This is a crappy argument. Chicken inherently has thousands of "ingredients". I think this product actually seems quite simple, considering the complexity of what they're trying to replicate.

EDIT: Although I agree -- I'd always prefer foods taken for what they are rather than substitutes. Then again, I'm not vegetarian.

It seems the goal is in part to replace the animal-sourced sort-of-fake meat that's already a significant part of the world's diet, with a non-animal source that may be more environmentally friendly to produce.

A roasted chicken or a steak is one thing, but a lot of uses of "meat" really only call for some kind of processed product that has a certain taste and texture. Chicken patties at McDonald's, for example, are not actual cuts of chicken meat, but mechanically separated meat that's reformed into a patty that attempts to mimic a certain meat-ish texture. If you can mimic that same chicken-patty texture with a non-animal sourced set of ingredients as the input, I don't see it really as any less natural.

(Alas, it does me no good personally, because I'm allergic to soy protein.)

it's a worthwhile goal, but feel if we're in the business of making fake food, why not make it as nutritious as possible too? Environmentally friendly should be secondary.

Have you been to any Buddhist country (Vietnam,Thailand India,etc) and tried any of the faux-chicken/beef/pork/fish dish? It isn't as real as Beyond Meat probably (since it is not made by scientists but thousands of years of practicing vegetarian) but is quite delicious.

We went to a Chinese restaurant the other day that is known for having vegetarian versions of almost every regular American Chinese restaurant dish. They used some kind of fibrous fake meat for the General Tsaos chicken that was very convincing. Maybe seaweed based?

My guess is seitan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_gluten_(food)

I don't doubt it. They are probably just taking simple soy proteins and cooking them with whatever, just like we would cook meat. Not produced in some lab. I have nothing against this and appreciate it.

Industrial chicken meat has lots of junk in it (e.g., http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/safe/over...)

To counter Botulinum toxins, frozen meat contains Sodium nitrate, a known carcinogen(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_nitrate#Health_concerns).

I never said factory meat was good :)

The point of this product is to serve as a replacement for factory farmed chicken, not the whole chickens you buy at your local farmers market raised in somewhat sustainable conditions, so your point of comparison is moot. If you compare the ingredients of this fake meat to what you find in factory farmed chicken this clearly wins out (no antibiotics or hormones, no cholesterol, higher proetin and carbs, etc).

"Just buying a soy protein" and cooking it that way tastes nothing like chicken. That is what is wrong with it.

If you like it, great. In some dishes I find tofu nice. For the most part, though, I dislike the consistency and find that outside a few types of dishes it can't compete on taste at all. I love chicken in a wide range of forms. I have no qualms about eating chicken. That it's the result of murdering animals does not disgust me the least.

In that context, it would have to offer something other than not being chicken as a benefit before I'd consider buying it. That is where there's a huge opportunity: Competing on price, taste or health factors with the actual animal products in the segment of the market that want something that tastes at least pretty much like the animal products.

Whether or not it is "fake" is irrelevant. Nature does not have a monopoly on making things good. What matters is how it stacks up with what it replaces in your diet. For most of us what it would replace is presumably chicken.

Their target audience is not tofu eaters, it's chicken eaters. They put that stuff in to make it close to meat, that was the whole point of the article.