this might look like sweet and sour
chicken fish beef and chili oil and
breaded spillage but none of this is
neat they're all made out of soy or
mushrooms faux meat is all the rage
these days brands like beyond meat and
impossible all have their version of a
fake beef patty - sizzles and even
believes like the real thing that it is
entirely plant-based it tastes like but
while it's now trendy in the West
did you know imitation meat has been a
part of Chinese cuisine for over a
thousand years to get to the origins of
it we have to look at Buddhist
monasteries in China imitation meat
started there where monks and nuns have
long abided by a vegetarian diet here's
a professor of Buddhist studies with
more imitation Mead can serve as kind of
subject you in the practitioners a
transitional period from Nanak turned to
vegetarian it was created for visitors
of China's monasteries and for
transitioning monks so this one we have
is one of our bestsellers it's a citrus
spareribs and you can see that I just
stir-fried with a little bit of carrots
moment of truth
[Music]
my god wait which room like this one
again this is citrus spirits all vegan
so no dairy no eggs it's so chewy like
the texture is so nice this is Lily and
she's the owner of Lily's vegan pantry
which has been in New York for 25 years
her family started selling faux meat
products in the States because there
wasn't initially much of a mock meat
scene in the city where we're religious
family so my mom grew up in Taiwan but
she's whenever she was in Taiwan she
always had delicious vegetarian food
where there was tofu or mock meats and
it's always grew with her and when she
immigrated here like 40 years ago there
was nothing so she decided to bring
everything over there target audience
includes people transitioning into
vegetarianism you're a meat eater but
you're slowly turning into a vegetarian
you want to try it out and but you don't
want to eat all the crappy stuff like
you don't want to just stick with non
flavor tofu or just veggies so we came
up with like mock chicken mock beef
where they use soybean as well but they
put in all the flavors so it's basically
a replacement or substitute for what you
usually at a restaurant they have their
own line of faux meat products including
spareribs chicken and even fish next
item that we have particle that we have
is our gumbo chicken so you can see that
there's chili inside it's one of us my
sear products they also have fake fish
fill its flavored with seaweed it looks
like me tastes like meat but just is it
meat but the one thing that makes
Chinese vegetarian food stand out from
other meat alternatives it doesn't
contain any alliant plants wait what's
out allium is a genus of plants that
includes onions garlic scallions
shallots elites and chives they aren't
used because their flavors are sent to
excite the central
okay we don't eat leeks scallions onions
and garlic so these are considered as
the strong flavor items and supposedly
they will bring out desires out so these
are off our diet and so what used to be
a byproduct of Buddhist cuisine today
fake meat has made its way into the
mainstream and it's getting closer and
closer to tasting exactly like real meat
this is David and he's the founder of
Omni pork a company that specializes in
faux pork products for the mainstream
Asian market Omni pork is made of
proteins extracted from peas soy
mushrooms and rice in our case it can be
used in dumplings as stuffing in dim sum
as mince on top of a lot of things of
course you can turn it into a meatball
or meat patty traditionally um many
people who are vegetarian are because of
religious reason now what the new-age
what this you know cutting-edge food
companies are doing is they are
targeting the meat eaters Thome has come
a long way from this Buddhist temple
origins and as technology progresses one
day soon it will be indistinguishable
from the real thing fun facts did you
know that Buddhists weren't always
vegetarian the Buddha never found his
disciples from eating meat in early
stage but later as time went by more
religious groups starting to take
vegetarian diet as their kind of a
lifestyle
one of the first mentions of
vegetarianism was in a Mahayana sutras
written in the second century it argued
for the diet on the grounds of having
compassion for living animals Mahayana
is a branch of Buddhism Mahayana
disciplinary book
specifically asking the practitioner to
abstained from eating meat as a minor
rule of that manual but vegetarianism
wasn't widely practiced among Buddhists
until the 6th century when Emperor Wu
the founding emperor of the Lyon dynasty
came to power he was a devout Buddhist
and very religious he actually stabbed
bongs and lungs nearly 2,000 of them to
the capital in his palace to hold two
conferences on the topic of meat-eating
after the first conference they were
protesting from monks and nuns saying
that well you are not Buddha because our
founder our great teacher never said
that meat is not eatable we are allowed
to eat meat so who do you think you are
the Emperor didn't listen to them and
instead issued an edict ordering them to
all stop eating meat from then on
vegetarianism became a practice in
Buddhist monasteries and continues to
this day