There is no reason to consume the new, fancy manufactures from the likes of Beyond or Impossible if one is a vegetarian. These fancy, unhealthy, patent-encumbered, are merely corporate tactics to profit from hype and overtechnical solutions to problems long solved. Vegetarianism has produced tofu, tempeh, seitan, paneer, and has mushrooms, eggplant, nuts, beans, and seeds for protein and as meat substitutes. These can easily be made at home, are far healthier than the technically intricate meat analogues, and are also cheaper.
Being a vegetarian means not eating meat, but the vegetarian and the non-vegetarian alike need not rely on animal flesh to enjoy savouriness, a tough or chewy texture, and a dense mouthfeel to their foods. Tofu is not meat, but it can be flavoured like meat, or like fruit. I am pretty weary of technology in our foods, as this has given us Wonder Bread, margarine, food colourings, and vanillin. Unsurprisingly, both Beyond and Impossible’s uncanny meat substitutes are far less healthy than the established vegetarian cuisines of both the East and West alike. Many of those foods were devised or seriously improved by monastics or even peasants, and so were made by persons with a higher moral purity than a modern corporation.
I am of the persuasion that vat-grown foods are not necessarily bad, but we need to stop looking to replicate existing foods and instead take advantage of opportunities presented by the properties of the foods themselves. For example, mycoprotein is very nutritious and shows much potential, particularly since the patents preventing its replication outside a certain company have expired. This opens others to flavouring mycoprotein loafs and patties differently from simply chicken or turkey, just as there are many flavours of tofu which are not savoury. Because vat-grown foods such as mycoprotein, Spirulina, or Chlorella, do not attempt to mimic meats themselves, they are ethically akin to soy, and similarly versatile. This is absolutely something into which research is needed, not how to create an uncanny Valley of faux meats.