Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I was a vegetarian for 10 years, and have now been a pescatarian for 8 years. It has been 18 years since I have had a proper cheeseburger, and since then I have had many thousands of veggie burgers. Cheeseburgers are probably my favorite food, and I haven't had one in 18 years. If someone told me that the world would end tomorrow, I would go out and eat a proper cheeseburger.
I have some experience in this area, is what I'm trying to say. The flavor and texture is the closest to actual meat I've ever had. And that, then, is the key for a lot of people: they don't want a veggie burger that simulates meat. Which is fine! I do, and I imagine the market for close-to-meat veggie burgers is bigger than obviously-not-meat veggie burgers.
Others in the thread have mentioned the Beyond Burger, which is also good. But the Impossible Burger, for me, is way better. I have had my Impossible Burgers at Bareburger. At home, I went with Morningstar Farm's Grillers Prime for a long time, but about a year ago they changed the recipe, and I did their black bean for a while. I have since discovered if I season the Griller's Prime while I'm frying it, it comes out much better.
The vocabulary of cooking is full of these sort of things (legumes/vegetables/fruits/...is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? is a potato a vegetable?)
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
scott_s replied in an evenhanded way, but many (maybe most) commenters in his position would have taken the question as hostile and responded in kind.
If you are struggling to understand pescatarianism as an idea, my perspective is that flexitarianism, pescatarianism, vegetarianism, and flexiveganism are all compromise diets that get some but not all environmental and ethical benefits of veganism. Different people have different levels of commitment and make different tradeoffs in their life choices. Whether that's "the only meat I eat is fish" or "I eat fish but not meat" is just a matter of definitions.
In terms of the English word "meat", there is certainly some ambiguity. At least as I know the term, it feels like a stretch (but maybe technically correct) to count fish as meat. I've had people suggest sushi when I say that I'm vegetarian, unaware that vegetarians don't eat fish. If you google for the Food Pyramid, most diagrams call out meat and fish as different things. "Vegetarian" almost always doesn't allow fish, but "meat" just isn't a very precise word.
Also, scott_s's original comment didn't say that fish isn't meat, or even imply that. In English the word "meat" didn't traditionally include fish, and that usage is more than enough to cover what he probably meant. Taking the strongest plausible interpretation, as the guidelines request, makes the question unnecessary.
"Meat", like many words, has multiple senses. One of them is the flesh of any animal. Another is the flesh of a mammal, which would exclude fish (and probably poultry).
The second definition isn't used as often, but you will find it many dictionaries, and some people do use the word in that way and treat meat / poultry / fish as disjoint sets. For example, the classic book "Joy of Cooking" has chapters titled "Shellfish", "Fish", "Poultry and Wildfowl", "Meat" (pork, beef, lamb), and "Game". (Actually, I guess "Joy of Cooking" is being even more specific and taking "meat" to mean domesticated mammal flesh, because there are some mammals in the "Game" chapter.)
I eventually decided I didn't care about fish that much - but I decided that I would eventually eat fish again years before I finally did. Yes, it's a compromise of my original ethical judgement, but it's one I can live with.
"how often are you in nowhere, US?"
and that's about how often I eat fish. To me it's just a less bad choice, which in my brain is still a net positive gain on the meal.
Waiting for the 2.0 one to hit places near me. Which version are you talking about?
If it was before January it was the 1.0 version, if it was after January it might have been either.
I'd rather eat something like a black bean burger, but I also eat meat so I'm not looking for my vegetable burgers replicate the experience.
(But then maybe I'd say the same thing about burger Kings beef burgers too haha)
Additionally, a lot of vegns are also extremely health conscious, and so they tend to avoid a lot of unnecessary fat in their diet. A lot of chefs will say "fat is flavor," which is true, but what's also true is that fat conveys flavor. It sticks to surfaces in places that water doesn't and allows flavors to linger.
It's why the Impossible and Beyond Burgers are succeeding: they haven't lost sight of what makes a burger, a burger.
[0] https://www.thedailybeast.com/vegan-youtube-is-imploding-as-...
Same reaction would occur for any vocal activist caught doing the antithesis of what they preach.
So, if a person has honestly tried everything and they absolutely need to eat some meat and fish to be healthy, then most won't have an issue with it. There will always be crazy internet kooks though.
I have met far more people who tell me cliches about vegans than I have vegans who tell me they're vegan.
Whether it's confusing or not or obvious or not, it was an extremely common term in the online vegetarian community I used to participate in around 15 years ago. Not trying to make a judgement on the term, just informing.
"Hackers" have their own version - *nix.
Since it's right up front in the headline that it's Burger King,I don't think the fast food part is “undersaid”.
> I just don't see the point, vs a high-protein high-fat patty made of bean or soy protein isolate that tastes good in it own non-fake-fast-good-meat-burger way.
If you don't see the point of fast food, you can, I hope, at least see that lots of people do.
And since there are people going off meat for environmental or ethical reasons, providing them an open which is both attractive in taste to their current palette and fitting with their existing lifestyle but for the change they are deliberately making seems to have obvious value.
And it can't be cheaper than a real meat burger, because consumers will kill its adoption by calling it the "cheap" product. Regardless of merit or quality.
(Source: the recent book Clean Meat.)
As a heathen who likes to have things like jalapenos on my burger I think I'm quicker to embrace it than I would be if I liked my burgers straight.
If this is true the processed food industry would no longer use real meat if the fake meat is cheaper.
Incidentally, as a meat eater I'd stop eating it tomorrow if this was the case (bring on the healthy and eco-friendly bacon, sausages and steak!).
Substitutes like Quorn mince in a chili are already more than acceptable to me.
I honestly think if the Beyond wasn't more expensive than a normal patty, I would probably order it all the time (and I am very much a meat eater)
I'm keen to try the Impossible 2.0 and the Beyond sausages.
[citation needed]
The use of [citation needed] is one of the most infuriating, passive-aggressive internet trends perpetrated by people who clearly don't understand the point of citations [1].
[1] citation not required
No, it wasn't; OP made a universal claim (“most people” not “most people I know”), and a claim of irony which makes more sense with a real geerality.
I actually assumed (and, in fact, still assume despite your interjection) that the not_a_pizza had some basis for making that general claim, and merely omitted it, perhaps because they assumed others were familiar with it.
Anectodally, it does make you feel slightly less bloated, though.
If you're considering people who do eat meat, and want something that is close-enough to meat as a substitute, then yes, I am not a good judge of that. But if you're considering people who do not eat meat, and want something that's as close as they can get of things that are not meat, then I think I am an expert since over the past 18 years I have had many different varieties of that thing.
... was linked from this Politico piece: "Inside the Race to Build the Burger of the Future."
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/04/01/meat-poli...
Does it have to be an all or nothing experience?
That does not mean that we stop driving. We drive less.
Not eating cute critters is fundamentally ethical.
Let me do you a favor: The world is going to end tomorrow!
About six months ago I had it in a vegan place near Cape Canaveral, and I was in disbelief it wasn't a meat burger. I asked the waiter twice.
It's been 15+ years since I last ate meat (and even more, red meat), and I hate the taste.
For anyone vegan or vegetarian who hates the taste of meat and is afraid to try it, I recommend giving a try even though it's supposed to taste like meat as it might feel different. I believe the preparation makes it very different because all other times (10+?) I had it (both 1.0 and 2.0), I enjoyed (specially at Umami Burger in Anaheim). The only reason I haven't had it more is that I don't live in the U.S., and I prefer the Portobello mushroom patty at Umami.
Within a decade this might just be normalized, and nobody will make much of it.
There has never been any reliable study or controlled experiment indicating that dietary cholesterol or saturated fat are the causes of anything negative. Sugar and refined grains have a MUCH higher correlation (higher than even early smoking studies). High fructose intake in particular has been a leading issue.
Is saturated fat bad for you? A diet rich in saturated fats can drive up total cholesterol, and tip the balance toward more harmful LDL cholesterol, which prompts blockages to form in arteries in the heart and elsewhere in the body. For that reason, most nutrition experts recommend limiting saturated fat to under 10% of calories a day.
A handful of recent reports have muddied the link between saturated fat and heart disease. One meta-analysis of 21 studies said that there was not enough evidence to conclude that saturated fat increases the risk of heart disease, but that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat may indeed reduce risk of heart disease.
Two other major studies narrowed the prescription slightly, concluding that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fats like vegetable oils or high-fiber carbohydrates is the best bet for reducing the risk of heart disease, but replacing saturated fat with highly processed carbohydrates could do the opposite.
