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?
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...
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.
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.
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.
> 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).
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...
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.