Dumb news stories

[HeavenIsAPlaceOnEarth]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/11/plant-based-foods-honest-meat-cow-muscle-eu-rules-ban-veggie

If plant-based foods must be more honest, let’s do the same for meat – fancy some ‘cow muscle’?

The Guardian opinion pieces are just 

Last week, European policymakers decided that plant-based foods should no longer be marketed with terms such as “chicken”, “bacon” or “steak”. The fear seems to be that shoppers might accidentally buy veggie bacon thinking it came from an actual pig. The change applies to the UK too, because of our trade agreement with Europe.

yes, correct, reasonable concern

If lawmakers want absolute transparency in food naming, then meat products could just as easily be required to use their literal descriptions. After all, beef steak is cow muscle. Pork chop is usually pig rib. Bacon is often salt-cured pig belly. Chicken nuggets? Formed chicken parts. And many sausages would require far less appetising names.

Sounds absurd? That’s precisely the point.

...but what are people buying by accident here? is there a single soul out there who thought they were buying beef steak but then were dismayed to find out they actually got cow muscle? beef steak means beef steak, there's no confusion there, but there is if you sell "vegan beef steak"

From the comments:

I once bought a beefsteak mushroom burger at a restaurant and was disappointed to receive a large mushroom in a bun and for not very much less than an actual beefburgers. Upon closer inspection of the menu it did say mushroom in the description of the meal so my mistake, food should be labeled plainly with no misrepresentation at all and that's a general rule for meat or vegetables or protein slurry formed into dinosaur shapes, but that's another hornets nest there.