Why would refined oils from sources that wouldn't have been available to man for 99.9% of human and pre-human existence be recommended at all? This article does nothing but repeat most of the same tropes as espoused for the past half century with no real supporting data behind it.
Edit:
from: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/80/3/550/4690530
> A causal relation between total and LDL cholesterol in blood and CAD has long been accepted. However, despite the strength of the relation between circulating concentrations of LDL cholesterol and heart disease, one should not assume that the relation between saturated fatty acid intake and heart disease is equally strong.
...
> Considerable evidence indicates that dietary saturated fats support the enhancement of HDL metabolism. In a study of the effects of reduced dietary intakes of total and saturated fat on HDL subpopulations in a group of multiracial, young and elderly men and women, subjects consumed each of the following 3 diets for 8 wk: an average American diet (34.3% of energy from total fat and 15.0% of energy from saturated fat), the American Heart Association Step I diet (28.6% of energy from total fat and 9.0% of energy from saturated fat), and a diet low in saturated fat (25.3% of energy from total fat and 6.1% of energy from saturated fat) (25). HDL2-cholesterol concentrations decreased in a stepwise fashion after the reduction of total and saturated fat. A reduction in dietary total and saturated fat decreased both large (HDL2 and HDL2b) and small, dense HDL subpopulations, although the decreases in HDL2 and HDL2b were most pronounced. Serum triacylglycerol concentrations were negatively correlated with changes in HDL2 and HDL2b cholesterol.
from: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article-abstract/109/2/433/528...
> Those on a low-carbohydrate weight-loss diet who increase their percentage intake of dietary saturated fat may improve their overall lipid profile provided they focus on a high-quality diet and lower their intakes of both calories and refined carbohydrates. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01826591.
They weren't replaced with vegetables, they were replaced with sugar made from cheap overproduced corn, and hydrogenated oils. Neither of those is a vegetable.
We wouldn't have nearly the diabetes problems we have now if they were replaced by more fresh vegetables.
For the most part vegetable intake is fine. Though excess fruit consumption year round, and in particular juice is pretty much inline with straight sugar. Your pancreas and liver don't care that it's "natural sugar" a term which irks me to no end.
The link between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol is much weaker than previously hypothesized, that's true, but there's ample evidence of the superiority of a vegetable rich diet.
The medical and scientific consensus is still that diets high in saturated fats - especially animal fats - as well as trans fats increase your risk of heart disease and high cholesterol. Other lifestyle risk factors are obesity, lack of exercise, smoking and diabetes.
Not many people can afford the grocery bill of an all dairy/beef diet. Everybody I've ever met who does keto consumes more vegetable fiber than the average american many times over, because without grain as a filler and a wallet deep enough to gorge yourself on beef and cheese all day long, fibrous vegetables are the obvious solution.
As to margerine, it is emphatically NOT better for you than real butter or lard/tallow. Seed oils are probably third in line behind sugar and grains as the biggest causes of human dysfunction.
There are actors in the cultural discourse that are already trying to make large scale meat consumption a cultural authenticity issue, especially if you read some of the nativist criticism of the Green New Deal [1]
I don't think that line of manipulation will go away, as it always will have some cultural currency with a subset of the population, but eventually the economics of the meat substitutes will win out, and "real meat" will become more of a special occasion thing, like truffles.
1. https://www.eater.com/2019/3/1/18246220/aoc-green-deal-burge...
Most people that are vegan or vegetarian choose that, because the ethics part of eating meat is the most important factor for them, with price and taste and nutrition trailing that.
And then a lot of those people make the assumption that everyone who isn't vegan absolutely doesn't care about the ethics of it. But that is simply not true. A lot of people, myself included, care about the ethics, it's just that we care more about taste and cost and nutrition. I love eating a good burger, or a good steak. I'm sorry a cow had to die, but I'm not sorry enough to stop doing it.
But give me an alternative that is just as good, but where cows don't have to die, and I'll switch in a heartbeat.
Imagine the following scenario: I have a choice between two burgers. They both taste the same and cost the same, but the first one requires a cow to die, and the second one doesn't.
If I don't care about ethics, then I would choose randomly between the two, because that's not a deciding factor.
But if I consistently choose the second one, then I obviously care about ethics, it is a deciding factor for me. It's just not the most important deciding factor, but it's still there. Why does it have to be binary? Why does it have to be all-or-nothing for you?
I obviously might not care as much as you do about it, but you claiming that I don't care about it at all is incredibly offensive.
If we're talking about the global population I'd say it's more than a small subset and it's not a cultural "statement", it's just culture.
People in Mexico aren't going to eat fake lengua or carnitas. Doro wat with fake chicken? Anything grilled or bbq'd. Sashimi, sushi...
People have been eating some of this stuff for hundreds if not thousands of years. I think it's a very Americentric view to suggest that people are going to stop eating their traditional foods in favor of fake meat.
This might be the case to some degree in Western first world countries but even there, I don't see people in the mid-west giving up real steak anytime soon.
It's not an all-or-nothing market. There will always be a demand for those things. But in the end what is used for what will be dictated by the economics, as cuisine always has been, even in traditional culture. Eating things like lengua, or tripe and other off-cuts of meat were largely about not wasting meat when resources were scarce, not about identity politics.
Take chorizo ... turns out Mexico already has a vegetarian version of this most culturally sacred of foods: https://www.mexgrocer.com/74562-06205.html
I was offered it with eggs ("huevos con soyrizo") at a breakfast restaurant in Baja ... 17 years ago.
There are plenty of dishes that use ground meat or meat that has been spiced or stewed to the point that the taste difference with regular meat is marginal.
> This might be the case to some degree in Western first world countries but even there, I don't see people in the mid-west giving up real steak anytime soon.
They don't have to. Real meat from slaughtered animals isn't going away, but it's use cases will be more limited to steaks, etc, which aren't "everyday" foods anyways.
And a good amount of Mexico's population is urban and first world, just like their counterparts in other countries. From what I can tell, urban Mexico has as liberal a palate as any other urban part of the world, be that NYC or London.
But also, if it's cheaper? People will eat it for sure regardless of the culture.
Side note: a lot of those things that are "hundreds if not thousands of years" are actually a lot more recent if you look at them. It's pretty common for cultures to reuse the name of some old dish for a new one that becomes more common, and is similar in some way - not even necessarily in terms of how it tastes, but e.g. in its purpose. In other cases, you can trace a direct connection to some much older recipe, but new additions have mutated it beyond all recognition. Just look at what the introduction of potato did to traditional recipes in Europe.
Soy and legumes are pretty common allergens for people, and the effects mild enough early in life that some may not realize it's actually legumes (mostly soy) that is the problem. I got used to the side effects and was only at 42 when it started to get bad enough that I found out via elimination diet.
Ground beef is particularly bad for gout, so I would order this in a second given a choice.
Right now, I'm seeing Beyond and Impossible substitutes at burger restaurants, and it always comes with a couple of dollars surcharge, because it is more expensive. Imagine the day when the meat patty comes with a surcharge, because the substitute is cheaper!
I am always soapboxing about this, but the only way we can meaningfully address environmental or ethical concerns, is by doing it through the economy. The "best" choice has to also be the cheapest choice, because then people will as if by magic choose that most of the time, unlike when you only have people's conscience to motivate them, then the wallet still rules most of the time.
Well, that or by abolishing capitalism. Which we'll have to do anyway, given that "there's no competitive advantage in not wrecking the planet."
But yeah if we can get everyone to switch to Impossible burgers that could definitely buy us some time. :)
You should try reading The Conquest of Bread.
Your comment is obviously propaganda, so I doubt this will help, but I strongly recommend reading some anarchist literature before making claims like that. The Conquest of Bread is a good starting point, but a bit outdated at this point.
None of this has anything to do with socialism or social programs or anything like that.
I've read plenty of anarchist literature, and studied economics extensively. I would, ironically, label myself something of an anarchist as well.
You've called my individual thoughts, constructed by myself alone, after careful and considerable study, propaganda. You're confusing my tautological deduction for ideology. That's fine, but golly does it make me sad. You're seeing what you want to see, my friend.
