I am a carnivore in a city of vegetarians and have often been forced to eat vegetarian sausages. The entire idea of a vegetarian sausage is disturbing at best to me as a truthful meat eater, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t empathize with those who are unable or who choose not to eat meat. In the spirit of sharing information, I’d like to pass along Juliet Lapidos fake sausage reviews from her article in Slate.
Lapidos’ experiment was highly scientific; she invited no less than six carnivores to taste-test three vegetarian sausages of the Italian-style variety. For "The Great Sausage Experiment*,” she included the following three sausages: Field Roast, Tofurky, and Lightlife. Each sausage was then judged by four criteria: Resemblance to meat, taste, appearance, and juiciness.
Here are the results:
Field Roast sausages came in first in “The Great Sausage Experiment.” The researchers all agreed that the Field Roast sausages were easily the most unattractive of the entire bunch. Possibly the best recommendation for the vegetarian sausage came from a carnivore “who said he could eat one every day.”
Torfurky sausages came in second in “The Great Sausage Experiment.” From Slate:
‘If the sole purpose of fake meat products were to fool a carnivore into grabbing a vegetarian product off the grill, Tofurky would have easily won the competition with its reddish-brown, accurately-tubular, fake Italian sausage.’
Unfortunately, the incredible sausage looks of the Torfurky were not enough to make it the best fake sausage ever. In fact, one the carnivorous researchers described the taste of Torfurky as Play-doh, while another carnivore called it “peppered cardboard.” (Which, does beg the question of what the testers usually eat.) The vegetarian writer had a different perspective on Torfurky and went so far as to say that she would eat a Torfurky sausage in lieu of a second Portbello mushroom. In addition, at least one meat-eater had kind things to say about the Torfurky sausage.
Lightlife sausages came in last in “The Great Sausage Experiment.” The researchers concluded that these particular fake sausages bore little resemblance to actual meat partially because of their more rectangular shape. The taste of the Lightlife sausage was described as bland and faint, while the texture was described as rubbery.
*”The Great Sausage Experiment is my name for the vegetarian sausage taste test that Juliet Lapidos conducted and not hers. Apologies to Juliet Lapidoes for giving the experiment a name and kudos to her for devising and conducting such a cool experiment in the first place.