Meat disgust is really interesting to me. A few months ago, I had steak-shaped TVP, which is basically defatted soy beans that get put into the shape and texture of meat.
I myself prepared it. I saw it go from being dry like a brick to having been soaked in vegetable stock to being fried.
And still, when I took my first bite of it, my body kicked in a gag reflex, because it was convinced I was biting into meat.
I also haven’t bitten into meat in 15 years, which is what makes this so crazy to me.
The taste reminded me of chicken (which was ultimately just the protein having undergone the Maillard reaction during frying) and the chewiness perhaps unsurprisingly did remind me of a steak. So, if I had been served that in a restaurant, I might not have trusted it to not be meat. But that’s not what happened then. It was just an instinctive reaction to something I haven’t experienced in 15 years.
In my particular case, it might also be a form of internalized trauma, because there was a time period, when I already found meat disgusting before going vegetarian (less so than after, but still) and my parents forced me to eat it anyways, because they thought I was just being a silly child.
Meat disgust is really interesting to me. A few months ago, I had steak-shaped TVP, which is basically defatted soy beans that get put into the shape and texture of meat.
I myself prepared it. I saw it go from being dry like a brick to having been soaked in vegetable stock to being fried.
And still, when I took my first bite of it, my body kicked in a gag reflex, because it was convinced I was biting into meat.
I also haven’t bitten into meat in 15 years, which is what makes this so crazy to me.
The taste reminded me of chicken (which was ultimately just the protein having undergone the Maillard reaction during frying) and the chewiness perhaps unsurprisingly did remind me of a steak. So, if I had been served that in a restaurant, I might not have trusted it to not be meat. But that’s not what happened then. It was just an instinctive reaction to something I haven’t experienced in 15 years.
In my particular case, it might also be a form of internalized trauma, because there was a time period, when I already found meat disgusting before going vegetarian (less so than after, but still) and my parents forced me to eat it anyways, because they thought I was just being a silly child.