Edit: Also, none of this even makes a value judgement about the worthiness of abolishing capitalism or infringing on personal freedoms. Perhaps it's a worthwhile calculation? That's not an opinion I'm bringing up - but the word "capitalism" has a simple meaning: trade and property. Abolishing the ability of humans to own things or do certain categories of things _is exactly the definition of limiting freedom_. Socialist philosophers are not unaware of this and their entire philosophy is built upon the calculation of limited personal freedoms to enable potentially greater net happiness. This is not a controversial opinion, is my point.
The fact that capital ownership in a cooperation does not expose an individual to legal liability for every action of that corporation is what let’s you have capital markets. A banker may loan a car dealership money with minimal concern beyond the risk of that money.
Without that protection the engine of capitalism breaks down even with private property rights. But, even simply applying strict liability to management would cause significant breakdowns. Picture the CEO of Five Guys going to prison if even a single person got food poisoning via negligence. Are they going to try to expand past a single burger joint?
PS: In practice this seems to work well. But, the ability to have legally enforceable contracts etc goes beyond simple trade. After all people would buy and sell used goods in socialist countries, but such trade did not make them capitalist countries.
(Feel free to replace capitalism with free enterprise if you don't like the term "capital".)
If it means something else to you, I'm sorry about that.
97% of soy meal (itself 80% of the soybean mass) produced in the US is used to feed animals for meat, not for making soy-based meat substitutes:
Say it takes 50 cents' worth of soy and 50 cents' worth of other expenses to produce $1 worth of beef, and it takes 90 cents' worth of soy and 10 cents' worth of other expenses to produce $1 worth of meat substitute. If the effective price of soy falls by 10% due to subsidies (and other costs remain the same), the cost of beef will fall by 5%, while the cost of meat substitute will fall by 9%.
Once R&D costs of the meat substitute are accounted for, the marginal cost of production is lower. So at the same or slightly lower retail price than meat, an equivalent substitute's profit margin will be huge compared to meat. That's what these firms are after.
And in the long run, industrial scale meat production will take a big hit.
I think we agree on this.
> If the production of meat substitutes from soy could be made more efficient than the production of meat from soy
It already is far cheaper from an energy-input (hence cost) and carbon-footprint perspective. https://impossiblefoods.app.box.com/s/edwcfyvojzsvzn5d633dxt...
That's why big chains like Burger King are moving to offer something in the space, not out of some ethical obligation about climate change or animal welfare.
The difference is that Impossible and its competitors are making a product competitive with real meat, with nearly the same flavor and texture properties. That's the game changer as it opens a huge market that eschew traditional veggie burgers.
So from an efficiency perspective we wouldn't want to entirely eliminate meat production, just drastically curtail it. But from an animal suffering perspective and a "methane is bad" perspective maybe we do want to eliminate it.
In WWII Britain came closest to having to surrender due to food shortages. It didn't have then (and doesn't have now) enough food production to feed everybody, it relies on imports, and during a war that gets tricky. It got down to, I think, one week's rations on hand. If the U-boats had been just a little bit luckier for just another couple of weeks the British government anticipated uncontrollably levels of public disorder and then one way or another surrender.
Culture varies, and it seems unlikely that the British "stiff upper lip" would have carried on through starvation rations as the Japanese did. Certainly the government of the day is recorded as having expected to be overthrown once the reality of starvation was felt by the common people, unless the next shipments of food arrived (which they did).
The number one reason for deforestation in the Amazon is to provide space and resources to farm cattle for beef. My point is, switching to a non animal based burger has larger implications that the overall health of the people eating the burger.
This is a wonderful goal, but I highly doubt this will happen in my lifetime.
I remember when they first introduced a veggie burger, I wasn't sure the demand would be there, but it seems to have worked out.
So it remains to be seen if they'll keep the Morningstar version too.
I've never had a real Whopper, so I can't be comparing the two.
It's pretty clear that it's not beef if you're looking for it, but not nearly as distinct as your standard veggie burgers. Most vegans, though, aren't especially craving meat simulacra. I think of them more as transitional for meat eaters rather than as targeting vegans.
Just recently, I ordered an Impossible Burger, and it just left me wanting beef. It's not that it was bad - the burger looked similar to beef, and was juicy and delicious. But it didnt taste like beef. Maybe it's different for others, but for me, the beef is the spotlight of a burger. Beyond and Impossible haven't gotten that beefy taste - at least to my buds.
When I cook a Beyond Meat burger at home, I usually add a little butter - I dont think there is enough fat, and I also add some Takii umami powder (which I believe is just salt, and ground up mushrooms). I think those additions help the illusion of beef. You could probably also cook the burger in rendered beef fat, and that would probably really help the beef flavor...probably defeating the point of meat alternatives though.
I wish I could cook an Impossible at home, just to experiment.
That said, those of us that DO miss some level of meat simulacra (great phrase!) will appreciate this. I lost the taste for actual red meat over 20 years ago, but the texture is still something that has few parallels. Between the hardcore beef aficionados wanting nothing to do with "fake meat" and the hardcore vegetarians/vegans happy to consume veggies I find bland or noxious (As a vegetarian that strongly dislikes bell peppers, I can say the struggle is real) I've had limited options no matter where I turn.
Both Impossible and Beyond burgers have been teasing me for years, but have offered nothing for home. This doesn't get us there, but the more fast food places that carry them, the closer it becomes to being a part of normal.
I hope you are able to find some soon. Home cooking definitely delivers a better experience than Carl's (at least at my house).
It does a remarkably good job of giving the texture of a mediocre burger. Not a great burger by any means, but it might fill a niche that you don't get from the Morningstar-type burgers.
this was my judgement of the beyond burger too. it's basically indistinguishable from a bad hamburger. it's certainly not a good hamburger, but it could pass as meat the same way most fast food burgers pass as meat.
We've noticed an interesting phenomenon among kids in vegetarian families: Preschoolers who will literally fight each other over things that their peers typically avoid like the plague, like broccoli or tofu, but, if you give them a meal with some sort of realistic fake meat in it, they will diligently pick around it.
Looks slightly healthier than an Impossible burger, but not as good as other "veggie burgers".
It's very, very delicious, but its not trying to taste like meat.
I did not know that! Thanks, that's good to know.
*http://smartlabel.kelloggs.com/Product/Index/00028989100689
:^)
At least they are forced to display nutrition info, so I know what I’m getting, unlike most sit-down restaurants that serve even larger portions with no numbers included.
Uh... http://cfa.org ?
They're probably unwilling to dedicate the kitchen space for a vegetarian grill, so the microwave is the obvious choice. Microwaves won't cross-contaminate like a greasy grill will, and are already in the kitchen so the financial risk is minimized.
Also, many fastfood places do have dedicated grills for vegan/vegetarian burgers, like for example McDonalds in the UK.
Massively wrong. Most are easy going regarding using the same cutlery, pots, pan, etc (only ones I've met who aren't happen to be Indian mums or super strict vegans).
However... cooking up on the same griddle? Yeah, that's something most veggies and vegans I know who be very unhappy about.
Another big difference is the Impossible Burger is vegan and the MorningStar burger is not (IIRC).
It’s interesting to note that A&W Canada is entirely separate from A&W in the US. A&W Canada is much higher quality.
Also ate meat for decades, so I also am very familiar with it.
But I am keto. So I am not eating it with a bun and tons of sugary sauces to cover up the meat flavor. You can really tell the quality of a burger (meat or not) when you eat it wrapped in lettuce.
Nevertheless, for the sake of the environment and industrially farmed animals, it's good to see meat substitutes progressing into the mainstream.
I also think the environmental cost of plant farming is vastly underrated.
In addition, grazing animals require no such feed. Grass fed beef is a thing, and it's price is on par or even quite a bit cheaper than fake meat.
Not all land used for grazing can be used to grow plants, true, but in the cases it can be, you're using that land at a 10% kcal efficiency, so to speak.
You might ask, can we just process the grass into something humans can eat? Well, that's what cattle are for.
Livestock are a central part of traditional agriculture and they're more or less essential for people who want to operate small-scale sustainable farms. It's a complicated issue that too many people enter with ideological presuppositions. Which is not to say current agricultural practices are necessarily perfect.
And many grasslands that cannot be sustainably be used for crops could be returned to wilderness rather than plant agriculture, if we were to increase caloric efficiency of food production. They probably should be, in fact. This doesn't preclude some animals being raised, but if we don't greatly reduce the amount of land used for raising animals, deforestation, desertification and other harms will continue to degrade ecosystems.
