I'm not a vegan. Not even close. I'm one of those rare creatures who lives on the west coast but has no dietary restrictions, either by choice or from allergy. I love meat, dairy, honey and whatever the hell gelatin is made out of these days, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate good vegan food where I find it. And yes, there is such a thing as good vegan food, though with a significant caveat. The crux of my argument could not be better illustrated than it was by VegNews recently. The vegetarian and vegan culture magazine got in trouble recently for publishing pictures of meat-filled dishes as meatless. When asked why they went for the fleshy pics, the reps from VegNews cited the difficulty of finding appetizing photos of actual vegan food and the high price to the rights of those few images that do exist. There are two things wrong with this: Tasty-looking vegan food exists in greater abundance than one would imagine and there's no reason VegNews couldn't have used original photography instead.
I'm a food writer. I've personally taken pictures of delicious-looking vegan food (that actually was rather satisfying). But I have a rule when it comes to the vegan food I eat, write about and photograph. Simply, if it's trying to mimic meat, it has no place on my plate.
Hear me out on this one. So far, imitation meat is as unpleasant to the eye, tongue and teeth as it sounds, which may be a development issue or may just be because vegetable matter doesn't have what it takes to act like meat. Then again, meat couldn't really mimic vegetable consistency, either. These two things are good for what they do naturally. It takes too much fiddling to make produce look, act and taste like meat, so you end up scarfing down a whole lot of processed goods, which is a bigger problem than the health concerns surrounding meat and dairy to begin with.
Besides, there are plenty of vegan "meat replacements" that are good on their own merits. Consider falafel. That stuff is delicious in a dozen different ways. Nothing wrong with fried chickpeas in spices. The same could be said for that Indonesian soy patty, tempeh. Slap a slab of tempeh on a wheat bun with garden veggies and a sweet sauce, you've got a heck of a sandwich. And go ahead and call it what it is. There's no need to slap the word "burger" on it.
That's really the root of the vegan food problem. Just like VegNews being unethical because of aesthetic insecurity, a lot vegan food producers and restaurants feel it's necessary to frame their cuisine through the lens of meat just because meat is dominant in mainstream culture. This is also the source of a lot of backlash. Non-vegans expecting something to taste like meat because it was marketed to them with meat-based terms shouldn't be faulted for their displeasure. It would be better if makers of vegan food just accepted that their products are what they are. It has worked for Asian tofu dishes, Middle Eastern falafel stands and the raw food movement. It can work for vegan cuisine as well.
As for the visual component that drove VegNews to slap a beef stew image on their article, that's just a lack of creativity at work. Vegetables are naturally colorful and textured. It shouldn't be hard to take a few digital snaps of vibrant green, wild red and golden brown. Vegan food has plenty of appeal when it's made and presented with confidence. It's when those who make it and eat it fall to their own insecurities as a minority that the image fails.