What Gets to Be a 'Burger'? States Restrict Labels on Plant-Based Meat | Hacker News Reader

What Gets to Be a 'Burger'? States Restrict Labels on Plant-Based Meat

npr.org

31 pointspseudolus86 comments

But language tradition is important here.

People have been calling it a "veggie burger" for decades now.

Saying it can't be a burger is ridiculous -- it's a kind of burger.

But, I fully support packaging requiring word(s) beforehand in an equal-sized font -- "burger" reserved for beef, while "black bean burger" and "veggie burger" and "quinoa burger" are all fine.

What's bizarre is that beef burger makers see this as a threat worth addressing... like, nobody's accidentally buying veggie burgers.

I guarantee this is more cultural signaling than a threat the beef industry sees as real.

I disagree, I think the threat is very real. Soon every burger chain will be offering a non-meat burger. Burger King already does.

> What's bizarre is that beef burger makers see this as a threat worth addressing... like, nobody's accidentally buying veggie burgers.

I think that's exactly what they're worried about, though. There wasn't much chance of confusion before, so it wasn't a big priority. Now that vegetable alternatives like the Impossible "patty" are becoming indistinguishable from beef, they're more concerned. If McDonald's or some other giant purveyor of beef could switch and save money, they would. They're rightly worried about a loss of market as the meat alternatives get better at mocking the real thing.

The truly amusing part is that they think spending money on labeling issues will do anything to stop it

People keep saying "indistinguishable from beef" but oh boy... I literally don't know what burgers these people have been trying.

I've tried them all, including the newest versions, and they're still not even close. They're fine, but still completely different... kind of like how soy milk is fine but certainly doesn't taste anything like cow milk. And I'm certainly not a supertaster or anything...

I'm personally of the opinion we'll have self-driving cars long before we come up with a non-meat burger that is actually as satisfying, in the same ways, as a beef one.

I agree, it's not that Impossible is anywhere near a good real hamburger, but when it comes to fast food, the bar is low. With all the low-grade beef, fillers, and flavor science involved, I bet I couldn't tell the difference in, say, a White Castle burger or a Taco Bell burrito. They might not be there yet, but they're damn close. That's the market the industry is rightfully concerned with.

I think people underestimate the quality of meat in fast food.

At least for McD's, for example, it's 100% beef and salt, no fillers or flavor science needed, just browning reactions from a hot griddle. The quality bar is actually pretty high for, say, a quarter pounder, and the flavor of the sandwich is predominantly the beef itself -- flavors like American cheese, raw onion, ketchup and bread are quite weak in comparison.

Taco Bell is a little different -- it's about 10% seasoning and 90% beef because that's what taco meat is supposed to be, but again the browned beef is the primary flavor component of the taco -- no amount of cumin will make up for it.

I'm not sure where people get the idea that fast food beef is somehow tasteless, low-quality, or engineered in any way that, say, home hamburgers aren't. It seems like it's just this urban myth that perpetuates itself because it's fun to believe.

It's about keeping alternative / status-quo-threatening foods in the "weird" outgroup in consumer minds.

"What type of burger do you want: Beef or bean?" is the opposite of that. But nothing that can't be fixed with some cultural manipulation from up top.

Right now they're being sold as an expensive novelty, but the producers are being open that their business plan is undercut meat on price and move downmarket.

That's a direct threat. Meat producers are probably imagining something like 10% beef / 90% artificial meat filler burgers being the norm for cheap ground beef.

It should be cheaper to produce plants than to raise a cow.

So it won't be long before plant-based protein is cheaper than beef. It's not "undercutting" so much as the fact it's cheaper to produce.

And has an inverse effect on global warming.

Ironically, the term "hamburger" might lead someone who doesn't know its origin to expect it's made with ham.

Or that it was grown and bottled in the Hamburg region of France

Do you mean the German city?

I think the joke in the parent was in making an overly enthusiastic comparison to Champagne.

haha why is this downvoted??

> What's bizarre is that beef burger makers see this as a threat worth addressing... like, nobody's accidentally buying veggie burgers.

If they force the sellers of veggie burgers to come up with, and popularize, another term, they cost those guys a little money. There's no principle involved here.

Note the irony of these nominally conservative, pro-free-market states being more than willing to introduce burdensome regulation when it tips the scales in favor of industries they deem worthy of protection.

Pro free market is more of a libertarian thing not a conservative thing.

Republicans still think they believe in limited government though. They don't notice the irony when they ask the government to keep the governments hands off the government benefits they like.

Mis-labeled food laws have been around in all these states for a long time, without, I think, much objection.

I'm 100% in favor of consumers not being misled. Truth in labels.

But veggie burgers have been around for 20 years and nobody has been "fooled" into thinking they are beef. The word burger doesn't mean "cow".

The purpose of these laws is transparent, and it's not "consumer protection".

That's a pretty sweeping claim. I have accidentally bought "Chik'n nuggets" before so it's not much of a stretch to believe some people might make mistakes.

I absolutely support the label being clear. There should be no pictures of chickens on the label and no need to try to trick people into thinking there is chicken in there.

