn all the historical records pertaining to it...they can have it.
Not bagpipes though, we should have words with Turkey and get them to take them back.
They sanitary rules are appaling - the only important thing is profit, damn others' health. And US wants to sell them abroad where the rules are much stricter.
Still you can be as racist as you like in the US - just look at the actual president - but you can't touch profits, and talking bad about the products can't be tolerated.
Most tinned "cream of chicken" soup is chicken stock, chicken fat, corn starch, milk / cream powder, salt and a few specks of meat. So basically the byproduct of chicken carcasses which have been stripped of their high quality meat. What's left is used either directly or through products reconstituted products like stock powder / fat / meat granules thrown into the mix.
So high quality it is not. Chopping, shaping, extruding or 3d printing the meat would be a costly extravagance for these companies.
Basically doing what most cooks would have done in the past - waste little if anything. Soups, sausages and brawn were always the traditional use for the bits and pieces of meat left over once the main part of the foodstuff had been used. Absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with it as food.
I suspect the vast majority of people who have no connection with food production and processing and have a very sanitised, ideallistic view of food, would have their eyes opened by seeing what is involved in putting what they regard as healthy food on the supermarket shelves.
A relative of mine was given a tour of a prominent UK jam factory many years ago. It quite put him off eating their jam!
"A relative of mine was given a tour of a prominent UK jam factory many years ago. It quite put him off eating their jam!"
I've got a freezer full of strawberries that are waiting for a Sunday when I have time to make more apple-strawberry jam. The apples are high in pectin so besides sugar and a little bit of water to get the cooking started off, there are no other ingredients. I don't know how long it will last once canned as it's never remained on the shelf long enough to find out. I go through apple butter less vigorously, but I have to make a big batch every year to keep it on the shelf. Pear butter too. Fruit, sugar, spices and time in the slow cooker.
Commercially produced food is a different animal. I'm not hugely fussed if there's some variance from batch to batch. There are two grades of strawberry jam, really good and super really good. Either one and I'm dancing.
"So basically the byproduct of chicken carcasses which have been stripped of their high quality meat. "
The phrasing sounds negative. I'm a fan of the Sam's Club $5 rotisserie chickens. Once I've pulled off the bulk of the meat, the remainder goes in pot and slow simmered with a few herbs to become really good broth. There really isn't a useful way to get all of the meat off. I often use the broth in the rice cooker/instapot to make rice and veg. Much better than just adding water. It's also a great base for a more complex soup and stews.
"So basically the byproduct of chicken carcasses which have been stripped of their high quality meat"
So chicken soup then?
Have you never boiled a roast chicken carcass to make chicken stock? It's how you get your moneys worth out of a chicken...the best part is, you can use the stock from one chicken to make your next roast chicken even better...and on and on and on...better yet, Christmas is nearly here...make some stock and baste your turkey in it, you can thank me later.
Apart from the guts and beak, there is no low quality part of a chicken. It's all useful. You have to use offcuts, skin, bones etc to make stock...you can't make it with lumps of pure meat, you can't just boil a whole chicken and get stock...and you won't get a lot of flavourful stock out of a chicken breast...the flavour in stock comes from the collagen, bone marrow and fat...I would expect a chicken soup to be packed with that, because that's where the flavour comes from.
Home made soup doesn't usually have chicken meat in it, if it does, it comes from the stock if you don't strain it, which is why they throw the token little bits in, it's a nod to home cooking. A homemade chicken soup is basically chicken stock poured over some sauteed carrots, celery and onions with some cream and some tarragon nicked from your neighbours herb garden mixed in it...salt and pepper to taste...a dash of white wine as well if you're trying to impress the neighbours.
Some people might shred some roast chicken into a chicken soup, but that's posh and a bit showy...really fancy people put noodles in...if you've just come in from your fox hunt, you might grate some black summer truffle on top...it's still just a boiled chicken corpse though...no matter how posh you are.
Not into that? Make a roux with plain flour and butter, then slowly stir in some chicken stock and a splash of sherry...boom, gravy...pour it over your freshly roasted spatchcocked poussin that you've had slow roasting in the aga all day and share whilst you guffaw with your acquaintances over the days hunt.
No matter how posh or poor you are, every chicken dish, if done properly, will involve boiling a carcass to get stock. If you buy ready made stock, someone else boiled it for you.
I'd be more upset about the corn starch than anything else in a tin of chicken soup...nobody wants spunky soup. The whole concept of chicken soup is using the left over bits of chicken and the carcass to make something else...it's a dish made from leftovers...if anything, Campbells probably uses less parts of the chicken than you would use at home.
It's not the low end of the market where you find bellends and ballsacks...it's the high end...particularly in sausages...if you buy sausages that claim to be 100% pork from a supermarket, I guarantee you that at least 20% of that meat is garbage...it's skin and various other sinew finely ground up and mixed with higher quality cuts to create the margin. You can tell, because when you cook up these "high quality" sausages, you end up with a sticky residue in the pan...that is collagen and it comes from skin, connective tissue, tendons etc...if you used nothing but pure pork shoulder to make a sausage, you do not get this sticky shit in your pan...in fact if you do use 100% actual meat in a sausage, it's usually naff...you need at least 10% fat to get a decent sausage...otherwise it's dry and tough and has no flavour...like a condom full of spam. You need the fat to cook through the meat to make it tender and to add flavour.
Judging from the pretty low uptake of vegan specific foods in my local supermarkets, and the fact that when they put out the stuff reduced because the 'best before' or 'use by' date is about to expire, the veggie based vegan specific stuff seems to occupy a disproportionately large percentage of it, I would say that "It would sell like crazy" is perhaps being a little on the optimistic side ;)
Actual long-time vegans and veggies I'm guessing prefer to cook from fresh and avoid heavily processed food.
I'm old school(*) veggie and we do cook from actual fresh ingredients most of the time. I'm up for a Quorn sausage now and again though.
(*) https://the-good-earth.uk-restaurants.com/menu
No connection other than eating there whenever I'm in Leicester.
I've often thought that the vegetarian "ready meals" are produced by the meat industry as a deliberate attempt to dissuade people from becoming vegetarian. There's no other reason they could taste so awful. Proper vegetarian food is not "fake meat", it's dishes that don't ordinarily contain meat. There are many of them, particularly in Indian cuisine: Vegetable curries, salads, Rice and Beans, Lentils, that kind of thing. If the food is tasty and well-balanced, you don't need meat.
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