Have you tried any? What do you think?

I have tried some quorn stuff but I don't like them. I think mostly because I don't like what it is,if you know what I mean. I feel like it has been made in a lab. We have had them in the UK for quite a long time. I remember reading when they were first introduced in the US and at one time there was talk of banning it for not "being a proper food" I have friends in the US that eat them and love them so knew they were on sale now. I personally do not feel so well after eating any quorn stuff. They must be popular in the UK though as they are sold everywhere and many different types of dishes too.

I've tried it and liked it--at least in some of its forms. I liked some of the breaded "cutlets" and "nuggets." I also had the "loaf," but did not like that as much.

John Robbins gives the product a very negative review here:

http://www.foodrevolution.org/askjohn/35.htm

I haven't bought any more since reading that article.

Is this the egg-based stuff ?

Some people seem to confuse it with seitan.....(damn)

I've tried just about everything that they offer in the US. I love the stuff. And while I wouldn't consider it a major part of my diet, I do eat it fairly often and haven't yet started growing mold on my chest. Until we figure out how to clone meat in vats, this is the closest we'll have.

I remember hearing a while back that Gardenburger and/or Boca were opposed to its introduction into the US under the pretense that it was harmful to consumers. Personally, I suspect they were more concerned (rightfully) about their market share.

Some links:

Quorn homepage - www.quorn.com

Anti-Quorn homepage - http://www.cspinet.org/quorn/

No, it's not egg-based. It's fungus-based. Like Fenguin said, it's not a major part of my diet, but I do enjoy it from time to time. I've made the mock turkey roast probably three times in the past 12 months (for major holidays).

My cat thinks it's real turkey--he knows when I'm making it and actually begs for it. If you're put off by the appearance and texture of turkey, you probably won't want to try it. It's very, very similar.

I read that post Joe, very interesting. I knew I had read things about it a while back so it was good to see what what written about it again. It bothers me even more now I must say. I'm vegetarian and I try and look after what I eat and I just don't feel this is really a food.:confused:

Originally posted by 1vegan
Is this the egg-based stuff ?
Originally posted by Molly
No, it's not egg-based. It's fungus-based.

It is based onsome kind of a fungus/mushroom, or more accurately "mycoprotein", but there is albumen in there somewhere in the finished product too I believe.

More discussion about it can be found here (http://www.veggieboards.com/boards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1696).

Quorn isn't vegan- so I've never eaten it, but my husband likes it and often chooses it rather than corpse. He's been eating it for years. We're in the UK.

quorn contains eggs. It's made from mycoprotein, which is a fungus-based product. I don't feel bad about eating fungus. It's not really lab food either. It's made by an industrialised process. But I'm not too keen on most quorn products as a matter of preference, though I do like the tikka masala curry that quorn do, even if I do get some nasty side effects. I have a great story of how I ate one of these things, and it gave me the sh*ts, so I popped into the nearest mcdonalds outlet, purchased nothing, and utilised their lavatorial facilities. I stunk the place out!!!

As for banning quorn because it's not a proper food, are these same people trying to ban tartrazine, and a lot of other e-numbers, because I think tartrazine is far worse than quorn.

I think I would still call that lab food!lol
It is interesting how many people get side effects too. Yikes!

Yeah. I think it was the curry rather than the quorn that gave me the side effects, but hey, I got to stink out a mcdonalds toilet!! You don't see me complaining!!!

I prefer natural food, but I don't mind "lab food"

Hey I didn't know this Quorn stuff! What a cool idea!!! Going even lower then plants on the food chain...

Buy yes it's not vegan so i won't try it :(

"In addition to mycoprotein, other familiar ingredients such as vegetable flavorings and a small amount of egg white are used to prepare Quorn™ foods giving them their meat-like texture and delicious taste."

Is there anything similar that is vegan? Replacing the egg white can't be so difficult?

Can mycoprotein be grown at home? I already have the equipment to grow mushrooms.

Me too, I prefer natural food too Loki:p

When I was still ovo-lacto I would eat Quorn products. I really liked them. But, as was mentioned, they contain egg. (I believe egg white. Which a friend of mine tried to convince me should be okay since it wasn't the yolk.) Yeah, right.

I've pretty much gone off the quorn curry now. I'd rather go to a good indian restaurant anyday!

But anyway, I know of quorn being contacted about veganizing their product, and they're reluctant to do so, as they've tried a lot of alternatives, and they don't seem as good. But anyway, I think that CSPI is a f**ked up organisation. I hate to even reside on the same side as the mis-named center (centre??) for consumer freedom, bu tI truly don't like the CSPI. I'm not pro-quorn either or anything. In fact, i don't like it, but I've not known of any problems associated with eating it. CSPI is over-reacting. This may sound like a surprise, but people have intolerances to foods. Some people are intolerant to lactose, and others may be intlerant to gluten, peanuts or other common foods. Would it come as any surprise that some people might be intolerant to this food?

Theonly ground the CSPI has to stand on with their anti-quorn stance is that their labelling is wrong. I never did like their labelling policy at all. However, at least in the Uk, they've changed and stated that myco-protein is in the fungi family, which is true, so this means that they can avoid any angry comments about them breaking the 1984 food labelling act or the 1975 trade descriptions act. I dunno if they've stopped lying in America, but if they have, then I guess that's a positive thing.

Anyway, keep the letters going into Quorn. i find it very odd that they don't back down and veganize their product. If I took control of marlow foods, the first change you'd see would be that egg white would be replaced with something else like xanthan. (I think the egg is a stabilizer.)

