If people are so against the idea of pigs and chickens being chopped up why would they want to buy fake bacon with realistic visual streaks of pork fat, or soy meat that tries to replicate the streaky texture of cooked chicken flesh? Surely these macabre details that mimic the look and texture of dead bodies are just going to be needlessly disturbing for someone that objects to killing animals. Unless they still crave the real thing — and this is like some culinary version of a nicotine patch. Something to trick the mind and fend off those urges to lunge for an unsuspecting nearby sausage. I was not against the idea of people being vegan or vegetarian but I had an issue with those “fake meat” products. To me it seemed absurd —

如果人們反對切碎豬和雞的想法，為什么他們要購買帶有逼真的肉眼視覺條紋的豬肉脂肪或大豆肉的假煙肉，而這些肉又試圖復制煮熟的雞皮的五谷質地呢？ 當然，這些模仿尸體外觀和質感的驚人細節對于那些反對殺死動物的人來說只會不必要地打擾他們。 除非他們仍然渴望真實的東西-就像某些尼古丁貼的烹飪版本。 一種欺騙思想并抵制那些沖動的沖動，以誘使附近的香腸毫無防備。 我并不反對人們是素食主義者或素食主義者，但是我對那些“假肉”產品有疑問。 在我看來，這似乎很荒謬-

“Oh just eat a real burger if you want it so much. If not, fine, eat vegetables. Vegetables are great!“

“哦，如果您想要那么多，那就吃一個真正的漢堡吧。 如果沒有，可以吃蔬菜。 蔬菜很棒！”

But I was totally missing the point.

但是我完全不明白這一點。

Most people who decide to avoid animal products are not doing so because they simply dislike the taste or texture of meat. According to many studies, the most common reasons people give usually fall into three categories:

大多數決定避免使用動物產品的人都不會這樣做，因為他們只是不喜歡肉的味道或質地。 根據許多研究，人們付出的最常見原因通常分為三類：

animal welfare

動物福利

health

健康

environmental concerns

環境問題

Furthermore, many vegans will openly tell you they actually liked the taste of animal products even if they lost any desire to eat animals. Disliking the taste or texture of animal products is much lower down on the list of popular reasons to eschew animal products. In the back of my mind of course I knew that avoiding meat was partly about what happens to animals. The idea of a vegetarian buying a fake sausage contradicted that assigned reason of “taste preference”. So for reasons I did not yet understand it was oddly irritating to me. Of course now looking back it seems blindingly obvious. The benefit of fake chicken is that it is not involving the suffering of… a chicken.

此外，許多素食主義者會公開告訴您，即使他們失去了食用動物的欲望，他們實際上還是喜歡動物產品的味道。 在避開動物產品的流行原因列表中，不喜歡動物產品的味道或質地要低得多。 當然，在我的內心深處，我知道避免吃肉的部分原因是動物身上發生了什么。 素食者購買假香腸的想法與“口味偏愛”的指定原因相矛盾。 因此出于某種原因，我還不明白這對我來說很奇怪。 當然現在回想起來似乎令人眼花obvious亂。 假雞的好處是它不涉及……雞的痛苦。

Even so, the question somehow still remains. If we vegans dislike what happens to animals so much, why do we still pursue such visceral reminders of animal suffering in our food even when it is vegan? These days we even have juicy vegan burgers from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods that can “bleed” a medium rare fake blood onto your plate.

即使這樣，問題仍然存在。 如果我們素食主義者非常不喜歡動物身上發生的事情，那么為什么我們即使在素食主義者的飲食下仍會內臟地提醒我們動物遭受痛苦呢？ 如今，我們甚至有來自Beyond Meat和Impossible Foods的多汁素食漢堡，它們可以將中等稀有的假血“滲出”到您的盤子上。

Many of us have jumped to explain the fake meat conundrum as it being aimed mostly to satisfy non vegans or flexitarians. However, let’s be honest, surely vegan customers make up a small percentage simply because there are still not many of us around. Vegans are equally enamoured with the concept of fake flesh. The recipe pages of Gaz Oakley, Richard Makin and the Bosh! boys are filled with ever more ingenious ways to make our own meaty imposters. So what is going on?

我們中的許多人已經跳出來解釋假的肉難題，因為它的主要目的是滿足非素食主義者或靈活主義者的需求。 但是，說實話，純素食主義者的顧客肯定只占很小一部分，僅僅是因為我們周圍的人并不多。 素食主義者同樣迷戀假肉的概念。 Gaz Oakley，Richard Makin和Bosh的食譜頁面！ 男孩們充滿了越來越聰明的方法來制造我們自己的肉類冒名頂替者。 那么發生了什么？

擬態 (Skeuomorphism)

This is a term that will be familiar to designers. The dictionary definition of Skeuomorph is as follows :

這是設計師會熟悉的術語。 Skeuomorph的字典定義如下：

Skeuomorph

倒影

/?skju??(?)m??f/

/ ?skju??(?)m??f/

noun: skeuomorph; plural noun: skeuomorphs

名詞 ： skeuomorph ; 復數名詞 ： skeuomorphs

an object or feature which imitates the design of a similar artefact made from another material.

