I remember eating Boca Burgers (or something very similar, perhaps Morningstar Farms?) a few times back in the 70s or very early 80's. They didn't taste absolutely horrible to me at the time, but definitely did not taste like meat either. The texture was similar to a cheap fried fast food burger. I think they had some kind of smoke flavoring in them to try to give the impression of being charcoal grilled. They may have had some other flavoring in them too (something vaguely beefy-ish tasting like tamari or soy sauce), since soybean meal doesn't have much flavor on it's own - it picks up the flavor of what you cook it with.

I recall coming across some recipes for soy-burgers back during that era too, although I never made any - I think the main problem was that I had trouble acquiring all the ingredients at the same time in the small towns where we lived.

I'm pretty sure that back in those days, the idea was to provide an alternative to a beef burger for vegetarians to use - not that they were adverse to meat eaters trying them too. But they knew their niche market and there was no huge push to come up with something made purely from plant products that could convince meat eaters to give up meat.


At any rate, as all of us on here have noticed, even vegetarians have become the enemy of the vegan agenda - their goal is to convince everyone to give up all animal products and embrace highly processed and chemical laden products refined from a bunch of plant products, doctoring them up so that that they're trying to make them look, taste, and act like meat. (incidentally also the very ultimate in UPF products)

I haven't tried any of the fake meats, but DH did get one of the burgers when they were first serving them in fast food restaurants, and he said it wasn't bad. He said he could tell that it was not really meat, and there was somewhat of an odd texture about it, but that it wasn't really awful.

If it "wasn't bad", I see it mainly as a step on the way to convincing meat eaters that if they really need to give up meat at some point in the future, they will be able to *sigh* tolerate fake meat as an alternative, because *sigh* at least it would have some similar characteristics and flavor that they miss with real meat.

And that seems to be what the fake meat industry is trying to do - create products that once they figure out a way to have real meat banned, their products will be in demand, providing ersatz products to fulfill the craving for real meat.