Susie O’Brien: Meatless Four’N Twenty just vego madness
So Four’N Twenty want us to embrace their new meatless pies but I’m betting it won’t be long before they’re apologising for their corporate madness, writes Susie O’Brien.
Susie O'Brien
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Four’N Twenty, the home of the Aussie meat pie, has released a meat-free version. It looks like a pie, it’s packaged like a pie but instead of a delicious mixture of meat by-products and animal offcuts, it will contain soy-based plant protein.
I can hear the apology now from the head of the company: “We are sorry we misread you, our valued customers. We thought the public would respond positively to the product we proudly called a “meat-free pie”. We now realise such a concept is unAustralian, and we deeply apologise. We hope it is not too late to earn back your trust and confidence in our beloved company.”
Still reeling from the news that Holden cars will no longer be made, the plant-based pie came as a full-frontal assault on our red-blooded senses this week. Soon we won’t be able to sing about football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars.
Changing Australian tastes and demographics mean it’s more likely to be soccer, vegan pies, companion animals and SUVs.
Anand Surujpal, general manager of marketing at parent company Patties Food Group, assured Four’N Twenty customers they won’t even know they’re eating a meat-free pie.
“It’s got the same colours, textures, the taste profile, the mouth feel, you’ve got all those elements,” he said. Perhaps it’s because we suspect Aussie meat pies have been virtually meat-free for years.
Why must vegan products look, cook, taste, smell and even “bleed” like meat? What’s the point of vegan burgers that look like Big Macs and vegetarian-friendly pea-based sausages that look and smell like sangas? Why not eat the real thing?
You won’t be surprised to hear the meat-free pie has been met with outrage by pie lovers across our wide brown land. One Facebooker even demanded to know “one good thing a bloody plant has ever done”.
“Why don’t they invent pastry made out of meat instead so we can have meat wrapped in meat?” he lamented.
Hear hear.
A meat pie should be sloppy and aromatic with gravy, crumbly pastry and lots of yummy meaty bits (if not actual meat). It should be eaten at the footy during half time or in the school ground with a bin between your legs to catch the overflow. The only vegetarian aspect should be the river of rich tomato sauce injected straight from the pointy end of a sauce bottle into the meat filling.
Aussie footy pies should not have dietary credentials. They should not have five health stars. They should not excite the “vego community”.
But what should I expect? Half of the food products we’ve loved for years have become virtually unrecognisable. Powerade now has a flavour called pineapple storm ION4 with coconut water. Arnott’s has chillable Tim Tams in a Turkish delight flavour with a package that changes colour when you put it in the fridge.
You can even get lamington flavoured Smiths chips.
And don’t get me started on sausage-sizzle Shapes featuring a “charred beef, smoky and savoury barbecue bite, with notes of baked bread, caramelised onion and sweetness from the BBQ sauce”.
From cholesterol-lowering Weet-Bix to yoghurt “alternatives” with hemp and blueberry, food ain’t what it used to be.
These try-hard products merely make us long for the originals. Remember when Arnott’s started promoting its “new and improved” recipe for Shapes? People started panic-buying the originals by the trolley-load.
Didn’t product developers learn anything from New Coke, renamed Coke II, then quietly dropped in favour of Coke Classic? When your CEO’s getting letters addressed to “Chief Dodo”, then you know you’ve got a problem. A psychiatrist hired to listen in on some of the calls from Coke lovers said people sounded as if they were talking about the death of a family member.
The same thing happened when Kraft got trendy with Vegemite. Marketing boffins came up with iSnack 2.0, which was an immediate and resounding failure. The name was picked out of 48,000 suggestions by someone who clearly hated the product and anything to do with this country. Kraft was forced into an embarrassing backdown and issued a grovelling apology similar to the one above.
I should stress I have nothing against vegans, vegetarians or flexitarians.
I am happy for them to have all the soy-based, plant-boosted, protein-injected meat-free food they like. They can drink vegan wine, munch seaweed and tofu burgers and snack on sprouted and fermented legumes.
Just stay away from our meat pies.
Susie O’Brien is a Herald Sun columnist.