I find this highly annoying. Here we've had very tasty wheat based slices that can serve the same purpose as sliced salami/meats on bread, and didn't try to muck anything in particular. But they disappeared from the shelves while the stuff branded as Vegan Salami seemingly does well.
I guess for casual buyers having a familiar reference point is just crucial.
The crusade against gluten probably did it. Tofu lives as un-refrigerated grey blobs and tempeh never even made it to the shelf, probably because of hormone-disrupting soybeans. But hyper-engineered single cell meat? Now that’ll sell.
This is really frustrating to me, it's hard to find seitan outside of Chinese shaokao (BBQ skewers) restaurants. There's a local brand of wheat-meat that even runs a deli that's pretty good, but people are so afraid of gluten.
I guess for casual buyers having a familiar reference point is just crucial.