模仿由另一種材料制成的類似人??工制品的設計的對象或特征。

“the pottery box with a square lid is a skeuomorph of a twilled basketry container”

“帶方形蓋的陶器盒是編織斜紋編織容器的仿制品”

an element of a graphical user interface which mimics a physical object.

圖形用戶界面中模仿物理對象的元素。

“note-taking apps offer skeuomorphs of yellow legal pads, squared paper, ring binders, etc.”

“筆記應用程序提供了黃色便簽紙，方格紙，活頁夾等的變形符號。”

Skeuomorphs are used in design for a number of reasons, sometimes they can be simply decorative and aesthetic to convey a mood. However they can also be used for more complex cognitive or functional reasons. An often used example is the Apple calculator on iOS. In the earliest versions of iOS the calculator app looked a lot like a physical calculator.

在設計中使用Skeuomorph的原因有很多，有時它們可??以只是裝飾性的和審美性來傳達一種情緒。 但是，它們也可以出于更復雜的認知或功能原因而使用。 一個經常使用的示例是iOS上的Apple計算器。 在最早的iOS版本中，計算器應用看起來很像物理計算器。

You might wonder why would Apple bother to painstakingly mimic every detail of a real calculator? And this is not the only example. They also had wooden bookshelves for ebooks and leather stitched address books. All designed to mimic their real world counterparts.

您可能想知道，為什么蘋果會費力地模仿真實計算器的每個細節？ 這不是唯一的例子。 他們也有木制的電子書架和皮革縫合的地址簿。 所有這些都是為了模仿他們的真實世界同行。

The short answer is people are attracted to familiarity. Of course people accept new experiences if there are some obvious benefits. However, asking customers to use a smartphone for a wide variety of tasks that they had previously done elsewhere was a huge undertaking. By providing familiarity through design it allowed people to feel comfortable to take that step into the digital world and at least still have some clue what they were doing when they got there. An easy intuitive understanding of these user interfaces was absolutely key.

簡短的答案是人們被熟悉所吸引。 當然，如果有一些明顯的好處，人們會接受新的經驗。 但是，要求客戶將智能手機用于以前在其他地方已經完成的各種任務是一項艱巨的任務。 通過設計來提供熟悉度，它使人們可以放心地邁入數字世界，并且至少在到達那里時仍然對他們的工作有所了解。 輕松直觀地理解這些用戶界面絕對是關鍵。

These days of course we are all too familiar with smartphones. Teenagers may have never even seen or used the physical “real world” versions of some of these products such as calculators, address books and so on. Meaning they only know the smartphone software versions. It therefore makes complete sense that Apple and other companies have decided to ditch the skeuomorphic design flourishes as they start to lose value. Notice how today the shadows have come off the buttons and they look flat. The LCD window at the top has been eliminated completely.

當然，這些天我們對智能手機非常熟悉。 青少年可能甚至從未見過或使用過其中某些產品的物理“真實世界”版本，例如計算器，通訊錄等。 意味著他們只知道智能手機軟件版本。 因此，完全有道理的是，蘋果公司和其他公司已決定放棄仿形設計，因為它們開始失去價值。 請注意，今天的陰影是如何從按鈕上脫落下來的，它們看起來很平坦。 頂部的LCD窗口已完全消除。

這和食物有什么關系？ (What has this got to do with food?)

It might seem odd to talk about food as design. However, processed food and even healthy homemade recipes are examples of human creativity comparable to design— using raw materials and making decisions how to craft products. These vegan foods such as fake chicken that tries to replicate the streaky texture of cooked chicken flesh, or fake bacon with realistic visual streaks of pork fat or bleeding burgers, they are all classic examples of skeuomorphism. Think of it as holding someone’s hand as they are crossing a bridge. For people new to veganism or people who just want to reduce meat, then this serves as a way to bring people across to something new.