They are honestly delicious. We grilled them on a fry-pan. The flavor and texture are almost perfectly there. It's just a bit spongy, and the depth of the umami/savory flavor isn't quite as deep. But if I hadn't known they weren't meat, I'd have been fooled. Throw a few of them on a grill or beer-boil them, put some mustard down over top, little kraut, I'd never know they weren't meat.
If the burger patties are anywhere near as good as the brats, then I think they'll sell a billion of them. For hearth-health and calorie density alone, I'd order them nearly every time.
Living in the future has a few perks!
Whatever your feelings on this particular product, it seems that the perhaps-inevitable decline of the traditional meat industry is going to take place on many fronts (clean meats, plant hemes, alternative proteins, locavore provider networks, increased availability of traditional vegetarian cuisines).
(And don't get me wrong, I'm a white castle fan. I also would not be shocked if I can't tell the difference between beyond and beef in a white castle. I definitely can in a full size burger).
Competition and innovation can be found wherever margins are thin.
I work for agriculture companies, and a lot of animal feed comes from by-products of other agricultural products. For example, beet pulp pellets, raffinate, betaine, molasses are all by products of sugar production and are used for animal feed extensively. They are cheap and very shelf stable.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
If you include the emissions from manure management you end with 45% of all emissions emanating from livestock production.
Also, that manure management is part of fertilization of plants if I am not mistaken.
I'm using the article 'Beef Cattle and Greenhouse Gas Production' from Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/livestock/beef/news/info...
According Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the UN 2006 report livestock were responsible for 18% of all human-related greenhouse gas production. 14.5% according to 2013 report.
Of that 43% is Enteric.
There may only be 9% GHG emissions in the US, but beef also comes from other countries where these emissions are very different. See Regional and Production System differences.
From the article -- There was an approximately 4-fold difference in emission intensity between the top 10% of producers and the bottom 10% of producers within a system.
If the U.S. were to tax agriculture production of beef, I'm assuming that would be for U.S. farmers so the relevant statistic is emissions in the U.S.
Are you only talking about directly? Because there is a huge amount of indirect costs, such as feed, transport, manufacturing.
In addition, for feeding often this comes from by-products of plant production (sugar by-products, etc...). The only reason corn is so popular imo is because it is so heavily subsidized by our government making it dirt cheap. But grass fed beef is a thing and it's on par or even quite a bit cheaper price wise than fake meat.
Do you mind sharing the name of the company you're referring to? I'm always looking to try new options and support companies in the space.
Also for the price to come down, it was like $3 more than the boyfriend's burger
That makes sense because I reckon you're not actually tasting much meat in the real Whopper. It's just salt and flavours from the other ingredients.
When people say that the beefless 'Impossible Burger' is problematic because it's fully processed ... I say, so what's the difference?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18855695
I tried version 1 and it tasted indistinguishable from meat.
After the second generation came out, I went to my favorite place to get the IB (Gotts in Palo Alto) and asked if they had the new recipe. They seemed uncertain at first but then said they did. I ordered it and it was fine, but not as good as I’d seen in online reviews.
Honestly, if I was told it was the first generation, I would have believed it. I wonder if some restaurants are still working through their stock of the first generation patties?
I had a notion that I intended to test with v1.0 that it would be more convincing if you charred the hell out of it and made it more like an overcooked burger, however I never did test it, and I also read that it didn't perform well (fell apart, etc) if too overcooked. However, I did really like the flavor and texture of the most charred bits of the burgers I did have.
I should note that I have never tasted V1 so I can't compare the two.
My brain knows it's fake deep down, but it doesn't break my suspension of disbelief enough to keep me from enjoying it.
Hopefully that is not the case and it's not just a meat substitute but is also healthy. Can anyone with more details please opine?
If you wouldn’t normally eat a whopper for health reasons, then you have no reason to start eating this.
Mayonnaise and cheese alone probably add almost as many calories as a hamburger patty some of their burgers
Removing the patty might even make it less healthy if it doesn't satiate you as much as it would otherwise
I make black bean burgers sometimes, and they actually have more calories and less protein than beef or bison.
I'm picking on you now but it fcking freaks me out how this whole page seems to feel concerned about "healthy food", "veganism", "ecology". This is a fast-food mega-corp, they are part of one of the ugliest side of the already disgusting industrial food chain. They are right on incompatible with any kind of healthiness you could imagine (of human beings, of crops, polinators, overall countryside ecosystems, farmers). Hey, fast-food/sweet-drink business uses the same marketing strategies than tobacco groups. Or pharma. These are the people that created all the massive public health issues we've got since say '50s. Cancer, diabetes, obesity, one-off epidemics (h5n1, h1n1, mad cow...).
And i didn't even start talking about work conditions or economic aspects of these bastards (the corps, not targeting any individuals here).
A burger is fat and protein and there is very little reason not to eat if for health reasons for normal people.
There's something called "context" in reading comprehension, it is when words take on the meaning relevant to the discussion. In this case, "chemicals" is shorthand for "bad chemicals." I don't understand why so many people fail to understand this and have to make this inane, childish observation that in fact, everything is a chemical. We know already.
While "better because natural" isn't some infallible nutritional law, it serves as a very solid rule of thumb for those of us who don't have the time or motivation to more thoroughly study the science behind it.
Tribes completely isolated from modern society have been proven to have extremely rich knowledge of the plants in their environments. As humans, we are extremely familiar with plants found in nature.
GMO foods are chemically speaking much closer to natural than this veggie patty we are talking about. It lies on a spectrum so arguing about how neatly something fits a definition is missing the point.
One problem is that lots of people include tons of known harmless stuff under "bad chemicals" because it's "artificial" (even if it's chemically identical to "natural" things that they praise at the same time).
Or put another way, the use of "chemicals" in discussions like this often suffers from the problem described at <https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey>: people talk about "artificial chemicals" being bad, when challenged fall back on "we just mean the bad chemicals", but then go back to in practice talking and, importantly, acting as if they mean a much wider class of things.
So yes, context is important, but is also manipulated in many cases to effectively gaslight the reader by saying, "Oh, _that_'s not what we meant, of course; think about the context," when in fact "that" is what was meant. And I suspect that in many cases the manipulation isn't even conscious!
People who believe in homeopathy don't believe this, since they believe that purified water has "memory", so logically they would also think that naturally-derived and artificially-derived but otherwise identical chemicals would somehow be different from one another.
One caveat, though: the identity of chemicals needs to be pretty carefully defined. Especially any time chiral things are involved, naturally-derived things are much more likely to be a pure enantiomer or close to it while artificial synthesis is more likely to produce racemates unless you are very careful.
Study links heavily processed foods to risk of earlier death https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/11/study-links-...
additionally, soy's estrogenic nature (combined with the disproportionately widespread use of soy in processed food products, which would be the "not natural" part) is suspected of having potential influences on breast cancer, male fertility, and thyroid function.
you can of course argue none of these things are nearly as bad as the saturated fat in beef but I feel more comfortable with a sunshine burger that's just brown rice and sunflower seeds.
> Even the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, has concluded that the “FDA’s oversight process does not help ensure the safety of all new GRAS determinations” and that the “FDA is not systematically ensuring the continued safety of current GRAS substances.”
You need to ask yourself what a company has to gain by intentionally obscuring ingredients in their product meant to be consumed by humans, and what you have to lose by consuming it.
> Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Potato Protein, Methylcellulose, Yeast Extract...
"Natural flavors" is the 5th ingredient by weight in the new Impossible Burger.
While I understand that this board often has a "but dihydrogen monoxide is a chemical" outlook, being skeptical about undisclosed substances in food is a valid stance.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/what-does-...
The reason for this is simply because of evolution. Our bodies evolved eating natural plants and animals. Our bodies have never before been exposed to the huge number of food additives that have been invented in recent years.
You probably hate that we have to talk in generalities. But food studies are expensive and hard to get right, and there's a LOT that we don't fully understand about nutrition. We're nowhere close to understanding all the different ways that all the different food additives are affecting our bodies.
Ingredients: https://faq.impossiblefoods.com/hc/en-us/articles/3600189374...
Saturated fat numbers don't look great. Also, TONS of salt which isn't great either.
sigh oh well, maybe some day.
You're right in that there's some debate around salt, and what amount is the "right" amount. However, for people with auto immune diseases (like me) it's a valid concern.
Apologize for the late edit (home now) but you might want to scrutinize closer your sources on saturated fat:
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-saturated-fat-studies-s...
> the company aims to give people the taste and nutritional benefits of meat without the negative health and environmental impacts associated with livestock products.
