After careful contemplation, I can’t really think of a more disingenuous attempt at food than the veggie dog.
For a long time, I’ve felt a moral confusion over the concept of imitation meat; even as someone who has made a slightly more concerted effort at switching to eating things like seitan and soy and sunflower seeds, the idea of mystery mush processed in the uncanny valley of grillable animal bits upsets me.
What’s the point? Just to fit in? If you are a vegetarian, aren’t you striving to be better than this? Why would you bring vegetables down the sad level of a hot dog? A slab of meat may or not be better put through some impressive machinery and transformed into malleable slop, but a head of broccoli? Not so much. Does anybody actually like veggie-meats? I must say, I’ve had veggie burgers that were almost palatable, as chickpeas can be crushed to the consistency of ground beef and similarly spiced, but never have I ever had a veggie dog that wasn’t a vomitous affair.
This is also largely the fault of the hot dog as a concept as well. A hot dog is an imitation of an imitation; for people too lame for a real Italian sausage. And if you can’t stomach the thought of that being made, how do you live with the knowledge that hot dogs exist and have passed through the stomachs of 87 percent of Americans (I made that statistic up). 
And then a veggie dog, poorly pretending to be a dick-shaped casing of slimy pork snouts, is an imitation THREE TIMES REMOVED from an actually edible food. That’s more or less the nadir without becoming something that can no longer be eaten–I suppose you could mash together some sawdust to make an imitation veggie dog. But it might not make it out the other end.
Full disclosure: this affects me personally. The other day someone tried to feed me a veggie dog. This is because there is a cruel rule that if children as served hot dogs, and you as an adult cannot eat neither meat and/nor hot dogs on principle, that the vegetarian substitute needs must be a veggie dog. And then someone got mad at me for refusing both hot and veggie dog. Because that was offensive to the kids, to the kitchen staff and to the person who was watching me refuse to eat both. But I’d rather come across as a miserable than have to suffer the consequences of putting it in my mouth. 
Because food is more than just a meal. Food changes you. It becomes you and informs a part of who you are. I don’t want even a fraction of a percentage of me to be composed of whatever goes into either hot or veggie dogs. I’m better than that. And, the thing is, so are you. My refusing a veggie dog is not meant to demonstrate my superiority, but to lead by example, to show everyone a better way.
Culture Time 