'Veggie meat' not just a fast food fad

WHEN IMPOSSIBLE FOODS, a company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat and dairy products, announced on May 13 it had raised $300 million in a new financing round, many media outlets described "vegetarian meat" as if it were a new concept. China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang comments:

There are records from the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) that mention monks eating food made from tofu and calling it "vegetarian meat".

The modern version of vegetarian meat does not differ much in principle from the vegetarian meat the monks ate. They both follow the same principle, namely cooking high-protein plant-based foods such as bean-products in oil so that they taste like meat.