The goal of the founder seems to be primarily the negative impact animal agriculture has on the environment/climate, while matching the same taste/nutrition of meat (not improving upon it).
I never understood why one would want to make a veggie burger taste like meat. Properly made veggie burgers taste delicious by them selves. Much more flavour than the meat versions.
But those are probably already on the menu and this is an addition to regular vegetarian burgers? Here in Norway we've had vegan burgers from both mcdonalds and burger king and max hamburgare (swedish company) for a couple years that do not taste like meat and especially burger kings' score high on the taste tests [1].
Personally I never eat fast food except a kebab once every two months but we do make vegetarian burgers maybe every other week here at home [2].
[1] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3...
[2] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3...
Because most people find meat delicious and it fills a particular cultural niche in the United States in particular. Veggie burgers are tasty too, but if you are craving a beef burger, it's not the same thing, much like tofu is not a satisfying substitute for chicken, even if it's delicious when prepared as tofu.
You can try to change the tastes of millions or you can just make a less environmentally damaging substitute.
No. A different flavour, perhaps.
A decent burger tastes good, be it meat or non-meat. Burger-King appeals to the majority and is not going to be making the best burger of any kind, just a "standard" one.
Because some people - myself included - like the taste of meat, and would only choose the veggie version for environmental (or economic) reasons if the taste were basically the same.
They do list all their ingredients [0], and you can take a look and see whether there's anything objectionable to you. If you're going by the "5 ingredients or fewer" heuristic, then it doesn't qualify. Avoiding "chemicals" is impossible, since everything is made out of chemicals, and just limiting to naturally occurring chemicals is no better of a guideline because cyanide, asbestos, and arsenic are all "natural".
As a sibling comment notes, it's likely not significantly better or worse for you than a standard beef whopper
[0] https://faq.impossiblefoods.com/hc/en-us/articles/3600189374...
This is true of pretty much everything at Burger King. It's true of most burgers, too. I mean, any meal coming with processed cheese and a processed bun is going to be on the low end of the "healthy" scale, relatively speaking.
But I'm genuinely thrilled to see this. Hopefully some non zero percentage of customers give this a try and reduce the amount of meat in their diet.
That said, I don't expect that non zero percentage to be very high without a lot of marketing.
Edit: Found a different article [1] that says:
> Burger King is giving the Impossible Burger a trial run in 59 restaurants in the St. Louis area, and if that goes well, the fast-food chain will make the product available in all its 7,200 branches across the US
[1] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/1/18290762/burger-...
Carl’s Jr. doesn’t keep their Beyond Burgers separate, apparently.
But I'd say this is great news either way. I like meat, but when there's a way to get the same taste and texture without the bad consequences for animals and environment I'm all for it, and I'm sure many others are the same.
I think there can be digestive concerns; eating a non-meat thing that was soaked in beef-grease may cause digestive trouble for someone who hasn't had beef in a very long time. But I've also heard of former vegetarians who had no trouble when they started eating meat again. Personally, I've suspected if some minor digestive trouble after various meals was caused by stray meat by-products making their way into my food, but I can't be sure what caused it.
I can't speak to the situation in the US, but here in the UK, veggie burgers in fast food restaurants represented a fairly significant tipping point. In the late 80s and early 90s, it could be genuinely inconvenient to be vegetarian. Asking "do you have a vegetarian option?" in a restaurant often resulted in a blank look. If you wanted to buy meat substitutes, your only option was a health food shop.
By the 00s, being a vegetarian had become a complete non-issue. Every restaurant had at least one reasonable vegetarian option, every supermarket had a decent selection of meat substitutes and vegetarian ready-meals, every product that was suitable for vegetarians was labelled as such.
For would-be vegetarians, that ubiquity removed a significant barrier. The sheer convenience of vegetarianism induced a lot of people to give it a try and took away an excuse for not trying. Perhaps equally significantly, it normalised vegetarianism - when McDonalds and Burger King offer a vegetarian option, you can no longer argue that it's some weird hippie fad. The same thing is now happening for veganism.
So I can understand their point of view.
I'm not a vegan, or vegetarian, and I can understand that point of view.
So I don't understand how your comment is at all relevant.
Either cannibalism is so objectionable that I'd refuse to patronize a restaurant that served human flesh, or I'd probably not mind them being cooked side-by-side.
That might be a bigger things for vegans, by buying even vegetarian stuff from burger king you're supporting a company that financially motivates a lot of actions you find unethical - that is logically consistent at least.
Interestingly I don't think it'd be the only logical stance for an ethical vegan - purchasing beyond meat products would signal the company of the increased relative demand of vegetarian substitutes potentially leading to that company investing more in beyond meat products and lowering their meat purchases, decreasing the market stability and liquidity for real meat products.
You're trying to bring logic into a moral decision. While I agree that that's the way I would approach it, it isn't the only way to approach it. As I said I'm a meat eater so I don't follow all the logical steps to being vegan, but that logical step I do understand.
Cooking the burger in beef/pork fat would likely be noticeable, but that is pretty trivial to avoid and _usually_ grills are crudely scraped down between different grillings, that will remove everything but trace amounts.
For the later case... I'm on board with sane things (don't fry veggie burgers in animal fat) but less with (don't prepare this food where meat products were prepared) simply because... I feel like the same amount of effort should be taken with each meal and vegetarians shouldn't require separate processing things.
To draw a parallel, I'm lactose intolerant myself, but I've always felt it's a bit silly that <GENERIC COFFEE PLACE> has separate blenders for milk/soy/other (except almond, due to the factor of nut allergies).
Vegans say this all the time. You can choose to be 100% consistent with ethics but how far do you take it? Do you shut out your family and close yourself off from most of society?
And a lot of people have religious reasons for not eating meat.
I've eaten meat a few times just to avoid making a scene. Got invited out to dinner by colleagues on several different occasions (diff people) and they were sushi and steak places. No vegetarian options. Such is life.
I manage to have positive impact with 99.9%.
Some of this is to do with pathogens, some of it is due to taste.
There are many vegetarian products designed to taste like meat, e.g. fake bacon, but plenty of vegetarians do not actually like the taste of meat even if that is acquired second hand by using the same grill or utensils.
even using the same knife to cut a meat sandwich and then a vegetarian sandwich with no washing in between is a cause of concern as far as contamination with 'animal germs' is concerned.
Quality establishments get these details right. They also tend to do better when the food inspectors come round.
Isn't the burger designed to taste like meat?
But!
Using the same knife to cut a meat sandwich and then a vegetarian sandwich, that sounds like some "wifi allergy" level BS to me. If that's actually a thing I'd like to see a well designed double blind study that could back it up - depending on the knife thickness there's a decent chance that the knife has been implicitly wiped down through the action of cutting before it gets anywhere near the vegetarian sandwich - I'd find it more concerning if the same cutting board was reused as that would give a decent chance that some left-over meat is pressed into the bottom of the sandwich, though in that case a quick dry wipe down would suffice.
In the UK we have the Food Hygiene Act 1995.
In it you are supposed to have different colour knives and chopping boards specifically for this matter of cross contamination.
Sounds to me like someone wouldn't pass their Basic Food Hygiene Certificate 1 here. And no, a basic dry wipe down does not suffice.
Catering is about being inclusive as well as hygiene. Lousy hygiene - that goes against the law - should not cost a business customers just because staff don't respect the rights that vegetarians have to not have their food tainted by meat.
I'm not vegetarian myself, but I imagine their revulsion is similar to what mine would be to dog meat. Even the sight of dog meat would likely make me lose my appetite.
Some observant Jews choose a vegetarian option because vegetarian things are kosher by default. But if the veggie patty is cooked on the same grill as both meat and cheese, then the veggie patty becomes (according to some views) non-kosher. This is because kosher stipulates strict separation of meat and dairy: separate grills, separate sinks to wash any dishes afterwards, etc.
Furthermore, the requirements for cleaning vegetables to make sure they're free of insects and insect parts is usually more stringent that what many vegetarians and vegans are used to.
Some vegetarians are just very grossed out by it (I'm one of them).
I generally look the other way at very minor cross contamination, its probably going to happen once in a while, especially if I don't know about it, but if I taste meat juices in my food I completely lose my appetite. I once bit into sausage that found its way into my pizza (I suspect it fell into the cheese) and I couldn't eat pizza for a while after that. (of course, for a burger that's supposed to taste exactly like beef, you wouldn't know...)
If you think that makes me crazy or whatever, then so be it.
