textured
vegetable
protein is the worst thing ever invented and should be outlawed
pictured: garbage
for the uninitiated, this is an ingredient in alot of frozen meals. if you've ever been to school and had chicken at their cafeteria, you might notice that it tastes and feels absolutely appalling. that's because it's meat slurry with tvp pumped into it.
this stuff is really common in alot of frozen meals and im pretty sure its the reason they get such a bad rep: because they have the texture of a soggy hankerchief due to all the tvp dumped into it.
if you buy some food and it says "textured vegetable protein" in the ingredients, get a refund because its no good. the only time it's good is in chili and thats only because the meat in it is in chunks instead of a slab so you don't actually feel the texture of the meat
this is what meat looks like after you put tvp in it
also solution in meat is really bad too
sometimes if you buy really cheap meat (or patties molded into a meat shape) it'll say "up to [] percent solution" or something like that. that "solution" is literally just water injected into the meat to make it look bigger and better. it's like cheap restaurants putting an insane amount of breading on their food: it can make a microscopic speck of meat look like a big ol nugget. when you thaw meat with solution in it, it basically falls apart, and if you thaw out a patty, it becomes a disgusting slurry.
tl;dr tvp is the reason school lunches are inedible
/discuss