Fake meat feels similar to my Slovenian eyes. There's a whole world of recipes that just don't include meat and are delicious. It wasn't until I moved to the USA that I even realized those are "vegetarian" ... to me they're just regular foods and recipes. Lots of cottage cheese hearty meals with high protein content.
It helps that traditional (100+ years ago) Slovenian culture was that you rarely eat meat because meat is expensive. Ye olden folks typically ate meat only on Sundays, I think. Maybe bacon fat to season the food on other days.
Sometimes I talk to my vegetarian friends and ask "If you want to be vegetarian, why don't you just eat natively vegetarian dishes? Why the fake meat?". So far no satisfying answer.
It helps that traditional (100+ years ago) Slovenian culture was that you rarely eat meat because meat is expensive. Ye olden folks typically ate meat only on Sundays, I think. Maybe bacon fat to season the food on other days.
Sometimes I talk to my vegetarian friends and ask "If you want to be vegetarian, why don't you just eat natively vegetarian dishes? Why the fake meat?". So far no satisfying answer.