Profs and Pints Online presents: “A History of Meat Mimicry,” with Adam Shprintzen, associate professor of history at Marywood University and author of The Vegetarian Crusade: The Rise of an American Reform.

[This talk will remain available in recorded form at the link used here for tickets and access.]

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the operation of meat-packing plants and the meat supply chain, dealing a major financial blow to meat producers. Fake meats, however, have continued to flow to stores without any problem, and sales of mass-produced fake meats grew exponentially during the pandemic. Unable to find regular meats at an affordable price, growing numbers of people are trying meat substitutes marketed as more ethical, healthy, and cost-effective.

As a result, we’re in the midst of a new chapter in the strange saga of fake meats in America, which actually have been around a lot longer than the grandparents who tsk-tsk at what they see their vegan grandchildren eating these days.

Come learn the fascinating history of meat substitutes in America, included how they were invented, where they came from, and how people have responded to them over the years. Adam Shprintzen, a leading authority on the subject, will cover it all in a talk that will leave you marveling at the strange twists and turns that such products went through in arriving on your grocery shelves.

Shprintzen will tell the story of how meat substitutes were first marketed in the United States starting in 1883, after an experimental kitchen at the Battle Creek Sanitarium began cranking out products purported to look, taste, and smell like meat. He’ll tell the tale of how an enterprising woman, Ella Eaton Kellogg, harnessed the power of science to reinvent vegetarianism in America and spark a movement to substitute meat on American plates.

We’ll learn how new products like Protose and Nuttose led to a shift in the diets of many Americans worried about disease or meat scarcity and bothered by unsafe working conditions in meat plant. For vegetarians this change paid significant dividends, and not just in terms of taste. Their movement gained notoriety, social cache, dietary praise, and respectability. In the process, though, it lost its radical, political edge.

Learning the surprising story of meat substitutes will give us a better understanding of our current fascination with fake meat, and might just also provide a warning to these products’ potential pitfalls.

Profs & Pints Online: A History of Meat Mimicry