When did Veggie = soy-based product?
Lately I’ve been on the hunt for restaurants with yummy vegetable dishes. No, i’m not a vegetarian, vegan, or non-animal-product-only consumer, but I do appreciate the nutritional value and taste of quality vegetables.
Recently a friend suggested we go to the Veggie Grill, an eatery in El Segundo. And I thought, “Hey, that sounds great!” exactly what I was looking for - a place with a ton of vegetable dishes. I looked up the menu to view my options for the evening, and as I scanned each menu item, my enthusiasm quickly plummeted to despair.
http://www.veggiegrill.com/VG_Menu.pdf (The Veggie Grill menu)
As I understood it: “Veggie” is an abbreviation of the word ”Vegetable.” I like my vegetables minimally processed aka when you see them you can usually identify which vegetable they are or at least take a decent guess.
Sadly, when I see “veggie” now-adays, it rarely refers to vegetables as straight up vegetables that are broiled, boiled, sauted, grilled, etc. Instead, today’s “veggie” menu often consists of some processed soy product (without getting into the whole culinary/botanical vegetable/fruit definition debate, soy is a legume, in which the distinction is more significant in the nutrional sense). While I do enjoy me some soy beans in their natural form, I don’t appreciate processed soy product being passed off as vegetables.
Just take a look at the Veggie-Steak ingredients: Water, isolated soy protein, vital wheat gluten, natural flavors, pea protein, carrot fiber, organic beet root fiber, organic evaporated cane juice, yeast extract, sea salt.
That’s hardly what comes to mind when I think vegetable or steak for that matter. Looking at that ingredient list deeply saddens me. Where are the vegetables? Isolated soy protein is something someone purified in a lab, in which this case purified means removing all the essential nutrients sans the protein part. Vital wheat gluten? I thought this was veggie not grain. Did they realize that a substantial portion of the population is gluten sensitve/intolerant? Imagine eating what you thought was a veggie meal and breaking out into hives. Natural flavors - what does that even mean? Carrot fiber, root fiber - why didn’t they just use the whole carrot and root (vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients anyone?) Evaporated cane juice - if I wanted some sugar with my veggies, I’d add it myself. Or they could have just used the whole carrot, carrots are high in sugar.
Below is the nutritional value and notes. Based upon the ingredients and nutrional value the “Veggie-steak” would more correctly be named the “soy-wheat-vegetable fiber-steak” with the disclaimer: does not include essential vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients.
Contains: Soy and wheat
Nutritional Information
Serving Size 100gAmount Per ServingTotal Calories 140Calories from Fat 10 % Daily Value*Total Fat 1.5g2% Saturated Fat 0g0% + Trans Fat 0g0%Cholesterol 0mg0%Sodium 440mg18%Total Carbohydrate 5g2% Dietary Fiber 1g4% Sugars 1g Protein 27g Vitamin A0%Vitamin C0%Calcum4%Iron50%
The majority of the menu items at Veggie Grill include one of these soy-based products instead of actual vegetables. They should promptly rename themselves the Soy-Protein Grill to prevent further disppoinment for others like myself looking for actual veggies.
2 years ago