談論食品作為設計似乎有些奇怪。 但是，加工食品甚至健康的自制食譜都是人類創造力可與設計媲美的例子-使用原材料并決定如何制作產品。 這些純素食品，例如試圖復制煮熟的雞皮的五谷質地的假雞，或具有逼真的肉眼可見的豬肉脂肪或漢堡出血痕跡的假培根，都是典型的擬態。 可以將其想象為在某人過橋時握住他的手。 對于純素食主義者還是只想減少肉類的人，這是使人們了解新事物的一種方式。

未來 (The Future)

What does this tell us about the future of vegan food? Well perhaps we will see the skeuomorphism trend for hyper realism start to wear off. Of course people are all at different stages of joining veganism so this will not happen especially quickly. I think somebody to watch is Derek Sarno, Executive Chef and Director of Plant Based Innovation at Tesco. He is using marinated whole ingredients like oyster mushrooms cooked on a BBQ with a cast iron pan to press a vegan steak. This is not trying to compete with the molecular level detail of a vegan burger made in a lab by Californians in white coats. The primary aim here is to be delicious not win an award in trompe-l’?il, and some of that undoubtedly comes from the flavour of the mushrooms. I see it as a bit like Apple iOS taking the shadows and highlights off their calculator buttons. It is OK to not be a perfect replica of what came before and instead explore a bit of freedom within this new world. Similarly if we see Tabitha Brown and the viral reaction to her “carrot bacon” on Tik Tok, it gives us a clue about what the younger generation find fascinating. Fake bacon already exists in the supermarkets with skeuomorph fat streaks, but that realism is kinda old, what is interesting is the idea of bacon made from just marinating whole carrot slices. Vegans these days are well versed in the fact that healthy means a diet rich in mostly whole plant foods, not lots of highly processed fake meats. I think this trend for whole foods with minimal processing will be critical. It is also likely that the old metaphors that link vegan food to animal products will in some cases be let go completely. People are already beginning to experiment more with newfound ingredients like Aquafaba (chickpea water) to the extent there are entire blogposts about it. Social Media is obviously going to play a big part and that means we will see home cooking moving into the territory of almost “food alchemy”. The focus will be on simplicity and health — so the ingredients might be quite basic and focus mostly on whole plants. The innovation will perhaps come more from the clever way to combine ingredients and and manipulate their physical properties perhaps even with totally new tools or methods. More people will likely grow their own food too, even in small apartments without a garden.

這對素食食品的未來有什么啟示？ 好吧，也許我們會看到超寫實的擬態趨勢開始消失。 當然，人們都處在加入素食主義的不同階段，因此這不會很快發生。 我認為值得關注的人是特易購(Tesco)的執行廚師兼基于植物的創新總監Derek Sarno。 他正在使用腌制的全部食材，例如用鑄鐵鍋在燒烤架上煮熟的牡蠣蘑菇來壓制純素食牛排。 這并不是要與加州人在實驗室里穿著白大褂的純素食漢堡的分子水平細節競爭。 這里的主要目的是要美味而不是在trompe-l'–il中獲得殊榮，其中某些無疑來自蘑菇的味道。 我認為它有點像Apple iOS的陰影并突出顯示了計算器按鈕。 不能完美地復制以前的內容，而應該在這個新世界中探索一些自由。 同樣，如果我們看到塔比莎·布朗(Tabitha Brown)以及提克·托克(Tik Tok)對她的“胡蘿卜培根”產生的病毒React，也為我們提供了一個有關年輕一代引人入勝的線索。 假臘肉在超市中已經存在帶有skeuomorph脂肪條紋的假臘肉，但是這種現實有點古老，有趣的是，僅腌制整個胡蘿卜片就可以制成臘肉。 如今，素食主義者非常精通，因為健康意味著飲食中應富含全植物性食物，而不是大量經過高度加工的假肉。 我認為，這種要求最少加工的全食品的趨勢將至關重要。 在某些情況下，將純素食品與動物產品相關聯的舊隱喻也有可能被完全拋棄。 人們已經開始嘗試更多新發現的成分，例如Aquafaba(鷹嘴豆水)，因為有關它的整個博客文章都在此范圍內。 社交媒體顯然將發揮重要作用，這意味著我們將看到家庭烹飪進入幾乎“食物煉金術”的領域。 重點將放在簡單性和健康性上，因此成分可能非常基礎，并且主要集中在整個植物上。 這項創新或許將更多地來自巧妙的方式來組合成分并控制其物理性質，甚至使用全新的工具或方法。 甚至在沒有花園的小公寓中，也將有更多的人自己種植食物。

There will be new traditions and new ways of thinking entirely born out of the vegan playbook. This is just the beginning.

純素食劇本將催生出新的傳統和新的思維方式。 這僅僅是開始。

Giles Mitchell is a British industrial designer based in Germany with a passion for vegan food.

吉爾斯·米切爾(Gilles Mitchell)是一位總部位于德國的英國工業設計師，對純素食食品充滿熱情。

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