Clearly chicken is the favored heavy weight in this fight. It's low cal, nutritious and the uncontested foundation to millions of meals every day. Tofu on the other hand is strange looking, sort of wobbly like mutated jello and is made out of the oft ridiculed soy bean plant.
You just might find yourself rooting for the underdog.
But tofu has some hidden qualities. It can't give you salmonella poisoning, it can't be undercooked or contaminate your raw veggies with a stealth attack on your cutting board or knives. You don't have to kill it, dismember or debone it in any way. But I think my favorite part about tofu (besides it just tasting good) is that when you order it at an Asian restaurant, you know it's not cat or horse or something else.
I am also sort of phobic of bones, gristle, and fat. The only reason I don't care for dark meat is because I spend an insane amount of time disecting each piece as I put it into my casserole/soup/stirfry, obsessively making sure there is not one tiny bit of fat or gristle trying to sneak it's way into my dinner preparations. I don't know what my problem is, and this is why my mom calls me her pickiest child. Not because I dislike food (definitely not that), or have a limited variety of food I like (definitely not that either), but because I get rather OCD about food.
Tofu is blissfully OCD friendly. No bones, no fat, no gristle. I feel like that should be their marketing scheme. Impossible to mess up, the no fail white meat. You can't feed it antibiotics or hormones to make it's breasts bigger, and you don't have to worry about it being crowded into small places and getting sick.
It's worst fault is that soy is estrogenic and depending on what medical study you read and what expert you consult...that could help your own human hormones function better or worse. Like most problems with homo sapiens it probably depends on the individual.
Chicken on the other hand doesn't have to try and list it's strong points. From chicken noodle soup, to fried chicken, it tops all the comfort food charts and *can* be healthy to boot. Sauteed, baked, grilled, fried, smoked, roasted... yeah, delicious.
So breaking it down as follows:
I have to say, in spite of my deep love for tofu, chicken is still the undefeated winner here. But I say this as I munch on my tofu, marinated and baked to a golden, flavorful perfection. If you're willing to try something new (and 89 cent/lb sounds like a good price to you) then do yourself a favor and give this a try.
You just might find yourself rooting for the underdog.
December 8, 2010 at 2:48 AM
Just read this article. Gotta say, the problem I have with people is that they make tofu vs. meat. It's not naturally an alternative. It's its own person... or ah... thing. Yea it loses as an alternative to meat, but in the same way that meat would lose as an alternative to tofu every time.
The same thing applies to mushrooms. Mushrooms lose to meat as an alternative to meat, but I'm not about to start substituting mushrooms with meat either.
It's those damn vegetarians who mess everything up. This is what happens when "popularizing" something constitutes throwing one's self-ascribed superiority at people. Should just been patient and let the Asians popularize it. At least they know how to do tofu right!
A tofu & meat (& potato) man,
December 8, 2010 at 7:06 AM
I don't think of Tofu as a chicken substitute. A lot of people will say "I don't think it tastes like chicken AT ALL." In response to tofu, which isn't really the point for me.
I actually like it just for being itself...not as a replacement.
So yeah, I think I'm on the same page as you with this one.
December 8, 2010 at 4:09 PM
I love tofu (and mushrooms) as themselves and not a meat substitute as well (better yet, in addition to meat), and in their own appropriate dishes (or in tofu's case, raw, with a dash of soy sauce). But I love these celebrity death matches. Mwahaha. I have this awesome mental image of a roasted chicken trying to spar a poor unsuspecting block of tofu.
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