Point is there is no (proven) link between the practice of enemas and this phrase. The phrase popped up in the 1960s with no apparent references to the old “medical” practice. People connected the dots and claimed that it was the origin of the phrase, but there’s no evidence for it beyond the fact that it seems to fit. It’s probably an example of false etymology.

I looked into it more and while tobacco enemas were indeed very real, they are unlikely to be the origin of the phrase “blowing smoke up someone’s ass”. The enemas were used in the 18th and early 19th centuries but fell out of vogue when in 1811 it was proven that tobacco was toxic to the heart. The phrase “blowing smoke up somebody’s ass” seems to have been coined sometime around the 1960s with the first appearance in a published work in 1965. By then nobody was using tobacco enemas anymore and there’s no evidence that they played any role in alternative medicine movements around that time.

I eat meat, but I’m not opposed to plant-based alternatives. What I don’t think these company’s get, though, is they need to stop trying to be just as good as meat at being meat. That will just never happen because a filet mignon is supposed to taste like meat by the nature of it being a steak.

Stop trying to taste like better meat than meat and start creating actual alternatives. Tofu is pretty gross but it wouldn’t have even caught on as much as it did if it called itself chick’n or be’f the way modern alternatives do. Same with black bean burgers… I’ve gone out of my way before to find a black bean burger because it has a unique flavor and they usually have different toppings to compliment that flavor… not typical burger toppings. If a black bean burger tasted the same as a beef one I would have just grabbed whatever was most convenient with no regard for whether it was meat or not.