Why are vegans addicted to replica bacon?

Queueing behind a young woman in the supermarket I became fascinated by the items she had placed on the conveyor belt.

Several bottles of expensive booze had gone through first, followed by six tins of chickpeas, two bits of broccoli, then packet after packet of processed meat substitute products. 

Cheese-free cheese, ham-free ham, soy this and tofu that, and something to make a curry with that was simply called ‘Chunks’…

Bringing up the rear, rather fabulously, were two enormous crates of an energy drink called Monster Energy Ultra.

I was bursting to ask this lady: ‘Has it ever occurred to you that the reason you need 24 large cans of liquid energy in your weekly shop is that the food you are putting into yourself is almost totally devoid of energy?’

She was only in her thirties, I would guess from her clothing, and the usual assortment of tattoos and piercings that one sees on young women nowadays, but she had silver hair and pale skin with a greenish hue.

She did not look to me at all healthy, but perhaps I was wrong and she had deliberately dyed her hair grey and powdered her face with greenish white make-up.

What chiefly baffles me about the vegan movement is the lack of fruit and vegetables involved. This woman was apparently not all that interested in fresh food.

What she wanted was processed junk that tasted of meat. It could be made of anything. Chunks of what? She didn’t care, so long as she could make-believe it was something else.

This I do not understand. If you are convinced that meat is appalling, then why would you want to replicate the experience of eating it? I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t drink anything that tastes of alcohol either. I don’t want to kid myself that the situation is not what it is by slurping alcohol-free beer.