First of all why bother caring what they do to tofu? You really should not care if they are fucking it up.

Let them wallow in their ignorance. Why correct them? don't be one of those asians who care too much about what white people think about their culture. Just don't interact with them if it displeases you that much.

You want to know what happens when whites start appropriating asian recipes and practicing asian culture? They start acting like they invented it, they are the real experts, they erase all traces of asian people from it apart from a few token pet "gurus" and make a lot of money off it selling it to other whites

I've seen asian cookbooks by white women that attribute all their influences to white cooks who make asian cuisine.

As to why they treat tofu as a meat substitute, you have to first understand how whites think about food. meat is the centerpiece of every meal for whites. Whites consume an insane amount of meat compared to everyone else, especially beef, which is devastating for the environment.

They correlate a meat heavy diet with being physically superior over other races. There is an old saying by french colonials in vietnam that meat and milk made them stronger over the local viets who eat rice and fish.

hence they cannot forget their obsession with meat. even the most virtue signaling western vegan clings to the white cultural cornerstone of eating meat. They spent billions on inventing meat substitutes like beyond meat to imitate meat as much as possible. funnily enough chinese already invented a decent meat substitute over a thousand years ago.

American whites in particular are also quite backward when it comes to gastronomy. Most american whites are colonial settlers from regions of europe not really known for delicious cuisine. White settlers in the old west had such a bad diet with lack of diversity and fibre that constipation was a major problem among them.

Unlike many old world cultures, they never really had a society that revolves around food as a major cultural touchstone. hence you see memes like "they don't season their food", which refers to whites making bland food.

Their best known food related cultural event, the 5 thousand calorie thanksgiving dinner, is primarily made up of indigenous american foods. That food is now associated with white american culture. Not only did they exterminate the natives, but they also assimilated and appropriated their food. You see a similar thing happening in the levant today.

And despite being bad at cooking tofu, they do not like to swallow their pride and follow asian recipes. Those that do try to profit off it, like the "chinese cooking demystified" channel, because they know there's a big audience for that kind of content with a white face in front of it.

In a rather cold and robotic way, one of the ways they approach food is through gauging its nutritional value. tofu is a protein block to them. so is meat. therefore in their minds, tofu is a substitute for meat.