But to say the word "nugget" is restricted to only chicken products is just anti-competitive.

I've accidentally bought buttermilk instead of milk before. I don't think that we can regulate names such that no one will ever mistakenly purchase the wrong item. Ultimately, there is a standardized ingredients list included with the required nutrition information on almost every packaged food product. Whether that's sufficient or there should be more restrictions is an open question, but I really don't think that these arguments are being made in good faith in this case.

It's pro "big business" ... as long as that big business is a big employer in their state and is big in helping them get reelected.

Note the irony in a HN commentor complaining about US states regulating things the way Europe regulates things[0].

It's ironic turtles all the way down. ;)

Honestly I don't see this regulation as a bad thing. Having to use some different text on your label costs approximately nothing since you have to have a label of some sort so it's not really burdensome. Stores sell margarine beside the butter. I don't see why they wouldn't sell the beef approximation beside the beef. I'm not the target customer though. I won't be buying this stuff until it's so cheap that they start cutting 80/20 beef with it.

[0] per TFA, Europe has very similar laws about food labeling.

Edit: You people have no sense of humor.

I don't think the majority of European lawmakers have ever claimed to favor a small-government approach to regulation, so whether it's a good idea or not, there's no hypocrisy there.

RE: burdensomeness of the regulation, another commenter already pointed out the historical usage of the language we're talking about banning. Imagine you spent the last twenty years building your brand around the term "veggie burger." I suspect you would find it burdensome if you suddenly had to change that.

It'll be really entertaining when they make the law so strict beef that we learn that most "burgers" have too much egg, breading, or beef byproduct to count as a burger.

Perhaps labeling these non-animal products as something other than meat might be a good thing.

Long term, I think we animal-eaters are on the wrong side of history. Providing humans survive the climate crisis and collapse of civilization, maybe a couple of hundred years from now the people will look back at us and wonder how we could consider ourselves civilized while killing and eating animals. A bit like Roman gladiator fights. It will seem very shocking to them.

The alternatives, lab-grown meat and whatnot, will be the norm and only psychopaths would kill and eat animals. With that in mind, if these products start to distance themselves from real (killed-animal) meat now then they are getting a head start on marketing. They won't have to remind people later that they were the good guys all along.

I don't think it will be the "wrong side of history" any more than using animals for transport prior to technology. It's not purel= senseless violence it's just the best way to make meat with the current technology, it'll probably be looked back on as "haha remember when they had to raise and keep an animal purely to transport them slowly".

Animals raised for transportation or muscle power were treated much better than meat animals are today. They also provided utility throughout their lives, while meat animals are raised for the exclusive purpose of slaughter.

Animals used for transportation and labor are often shackled and beaten the duration of their short lives, worked until they’re too injured to continue, then slaughtered. Those raised solely for meat might have it comparatively easy.

That's just not how labor animals work. Just like human laborers, animals need rest, and they're darn expensive. You can't drive your workhorse or your ox 24/7, it would die early and you would just be squandering your investment.

For meat on the other hand, you can lock your cow or pig or chicken in a cage exactly the size of its body with no stimulation except the food being shoved down it's throat, it'll get fat and you can sell if for meat. There is no downside to mistreatment.

Not disagreeing, but providing a different perspective. By maintaining labels that associate lab-grown or plant-based with the "real-deal" (not a "fake" or new/different) meats, perhaps more people would be willing to try the alternatives. People are resistant to change and many stick to what they "know". It's part of why the milk industry is fighting for nut-milks to not be labeled as "real" milk. If the alternative has that "other"/"outsider" label, there's more resistance from the customers.

That milk issue is ridiculous. Nut milk has been referred to as such since the middle ages or earlier.

In France you can't label nut milk as such, so they call it "nut based drink".

It doesn't matter. Customers call it nut milk. Recipes call it that. Restaurant menus as well.

It will be the same with burgers. It doesn't matter, and it's just a waste of time and resources.

When Napster came out with an alternative to the CD, the industry mocked it, then attacked it, but never tried to learn from it. As a result, GAFAM arrived and took the whole market.

When youtube came out, TV did the same. As a result, the Valley arrived an took the whole market.

The meat industry is doing the same with vege alternatives. They first mocked it. Now they are in the fighting phase. But these products are already as tasty as the average meat (not speaking of high end steaks, but that's not what people eats every week). The difference is that IF and BB can provide consistent quality across the entire production. And since it's made from plants, it will scale way better than real meat, from sourcing to production, so it will get cheaper. Because of the green trend we currently got, not to mention the ethics surrounding the topic, it will be an easy way to get a guilty pleasure while feeling you are doing the right thing.

I understand why Gates has invested in it.

Your different perspective boils down to "it's ok to lie and mislead people with food labeling if its in a good cause".

So you would like corporate interests to just say whatever they want about the contents just because you THINK it might be better for OTHER people to not know what they are eating?

I would put people mislead by the "nut milk" label in the same box as the people putting their dog in the micro-wave to dry it.

We should not thrive to protect those people from their own stupidity. We are short in resources, I'd rather see those invested in schools to provide education to their children.