Funny thing, that: http://archives.quarrygirl.com/2009/06/28/undercover-investi...
Makes sense that dairy and eggs were the most commonly found non-vegan ingredients-- they are both such a huge part of cooking. As someone who has tried to go vegan in the past, I can tell you that cheese was probably the hardest thing to fully cut out for me, and eggs were right behind it. I'm glad the liars are being called out, though, that is some despicable behavior.
Amusing to me is that frozen pizza meat (and some delivery pizza meat) is seriously bottom shelf and can be disgustingly greasy. I've gotten very picky about my frozen pizza preference because some of the brands have a meat with a terrible aftertaste (looking at you, Delissio).
You can prove this by trying to make meatball or spaghetti or a taco with the 'impossible burger', and it's nothing like it should be.
Haven't tried the Impossible patties yet though
Anyway, Fast Food-Franchises are IMHO the perfect breeding-ground to raise lab-grown meat to success. Most of their meat is processed to a degree, that you can't taste the original texture or figure out their real source of it. And they are one of the biggest sellers for meat. Removing this chain will be a big service for environment.
https://faq.impossiblefoods.com/hc/en-us/articles/3600189374...
Seems I had a bad misconception here. This brand is not available in my country and I only ever heard of indirectly. But reading up on it, I see where it's coming from.
I personally went straight from being a heavy meat eater and steak lover to a full blown vegan.
below is a video in which they make the impossible burger by hand and show every ingredient as well as showing the ins and outs of the impossibel burger from a science perspective.
As is a huge portion of the food consumed by people today, including things that are marketed as forms of meat. The difference here is that the climate impact of mass-production of beef and the associated mass scale animal cruelty is mitigated.
Quoting from one of my favorite recent commentators on this subject (https://granolashotgun.com/2019/03/12/bite-me/):
"If you think all this talk of laboratory food is ridiculous or unappealing you really need to spend some time discovering where your current food supply comes from. Most of the nitrogen molecules in your body right now were created in a factory using the Haber Bosch method. Natural gas is used to fix atmospheric nitrogen into a usable form needed by plants. Enormous amounts of this synthetic fertilizer is what makes it possible to feed seven billion people. Take away that factory made nitrogen and our crop yields would drop like a stone. Without Haber Bosch nitrogen half the humans on the planet would starve to death. Synthetic food grown in fermentation vats is just a matter of cutting out the inefficient middle steps of agriculture. Like it or not it’s coming to fish sticks, chicken nuggets, and meatballs near you. And you might not even notice."
https://impossiblefoods.app.box.com/s/edwcfyvojzsvzn5d633dxt...
I'm not actually vegetarian, but trying to eat less meat, mcdonald's makes that extremely easy. When we go, it's quite a no-brainer to take that option.
Ofc they do not taste like meat, and aren't supposed to taste like meat. But, damn, do they taste good on their own.
The Impossible Burger is in weird niche that screams "fad" to me, or at least early-prototype, like self-driving cars -- it's an expensive fake meat, dollar-for-dollar optimized for looking and feeling like low-quality ground beef burger, instead of high-quality something-else-burger. At best it's an expensive but meatless mediocre meat-imitation burger. Why opt for that instead of a less-expensive but good burger?
Seriously, go eat a McDonald's burger in Italy. The difference between that one and one in the US will shock you.
McDonald's is another one, my cousin once earned a "fry guy" pin where he cut and fried the most potatoes in a day. Yes, _cut_. None of that frozen garbage.
You can say McDonalds food is different from what it was. That's a fact. You can say McDonalds food is terrible. That's your opinion. But if I want a thin salty burger with cheese dissolved onto it on a suspiciously smooth bun... who are you to say McDonalds isn't the correct choice? You wouldn't prefer it? Ok. Don't eat it. But don't try to say it is objectively terrible.
Sometimes I like a steak that dissolves in my mouth in a burst of flavor. Sometimes I want one that can be chewed on and doesn't turn to mush. They're different experiences. Neither is objectively better than the other, no matter how many chefs are trying to sell me $70 steaks.
Come on... I know you might not like them, but I don't see how they "barely resemble the real thing."
Also I'm glad I couldn't go a story about fast food without a comment about how <your fast food> is <highly processed unnatural garbage> and <America sucks> / <go European master-culture>.
The McDonald's burgers I had in Italy tasted just like the McDonald's burgers I remember McDonald's tasting like. I actively will not eat the current McDonald's burgers in the US--they have gotten that unpalatable to my taste.
Fortunately, in the US, I have plenty of options for burgers that are not McDonald's--unlike most of Europe.
So <nyah> to your European master race-baiting.
Apparently, McDonalds salads are not directly all that profitable for them. So why do they offer them as an menu option?!? Because there is often one member in the car that would veto going to McDonald's if they didn't have a salad as an alternative to a meat burger. E.g. if mom vetoes McDonalds, they would lose the 3 potential burger sales to the dad & 2 kids in the car. Scenarios like that makes the salad option (and veggie/meatless burgers) worth it for them.
EDIT ... found one source about this: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-mcdonalds-uses-anti-veto...
Depending on how often these items are asked for, though, and particularly in smaller cities, it's not uncommon for them to be deep frozen and pretty freezer-burnt by the time they reach you (same as Subway).
I eat meat. I also eat veggie burgers. They're delicious.
But as you said, those options have no protein and aren't trying to be a meat replacement.
My Jewish fried rejoices in that she can now have cheeseburgers,
Not only that, but the kosher requirements (no dairy and meat together), depending on how kosher you are, also to apply to the plates the meal is served on, the equipment the meal is cooked on, and food storage areas; you need strictly segregated facilities, and washing between uses does not make it kosher. The requirements are strict to the point where rabbis have to regularly certify kosher restaurants as kosher.
https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/what-exactly-american-chees...
Is it though? I tried to find a source for your claim but came up with inconclusive studies, at best. Do you have any sources for this or is it just a well known myth?
Incidentally, oxalic acid found in spinach also blocks calcium. Also beans and such have similar effect.
You may be thinking of Velveeta and Kraft Singles but they don’t qualify by the FDA to be called processed cheese, they’re a cheese product. But even they have significant protein, albeit less.
https://boarshead.com/products/detail/652-american-cheese-lo...
It seems a little ghoulish to eat a calf with its mother's milk.
I'm definitely not an expert on Jewish law (my exposure to it is through reading Leviticus as a Christian). I suppose it's possible that the reason changed over time. However, now that I think about it the health reasons that others have pointed out seem to make more sense. Especially since I would presume that a cow wouldn't have the intelligence to actually be concerned about the precise manner in which you eat it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_and_meat_in_Jewish_law#Ex...
https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/15/why-does...
For example, shell fish were probably or average unhealthy to eat back in the day. So claiming God commanded The People to not eat it was the FDA implementation of its time.
Looks like it isn't available in the US though, https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/our-food-y...
With that, the only real incentive to eat the impossible whopper over the standard whopper would be personal motivation to eat less meat. And I'll hazard a guess that most people eating Burger King aren't immediately concerned with cutting down their meat consumption.
I've had this burger and I prefer the Beyond Burger, but the meat eaters that had it said it tasted just like a run of the mill fast food burger, so I'm hoping that it takes off with the health and environmentally conscious. If anyone can really make this work I'm thinking Burger King or McDonalds could, they are both excellent logistically and process wise.
This is exciting news in the food world and opens up a lot of choices for people looking for less heavy food choices.
The impossible burger has more fat, more saturated fat and more sodium than the standard beef patties. Less cholesterol though. Again, by mass (their patties are smaller, so direct comparisons are a little harder).
Comparison chart about halfway down: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/nutrition-environment-gene...
I know that the beef industry has a lot of subsidies (many billions per year), but how much impact does that have on price? Without subsidies, what happens to the $3.99 Big Mac? Would it go to $4.19 or $7?
What matters is the ratios protein vs sat fat vs fat vs carbs, and what your view of health science tells you is optimal.
Per g of protein, impossible burgers are low fat, and Beyond Meat is reguar fat.
While I can't argue that animals should have the same rights as humans, I believe our psychology is wired for empathy even of animals and that may be the only "collectively objective' moral compass we have as humans.
The better we treat animals, the more resources we consume to produce meat. Lab-grown meat startups IMO have incredible potential to not only solve this problem but also make high quality meat incredible cheap. Great space to follow.
Note: of coarse the impossible burger isn't lab-grown, but they're working on that.
