"Vicky Conlan" > wrote in message
.. .
> I suspect there was tofu, if you looked hard enough, since it's a
traditional
> Japanese staple.
>

Outside of California, I doubt it. Some stores had tofu (Mori-Nu in the
tetrapak), but not all. Most stores now days don't have miso, either, or
tempeh, for that matter. Most healthfood stores have them, but not
everybody lives near one of those.

>
> It is now, it used to be from battery hens. Quorn was never intended as
> a 'vegetarian' food, it was marketted as 'low fat'. It's only a small
> unintentional that it ended up being taken up by the vegetarian market.
>

Quorn was developed in response to the percieved food crisis of the
1960's. A way to efficiently provide protein in a palatable, efficient
form, using technology and nover food sources (sort of like Soylent Green,
only it's not made from people...). It turned out the predictions for food
shortage were a bit off as farming yields increased, but the world still
faces environmental problems related to protein demand, specificly animal
protein (and note the recent article on water supply shortages causing
problems for agriculture in the future)- so a food crisis is not a forgone
conclusion. If you are vegetarian for any other reason besides animal
rights, then protein sources such as Quorn are indeed consequential.

And the application of science to create new food sources is nothing new:
George Washington Carver, the African-American chemist and agronomist,
developed modern peanut butter as a solution to malnutrition in the South
after the civil war and as a way for the Southern agrarian economy to
diversify beyond cash crops. He noted that pound for pound, peanuts were a
better source of many vitamins and energy than meat, and also was a good
source of protein.