Dried soy as a meat substitute

Yes, I am aware of the circumstance, that's why my hint in the subordinate clause. The difference is that I (still) can pay attention to the choice of meat, for example by only buying from farmers where I am sure they do not feed soy-based feed (grass-fed cattle). What I wanted to get at is that for the nutrition of the still growing population, we should rather think about tapping entirely new ("unnatural") food sources. I would simply prefer cultured meat that comes very close to the original over "bricks" or Soylent Green. Damn, hijacked the topic again. I need to control myself more...

I totally agree with you. Soy will not become the ultimate savior. Or rather, it is not allowed to.

I actually meant the small minced pieces that stand for ground meat. And then those Maggi bouillon cubes, they give flavor. What else works: as scouts we had canned tuna salad with rice (boil-in-bag). And then, I don't know what cooking resources you have, but I discovered that there is mug bread: just mix it in a Tupperware and put it in the microwave.

Beef Jerky!
The varieties you can buy are mostly over-sugared.

The ready-to-eat jerky I get at Lidl has 0.6 g of sugar per 100 g. I don't really believe that homemade jerky with a marinade of soy sauce, apricot jam, and honey can match that.
If anything, it's the relatively high salt content in ready-made jerky that hits hard. But even that is still tolerable if you don't eat 5 bags a day.

Ok, I have to take a look at that. I am more talking about the usual suspects like Jack Link's (16.5g/100g). There is significantly more sugar in it. Yes, there is surely a lot of sugar in a marinade too, but how much of it actually remains in the finished product I don’t know, anyway it doesn’t taste as sweet as the ready-made stuff I have come across so far.

Edit: I checked again. Jam has about 60g of sugar per 100g. 100g is roughly the amount I make for the marinade for 1kg of fresh meat. I prepare the marinade so that the meat is swimming in it. So not like with grilled meat where it sticks to the meat. The meat absorbs it fully, but then there isn’t a thick layer sticking to the outside. So I think that with about 300g final weight after drying, not much remains either. Hmm, how would you measure that?

The difference is that when choosing meat, I can (still) pay attention to it by, for example, only buying from farmers where I am sure they do not feed any soybean-based feed (grass-fed cattle).

Then marinate for over 24 hours. Actually according to your own taste. I have had good experiences with soy sauce, pepper, chili sauce, garlic and (apricot) jam or honey.

You buy meat and make sure it wasn’t fed with soy products, only to then put the meat into a marinade containing soy sauce... sorry for the off-topic, but that just struck me while reading.