Impossible Burger 1.0 was vital wheat gluten based, and Impossible Burger 2.0 will be soy based. I'd probably rather have the 2nd over the first, but a lot of these announcements aren't specific about which formulation is being sold.
I have tried the Impossible Burger in a number of places, and to my taste, it's inedible. My girlfriend likes to try them, and the best we've had so far is at a fish & steak place in Phoenix (Dillon's, out on the west side, near Sun City).
Impossible started in "nicer" restaurants and is moving downmarket.
In flavor, it just doesn't have it. It has the same char flavor that a burger has... but without any meat flavor behind it, which is of course most of the flavor of a hamburger. Which makes sense, of course, because there's no meat. It's like picking up what you think is a Coke only when you taste it it's just sparkling water.
And then in texture it's quite different too. As if meat, instead of being ground (with all the satisfying texture that still has), were somehow blended into something more like a smooth paste before cooking. It isn't physically substantial or satisfying to chew, just mushy.
Since I'm not vegetarian, it's definitely not something I would ever order again because it doesn't have flavor and doesn't have texture. I'm not even talking about as a substitute, I'm just talking about as food period. Just give me some roasted veggies instead which have both flavor and texture. I mean, I love vegetables.
Or if you want a vegetarian "burger", a meaty Portobello mushroom is waaaay tastier.
But the Impossible Burger just feels like the worst of all worlds -- not satisfying like meat (just nowhere close), but also not satisfying as vegetables or any kind of "real food" at all.
It wasn't posted on th emenu, but you could order a "vegetarian Whopper" that cost something like $0.50 and was just a Whopper where they left off the patty.
I'm a little surprised the fiber is 3g, taht seems low seeing as it's made from plants. But then an e.g. Morningstar Farm black bean patty has 4g fiber and 1/3 the protein.
I had one at a restaurant just last week, $3 up charge made it an $18 burger. I'm not sure about that. But I doubt I'd have guessed it wasn't cow had I not ordered it myself. Perhaps eventually this or something like it becomes the default and it's a $3 up charge for animal meat. Meanwhile Native Foods makes their own burgers from plants rather than using a name brand 3rd party product, and manages to put together a pretty good $12-13 burger that includes a side. It's a bigger pile of fiber. (I'm not a vegetarian let alone vegan.)
Recently, I ordered an impossible burger. It was so close to real beef (or as I remember it), that after 1 bite I stopped. I wasn't sure if I was eating real beef or not, and I didn't want to risk it.
For those who crave the taste of meat but want to be vegetarian: you must try the Impossible Burger.
Personally, I don't crave the taste of meat, I just like the form factor. So a good veggie patty is all I need.
BK was the first burger chain to carry the Gardenburger line of veggie burgers and this is why I would seek out BKs whenever I travelled. I hope they continue to carry them if they decide to include the IB too in their offerings.
My guess is that as it was offered longer, fewer people would order it since it was no longer a novelty, so the cooks would forget that they don't need nearly enough time as a normal beef burger.
I'm no longer vegetarian but I'll definitely try v2 once it's more available.
Not sure about other Bar Louie locations.
Burger King has had vegetarian burger patties supplied by Morning Star Farms for around two decades now. These were the standard for quality for a long long time. I am glad something as amazing as Impossible Burger has stepped in to advance the legacy.
Bun, cheese, condiments, fries, seasoning? Is it "not that bad", or should the average Joe still feel guilty about indulging?
I've recently seen a few ads from Harvey's, went there and had a burger. It's not the same as beef but it's a burger.
The good part of having a vegetarian burger is that I don't enter into catatonic state for about 1/2 hour after I had fast food. I can eat fast food when meat is replaced with something else.
They're closing down on April 27th (after 21 years) so you have 4 weeks to try it.
You don't need a reservation: the burger is available as bar food, so you can walk in any evening after 7pm and get one. Costs $16 I think.
If you haven't tried one yet this is a great place to start.
I'll be happy to replace meat with better alternatives when they come, but at least from my perspective it's not a huge step, although maybe it will make a big difference in the larger scope.
Edit: wording
There is a hierarchy of 'life'. Those who try to say 'All or Nothing' when it comes to harming a sentient being are either ignorant or simply trying to justify their meat-eating habits.
You could make the same argument with eating engineered zero sentience humans. Or humans born with extreme disabilities. I think ethically it comes down to does the being have the ability to feel pain and suffer, and the emotional responses that come with it. eg a pig is more intelligent than a 3 year old, can solve the mirror test and has deep bonds with family, builds emotional connections, has the basic emotions we have etc. It's hard to justify their suffering and ultimate consumption by us when there are so many alternatives available.
Impossible Burger, for example, has more than double the saturated fat of an 85% lean beef burger: 3.6 grams per ounce (derived from coconut oil) versus 1.7.
https://www.foodandwine.com/news/great-veggie-burger-debate-...
I know there is debate about the link between saturated fat and heart disease, and further question about the specific types of saturated fat in coconut oil. I have no idea what the truth is, but if you are on a low fat diet, impossible burger isn't a good substitute for beef.
I've tried impossible burger, and thought it was very good, so I'd eat it just for the flavor.
Also high in sodium, which is part of the reason why it's so yummy (to some)
He overblown it.
It's good. But it doesn't taste like meat and the texture isn't close, only the seared like texture works the inner is different. The flavor is off. I want to say the fat of meat gives it that good taste which impossible burger does not have.
I can't wait until the time I can just get them from the grocery store.
Strawberry flavoured cereal is nothing like a strawberry, and can't possibly hope to emulate any of its properties (not even taste).
The ethical part won't effect demand just like it hasn't effected demand in the past. The price and taste will help consumers afford more meat. And I'm sure that they would agree that is a noble thing.
My guess is that beyond will soon be cheaper than regular meat, but that the requirements for creating lab grown are simply going to be too great to be able to compete economically or ecologically. I'm going to be very happy to be proven wrong someday, but that's my initial, knee-jerk reaction.
the only difference I can tell is that I don't feel full and then lethargic afterwards which is honestly part of the conditioned expected experience of eating meat, so I feel empty, but I can accept that. maybe we can make people feel the same way after eating a non-meat burger, with a benign chemical.
Part of BK's draw for me is the place smells like a backyard cook out.
Am I the only one in that?
Has anyone done any testing of mixing of real beef and impossible to get as close as possible to "real" perception while minimizing the amount of real?
For the company the issue is scale, and since the beef market is huge and profitable they are focusing on scale, more then on introducing other products.
But there's something about engineered food that doesn't sit right. Am I alone?
I mean, can't we just try to push real food, that looks, smells and tastes like real food? It doesn't have to be meat. Just something that isn't made on a production line, from ingredients you can't identify and in a way you don't ever get to see?
There's a food truck by my house that sells Impossible 2.0 burgers, and they charge $4 extra for it over meat burgers. If I can get something even close to that burger for half the price, I'm there, because it's that good.
And if fake meat is more expensive than the real deal and is not the real deal, then how is it going to fix anything?
One thing that gets me though: They smell terrible. I've cooked them in my house and have to air the place out afterwards. It's like an awful chemical plant fart. I'll never cook one in my house again.
Most food companies have slowly started doing this to reduce, sugar, calories and fat
I'm convinced industrial animal agriculture will be one of the things today's society is condemned for, fifty years from now.
As for cost, it seems intuitive that turning soy into a milk substitute would be cheaper than feeding soy to a cow and milking it if both were done on the same scale. On top of that, some countries tax substitutes higher than the products they replace. In Germany, for example, non-dairy milk has a VAT rate of 19% while dairy milk gets the reduced 7% rate for staple foods.
In the marketplace of ideas, the criticisms of these obviously abhorrent practices simply do not get much currency. Where does the failed war on drugs rank in terms of politically important issues? How about wage slavery, student-loan-indentured servitude, or industrial meat farming?
I don't know much, but I do know that people form habits and tend to set their beliefs/wants in stone, such that they will simply overlook suffering caused by their meat eating, tough on crime stances, etc. If it stands in the way of their bacon cheeseburger, most people simply don't spare a thought for others' suffering.
She in turn was banned from two far-right wing publications: The Daily Caller and The Federalist. Even twenty years ago, she would have been applauded for her reaction by the same kind of people and they would have concern-trolled for weeks about the negative reaction others might have had.
There is a group of vegan activists in Portland called the Cube of Truth. They hide their identity and hold up monitors on the street. If you approach and consent, they will display difficult to consume video of industrial animal practices.[1]
I commented there that "the cavalier, even gleeful use of animal products in food and and consumer goods will be a regrettable cultural wave."
