The French government issued a decree Tuesday banning the term “steak” on the label of vegetarian products, saying it was reserved for meat alone.
The French government issued a decree Tuesday banning the term “steak” on the label of vegetarian products, saying it was reserved for meat alone.
I love meat and think that this rule is stupid. The metaphors are used to describe what taste and texture you might expect from a product, which makes sense especially for people who just switched and want to emulate the taste pallet they are used to.
Except that France regulates their food industry very strictly and rightly so. What you think it’s a metaphor, it’s actually a word with a specific meaning.
Try to emulate Champagne and sell it as a Champagne in europe, and then try to convince the judge that you just intended that as a metaphore and wanted to emulate the taste pallet.
Champagne is a funny example because colloquially people will often use that term to describe any sparkling wine. And as said before - I disagree that this specific regulation is very useful to anyone, except maybe producers. Most people understand what coconut milk is.
The only funny thing is that you call shitty wine champagne COLLOQUIALLY with your mates and miss the point that this whole thread is about food being sold to customers and actually labelled wrong, something that is taken pretty seriously in the EU, and rightly so.
Want to continue talking about champagne in your after work plans with Debbie from the second floor? Be out guest but you can’t sell something that is not champagne as such.
And BTW this is a good thing for all of us consumers of the union. Particularly vegans and vegetarians, the main target audience of these replacement products. You wouldn’t want their products accidentally mislabelled and chicken eggs or animal meat ending in products labelled as vegan?
You seem to be a calm and reasonable person.
Maybe instead of screaming you could actually try to explain what is a problem of labeling a vegan product as vegan steak. For customer it’s rather clear that it’s vegan and he also gets a general idea of taste and texture that the producer was at least going for. So what exact problem does arrive from having a vegan steak?
If you planing on producing meat that tastes like banana, I don’t see any problem to lable it as meat banana.
Confusing and misrepresenting. Steak is meat.
No I am talking about a processed vegan food that is called ‘vegan something’ but that it turns out, has chicken eggs and maybe even meat in the list of ingredients. Just because someone might argue around the meaning of ‘vegan’ the way we are doing for steak, and legislation in some countriesight not protect the meaning of vegan in food names.
Just to be very clear. Nothing against vegans or vegan food. I am for clarity when it comes to customers, particularly in the food industry.
That’s why you put vegan before it. Like coconut milk, nothing confusing at all - was used for really long time and nobody ever had any problems with that term.
How is it not clear if it’s called vegan steak? What is not clear about it?
Or maybe to protect their meat industry? The same reason Champagne is a protected name. Lets not pretend that’s difficult to understand.
But that is just a wrong analogy. You are not calling a steak a carnivore stake or do you? So an example of a vegan food wood be a banana. You don’t call it vegan banana because that’s the expectation, like with a steak. You ad a word to make clear that it’s different from what you normally would expect - so vegan steak or meat banana. In both cases it’s rather clear how it’s meant.
I could not care less, since I’m not vegan - I just don’t like stupid rules.
EDIT:
This discussion is incredibly funny from Germany since we have a traditional sausage that is called Leberkäse or Fleischkäse, which is translated as liver-cheese or meat-cheese. There is no cheese involved at all.
For starters the word vegan is relatively new and not widely adopted by the general population. Older generations are likely not familiar with it and once again we are trying to put on the customer the onus of disambiguation. On the other hand they are familiar with the word steak, and associate that with an animal cut.
While your suggestion is intriguing, fake meat producers could just come up with a name for their products that doesn’t confuse people so you don’t need to put ‘vegan’ in front of it. Which is what France is doing and other countries will follow soon.
That would be a somehow valid argument if true. But the more the word is used the faster people will understand what it means, so this problems solves by itself.
Again, nothing ambiguous about vegan steak. It’s self explanatory concept, something that supposed to taste like stake but is vegan. The best way to convey this information is to call it a vegan stake. The only way to be confused about it, if you don’t know the word vegan (this will become better the more it’s used) or if you don’t read the labels, but than labeling differently wont help either.
Fake meat products, are targeted at people who want something that taste like meat. Calling something vegan meat - is the best way to communicate that concept. And again it’s not that meat-cheese (Fleischkäse) has been around for long time and we are all still fine, nobody is up in arms against it - the same goes for coconut milk.