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I’ve been seeing a ton of commercials lately about a new food product called “Incogmeato.” What first grabbed my attention about this product was not it’s name, (which is quite clever), but its description (which occurs at the end of every commercial): “it looks like meat , and it tastes like meat, but it’s not meat.”

The music of that phrase mesmerized me, and has lingered in my mind for months. But this week I started to wrestle with its meaning. What exactly does it mean “to look like meat, and taste like meat, but not be meat?” In a recent press release, here is how the company describes it:

Masquerading as meat, Incogmeato™ tricks your taste buds with its meat-like experience and flavors from natural sources.

Hmmmm. How does it trick your taste buds? What is a meat like experience? Flavors from natural sources? This description did nothing to quench my curiosity, so I dug a little deeper. What exactly is in an Icogmeato burger? Here is the list of ingredients from the company website:

Water, soy protein concentrate, canola oil, palm oil, methylcellulose. Contains 2% or less of natural flavors, potato starch, salt, yeast extract, cultured dextrose for freshness, apple juice powder (color), cornstarch, sunflower lecithin, vegetable juice concentrate (color), vitamin B1 (thiamin hydrochloride), vitamin B12, ascorbic acid for freshness.

Huh? I’ll pass. I’d rather just go ahead and have a real hamburger. With cheese, pickles and barbeque sauce. LOL.

I am not a food critic, a nutritionist, or a dietician. However, I do have strong ideas about doing our best to maintain a healthy lifestyle by exercising and eating a diet based on whole foods. But none of that is the reason why “Incogmeato” and products like it trouble me. It’s the idea behind them: “it looks like meat, and tastes like meat, but it’s not meat.” What they are selling is a substitute.

We could apply that phrase to an endless number of scenarios:

looks like a relationship, and tastes like a relationship, but’s it’s not a relationship

looks like prosperity, and tastes like prosperity, but its not prosperity

looks like a family, and tastes like a family, but it’s not a family

looks like a Christian, and tastes like a Christian, but it’s not a Christian

You get the idea. Substitutes make us comfortable with not having the real thing.

And that can’t be a good thing.

I remember that whenever we had a substitute teacher in school, we traumatized the poor creature. The sub didn’t know us, so my elementary school assassins and I used every conceivable strategy to avoid learning. We tried stuff with the substitute that we would never try with the real teacher. To us, the equation was simple: sub=no work. And that’s the problem with substitutes: they don’t require any work. Instead of reducing or eliminating our meat intake, just have a dose of methylcellulose!

It is comforting to me to know that Abraham tried the substitution strategy with God. Why? Because If the father of faith tried it, it stands to reason that we will too. When he was 75, God promised Abraham that he would be the Father of many nations. At the time, Abraham was childless, and his wife Sarah was past child-bearing age.

11 years later, no child had been born, so Sarah and Abraham concocted a plan to “help God,” and Abraham conceived a child using a substitute name Hagar. The result was a child named Ishmael. For 13 years, Abraham dotes on Ishmael, and grows to love him dearly. Then one day God informs Abraham that Ishmael is not the son he had in mind, and that at 99 he will have another son named Issac through whom all the promises that God has made to Abraham will be kept. Abraham’s reaction is priceless:

And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee!

Genesis 17:18

Translation: Abraham is saying “God, I’m good with my substitute. No other miracles are required. Elvis can now leave the building.” It’s comforting that Abraham tried the substitution strategy. But it’s convicting to know that God didn’t go for it. God never does.

God tells Abraham that Ishmael is not the object of his favor, nor the vehicle of his blessing. Ishmael may look like the promise, and taste like the promise but he’s not the promise. Sorry, Abraham. The substitution strategy will never result in a sustainable, God favored result.

Where in your life have you settled for a substitute?

Sorry. It ain’t gonna work.