I don't think these type of companies really care about anything other than their profits and if they are making plenty of them, they are not too interested. Hopefully though with letters, it may help. I personally think that this food is just not too healthy. I know how sick it makes me and my husband and now listening to other people, I realise it is not just me.

Ok, I do NOT see what the big deal is re: the fact that it's made of mold. Blue cheese and many other cheeses are made with mold, and I believe that tempeh uses a specific mold culture as well. Not all mold is unfit for human consumption, obviously, so why should this be any different? It's certainly alot better than artificial colors and flavors and other petrochemicals that are commonly used in foods. But nobody in the FDA is freaking out about those, even though one of the red food colorings was found to be unsafe and pulled from the market many years after they had originally declared it as safe. There is nothing insidious about Quorn!

I've never gotten sick from eating it either.

my ovo-lacto brother (woo hoo chalk up a conversion for the steve-man this week!! - it had to do w/ me doing vegan after 8 months of ovo-lacto) LOVES quorn, so do my omni parents. i don't mind it either.

"Replacing the egg white can't be so difficult?"

OK. Here's the problem. Egg white is helpful in cooking because this is what it does. It is a sol (flows) before it is heated. Heat it to a certain temperature, and it becomes a gel (doesn't flow). Cool it back down again -- at it still remains a gel.

Let me know when you find something else you can use in food, that does that.

That is what makes it a good "binder." When it flows, it mixes itself up with all the other ingredients. As long as it stays a sol, the ingredients will gradually "unbind," separate from each other again (the densest on the bottom, etc.) When it is heated and gels, and thus no longer flows, those ingredients can't "unbind," can't separate from each other. they are stuck where they are, for years conceivably. And after it cools, nothing changes, the ingredients still can't unbind.

There are also other things that make it unique in the food world, as far as I know.

Food starch, such as tapioca, potato, or corn, will start off as a sol, will remain a sol when heated, and will become a gel when cooled. They also serve as binders -- but for ice-cold food only. Not for warm food or hot food. Warm up that gelled starch -- and it will become a sol again. Same thing with hemicelluloses like pectin.

Further, while eggs are in a sol state, you can whip air into them, increasing their volume tremendously. Rapidly heat them -- and the air stays "bound" in place -- merengue. You can try whipping a hot starch or hemicellulose sol, but it is hard, I think, to get it to hold much air -- air dissolves better at higher temps, so it goes into the liquid, instead of remaining in tiny bubbles. Even if you could get the mix to increase in volume, I think it would be hard to cool it in a way that it stays volumized while cooling.

Commercial so-called egg substitues, are utterly useless for imitating these egg white characteristics, as far as I can tell. They generally consist of potato starch, and a number of other common ingredients, at an inflated price. I'm pretty sure its a lot cheaper to buy the ingredient separately. Ther are a number of recipes that include egg white that, if you leave out the egg white, and substiute water in about the same amount -- come out the same or similar. Egg-substitutes substitute for eggs very well in these recipes. They sometimes say, right on the package, in tiny letters -- no suitable substitute for egg-white in merengue recipes. They are not suitable in potato-pancake recipes either.

Gelatin is of course an animal product. And it's characteristics are more like hemicellulose than egg-white.

What about agar agar? I haven't used it, so I don't know--I'm just asking if you've tried it, and what your results have been.

Agar is a hemicellulose, like pectin and has similar characteristics.

J Robbins say, about Quorn:
=============
They are telling the public that the food is made from mushrooms. The packaging says the “mycoprotein” in Quorn is “made from natural ingredients” that are “mushroom in origin,”
===============

Well, I haven't seen the package labeling, but I don't see anything resembling Robbin's claims, on the Quorn web site, where they say
===================
Quorn™ foods are made with mycoprotein, from the fungi family - and a relative of mushrooms
====================

I'd bet Robbins has been busy twisting Marlow foods words around. I've never seen Marlow foods claim that their product is "mushroom in origin," only that their product is a "relative" of mushrooms. And indeed, it is in a rather distant relative. It is in the same kingdom, as mushrooms, fungi (fungi is a kingdom not a "family," -- Marlow is absolutely mistaken in saying it is in the same "family" as mushrooms), and the same phylum as mushrooms (classification division just below kingdom), ascomycetes, but it is not in the same "class" as mushrooms, the division just below phylum. It is about the same distance from fungi as a pine tree is to a tulip, and as a human is to a turtle, or a frog, or a shark.

However Robbins claim that "A mycologist from Cornell University said that mushrooms are as distantly related to Quorn’s fungus as humans are to jellyfish. " Notice how he blames this on an unnamed mycologist. A jellyfish is not in the same phylum, Chordata, as a human is. The most distant thing from a human that could be comparably distant as quorn is from a mushroom, would be something like a tunicate. A shark would be a more likely comparison.

http://depts.washington.edu/fhlk12/StudentProjects/Tun.biology.html

Note its larval stage. A jellyfish, i'm pretty sure, does not have a nerve cord running along a "back" at any stage in its development.

Try also this chordate, the lancet
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/chordata/cephalo.html

And see http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/chordata/chordata.html and http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/chordata/chordatamm.html

Note the bilaterl symmetry. Jellyfish have radial symmetry. Making them further from humans, than quorn is from mushrooms -- I'm pretty sure.

umm, the products used to state that mycoprotein was mushroom in origin. It has since been changed

All I have to say is 'yuk'!