Sausages and Co: Meat substitutes are becoming increasingly popular. Also because many consider it to be more environmentally friendly and healthier. Does this belief stand up to the data?
That a federal chancellor invented the veggie sausage sounds like a bad joke. But is true. The chancellor’s name was Konrad Adenauer, and before he ruled in Bonn he was head of the food department in Cologne. It was 1915, Germany was at war, people were starving, and so Adenauer invented a sausage made from soybeans so that “the consumer would be given the vegetable protein under the guise of meat food,” as he wrote at the time. Soya had to disguise itself as a sausage.
Today, a good 100 years later, the camouflaged sausage is trending, the traditional manufacturer Rügenwalder sells more vegetable than animal cold cuts. But which is better for the environment and people, the real or the imitation sausage?