“Wildly popular plant-based, alternative meats like the Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat can trace their origin to Thanksgiving, which, as one of the most meat-centric holidays, traditionally left vegetarians without a comfortable seat at the holiday table,” according to Johns Hopkins University.
“That is until the introduction of Tofurky — which a Johns Hopkins University expert can explain — quietly introduced the world to ‘meat’ for people didn’t eat meat.” Jan Dutkiewicz, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins and an expert in the alternative meat industry, explains:
Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report 
A footnote: When I was editor of CNET News, in the late ’90s, one of our reporters, who was a vegan, was a big fan of “tofurky” at Thanksgiving. She brought one of them to her family’s Thanksgiving gatherings — shaking up the traditional menu. Later, another one of the reporters has since wound up working in public relations at Impossible Foods, which plans to go public with a big valuation. To be sure, the boom in plant-based meats is now upon us, and I’ve known some trailblazers.