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/awp0zc/vegan_papi...
Since going lacto-ovo vegetarian myself, I just want tasty food, doesn't matter if it's "like" a meat product.
(Also, I've been vegan for years and _love_ the Impossible burger.)
It's definitely not clear that eating meat is bad for your health. In fact there's plenty of evidence to suggest it's good for you.
There's a subset of people who are content with good vegan or vegetarian food. That set doesn't include me. I would however like to not eat meat anymore for ethical reasons.
I lack the willpower however to commit to vegetarian and vegan food, because I absolutely do not like those dishes and I don't have the mental headspace to tackle that alongside with a dozen other improvements I'm trying to make in my life (eg. producing less trash, staying healthy, charity work, etc.)
Compare it to the vape-pens that can replace smoking a cigarette. I'm not well versed enough to know if the numbers back up my intuition on this, but on face value I'd say that if vape-pens are available to help the subset of people who would like to stop smoking but are finding it too hard, why would that be a bad thing? The people who want to stop smoking completely can still do so.
* I'd like to say I prefer a good vegan/vegetarian product, but I have struggled to find vegan (egg-free/dairy-free) food I really love.
I hear what you are saying but for someone in my shoes (I'm vegetarian, my wife is not), this makes life so much easier.
In the US, I'm guessing the biggest items are burgers, dogs and sandwich meats.
For the same reason, they're great for restaurants to retrofit their menus to be veg friendly.
Here’s the full ingredient list for the new recipe:
Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Coconut Oil, Sunflower
Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Potato Protein,
Methylcellulose, Yeast Extract, Cultured Dextrose, Food
Starch Modified, Soy Leghemoglobin, Salt, Soy Protein
Isolate, Mixed Tocopherols (Vitamin E), Zinc Gluconate,
Thiamine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Sodium Ascorbate
(Vitamin C), Niacin, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin
B6), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12. Contains:
Soy [0]
Bernays-level marketing though.
For those worried about the ethics of eating animals, I can understand the extra $3.
For those just worried about other wastes (eg: losing 90% of the food value by feeding it to cattle), this isn’t a magic bullet, for now. Those extra $3 went into something else, whether it was a complicated energy-intense process, or luxury vacations for the patent owners of the process.
A $4 beef burger where $1 went toward reforestation or some other project may have the most impact over a $3 beef burger or $6 Impossible burger.
The meat/dairy industry in the US is subsidized to the tune of $38 billion, there's a little more to it than "Costs more at the store so it must cost more resources to make."
Though the other plant inputs in this burger are probably subsidized too.
Either we need to subsidize the impossible burger, or properly tax/desubsidize agriculture.
Health-wise, it makes all the wrong things cheaper.
My guess is that the retail price impact would be tiny. Kinda like the calculations where Walmart could double associate salaries by raising prices by 6%.
Are we talking about a $5 steak becoming $5.09 or becoming $10?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/the-hidden-costs-of-ham...
So even if all of the $38 billion went into burgers, it would not be much per burger.
If you have an extra dollar, what do you do with it? You either spend it on land, labour or capital. Stuff, property, or other people that will spend it on one of the three above things.
I imagine they are charging a premium for the impossible burger because it's a novelty and they think they can get it. Time will tell if that pricing model is sustainable in the long run.
Ie: cost + profit = price.
The $10000 shirt may pay for a lot of “designers” to tour the world about how great their shirt is, or for a celebrity to build a bigger house in exchange for an endorsement.
Or it could pay for $9990 in subsidizing reforestation, but doubtful.
Even if you hate those greedy rich people, their greed will mean their interests (more profit) will align with yours (fewer mistreated animals, less land devoted to meat-production).
Holding out for the capitalists to spontaneously get religion ("$9990 in subsidizing reforestation") seems like a losing bet here.
Ugh. First: The vegetarians that I know don't like meat. So making a veggie burger that tastes like the thing they don't like is just dumb.
Second: When I tasted an Impossible Burger, it was awful. It tasted like a horrible veggie burger.
At the places that I've tried it, the staff usually apologize as I order it, and warn me that I probably won't like it. They all tell me that the ordinary veggie burger that they used to serve was better.
At that point, they hint that they were strong-armed by their distributor to server it.
I personally reduced my meat consumption for environmental and health reasons, but when I want a burger, I get a burger.
Anecdotal, but i think the aim wasn't just at vegetarians, but also meat eaters who want to eat healthier.
>> Second: When I tasted an Impossible Burger, it was awful. It tasted like a horrible veggie burger.
I've also had an impossible burger, tasted fine to me. Perhaps your's wasn't cooked correctly?
I like meat so i'll give it a try.
If it's a choice between me eating junk food that's killing animals and earth, and eating this junkfood that is probably very slightly better for those and my health then i guess this will work.
I've had the impossible burger (and liked it) as well, and on a highly mass produced burger like the whopper I'm willing to bet it's close to the real thing.
It does make it much easier to 'half-abstain' because it's not an exception I can make easily on a whim at the grocery store. Buying a whole animal takes some planning.
It's been an ideal combination for us -- higher quality meat, considerably less meat consumed, and education to my kiddo about where meat comes from (and what responsible looks like on a farm).
I've not had the chance to try this burger, but when I get the chance I will do for sure.
What about the other 95% of people you know who aren't vegetarians because they like meat a lot?
> Second: When I tasted an Impossible Burger, it was awful. It tasted like a horrible veggie burger.
Haven't had one myself, but the friends I've heard from (largely not vegetarians) have liked it better than that. Reserving judgement until I can get one.
> I personally reduced my meat consumption for environmental and health reasons, but when I want a burger, I get a burger.
It sounds like you're disagreeing with your own first point. "So making a veggie burger that tastes like the thing they don't like is just dumb," but (supposing they'd actually pulled that off) you're exactly the market who would eat it. Likes meat, wants a burger, reducing meat consumption for environmental and health reasons. Doesn't sound dumb to me.
Personal favorite veggie-protein-patty is morningstar's "buffalo chik," which aren't really that chicken-like but taste good and have enough structure to stay together while you eat them.
Hi, nice to meet you! Vegan for almost a decade, the smell of a burger on the grill in the summer gives me hella cravings. We exist.
"Second: When I tasted an Impossible Burger, it was awful. It tasted like a horrible veggie burger."
I'm jealous, you must not have ever eaten a truly horrible veggie burger. I had a Gardenburger in like 2005 that literally tasted like cardboard. The Impossible Burger is a miracle of science.
There's people who doesn't consider charring meat having a good odour, and that doesn't make it less nutritious. There's super tasty things which are horribly un-nutritional, or even poisonous. That goes both for smell and taste.
Nailed it. We used to have summer dinners at my grandparents when I was a kid, complete with grilled burgers. It is, in large part, emotional.
As long as we're sharing anecdata, I've reduced my meat consumption for environmental and health reasons, too. And I would love to have a decent veggie burger option at more fast food places. If it's a perfect fascimile of beef, all the better.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed the old BK veggie burger. I think the Impossible Burger is good, too, but I'm not sure it's a step up for me so much as a horizontal change. But I do think it will be more appealling to more reluctant prospective veggie burger consumers, in which case, we all win.
They're probably trying to prepare it like a veggie burger, which ruins it.
I've had the Impossible Burger a few times, and just like ground beef, you can make a good burger or a bad burger.
The places that it turned out well, they were aware that it was meant to be prepared like meat. I order it medium-rare, like I do with beef, and it comes out well.
Another place that I've been to still thinks it's a veggie patty. They end up cooking it until it's dry and disappointing.
Ugh. First: The vegetarians that I know don't like meat. So making a veggie burger that tastes like the thing they don't like is just dumb.
Guessing anecdotally, I know as many vegetarians as you. Almost every one of them is happy to have a good burger option. I'm sure some % would be ok without a meat clone but the utility alone of having fast-food chains offer good vegetarian food is amazing. My non vegetarian friends have tried the beyond and impossible burgers and the vast majority have found them to be a satisfactory alternative to conventional beef patties.
Second: When I tasted an Impossible Burger, it was awful. It tasted like a horrible veggie burger.
You are probably in the minority here or you didn't have it prepped well. I'd recommend trying one at umami burger as so far, I have found their preparation the most reliable and delectable.
I personally reduced my meat consumption for environmental and health reasons
That's great, and precisely why this space is taking off.