So if you look at my other comments maybe you'll see a theme.

Nut milk can be made at home, so can peanut butter.

This is highly processed fake food thats designed to trick you into thinking it "feels" like meat. A process that is not designed to make it actually healthier for you in all the processing.

This is the English language so yes there is nuance in how we use it.

It's important to me that we not start to label industrial food pastes as X when they are still just industrial food pastes.

What's the "veggie" in "veggie burger"? It's not ground chickpeas anymore, don't conflate the two very different things.

Maybe once we evolve into herbivores, we'll look back in disgust. But until then my kids have incisors and eyes on the front of their face, just like their mother and I, and most predators on the planet.

If you want to have a conversation about factory farming and animal cruelty, I'd imagine we'd agree on a lot.

As flawed as appeals to nature already are, these aren't even particularly good ones. Your incisors are laughably small and dull compared to those of a literal mouse and you have fewer of them than a cow does. Fruit bats and gorillas both have forward-facing eyes and neither would know what to do if you handed them a ribeye.

I'm not going to criticize you for your diet choices. I just ask you don't do the same to me, and act like we haven't evolved to eat other animals like so many other species.

I'm criticizing your understanding of comparative zoology and evolutionary physiology, not your diet. I would actually love it if you tried to criticize my diet because I have some bloodwork, double-blind studies, and WHO guidelines I think you'd find very persuasive. Oh well.

This belongs on /r/iamverysmart

Compelling argument

To be clear, these laws are saying you can't use the word "burger" with anything other than the flesh of animals.

Not meat - burger.

Nobody is being fooled by the "veggie burger" containing animals. Nobody. It's a non-issue.

To open, a few weeks ago I went to Fatburger to get another Impossible Burger. It had been a while, but I remembered that it was good. Fatburger must have gotten their grillin’ chops down, because the whole time I was eating it I wondered if they didn’t mistakenly give me real meat. I didn’t remember it being that good. Whatever, I’m not not that much of a hard-core vegetarian.

But I need a repro, so I went back a week later. That’s when I saw the sign saying, “Meat. Made from plants. <cutesy blurb>”. Vegetarian Me says “yea!”. Truth-in-advertising Me says, “meh, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that”. OTOH, I knew full what they mean.

Oh, and Fatburger didn’t make a mistake the first time. Impossible Burger is just that good.

I think in a side-by-side test of the bare burger, you'd have no trouble telling which is which.

But most burger chains serve their burgers with an array of toppings, sauces, condiments, and other things that make it nearly impossible to taste the actual patty. There are so many layers that all the burger itself provides is a bit of chewy texture. The texture of an Impossible Burger doesn't have quite the same mouthfeel as one made out of cow, but if you're not expressly looking for it, you'd easily miss it. If they accidentally substituted it for a meat burger, I'd wager well over 80% of the patrons wouldn't notice.

> I think in a side-by-side test of the bare burger

Our supplier of impossible meat gave us bratwursten last time to try and yeah, I would say you will have a very hard time doing blind test between those and the real thing. They are not only simply very good: they are absolutely convincing next to the real thing.

Again, for me they do not need to be but I think our meat consumption is unsustainable and far worse (for me), animal torture, so if this can help others eat /less/ meat, it is good.

Disclaimer; I know most people just do not have the financial room to do this; it is all very expensive (at least here). Nice vegetarian cooking (I do not know if this goes for vegan as well or not) can be done very cheap if you have some time to shop and prepare.

But all these ‘plant based meats’, at least here in the EU, are very expensive. 12 hamburgers from the freezer which are meat (well, some kind of very cheap waste meat) at E4,- vs 10 impossible meat v2 burgers at E33,- it will make no sense for most. But I guess this will change with volume; I hope so anyway.

I haven't tried the sausages, but I am looking forward to it. I'm neither vegan nor vegetarian, but I do try to reduce my meat consumption for the same reasons you do. That's easy at home, but harder when I eat out, especially when I'm trying to be expeditious about it.

I don't expect to eliminate animals from people's diet, but I have hopes that eventually we'll be able to break the assumption that meat is somehow necessary at every meal. Just breaking that assumption would enable people to consider a wider range of possibilities, and encourage more places to support those who don't want to eat meat.

Impossible Burger meat is shipped ground-beef style, so the quality of the patty is highly dependent on the restaurant. Among my vegetarian friends, Fatburger is considered on the high-end of the quality scale for Impossible Burgers since making burgers is all they do.

Other burger-centric restaurants also tend to be pretty good at cooking Impossibles, except Umami Burger, which is very bad at it.

I buy them now frozen and bbq them, serve them with a sauce recipe we (my wife and myself) perfected over the last months + pickles, onion and tomato. Our friends (mainly somewhat anti vegetarian meat eat eaters) do not believe it is not meat (we live in a small village). I have been making lasagne and spaghetti bolognese with mushrooms based meat replacement and no-one ever noticed it was not ground beef (I use different herbs and fatty tasting oils).

For us it does not have to taste like meat at all; we eat different beans, lentils, veggie dishes most of the time, but if we want friends over, we have to serve ‘meat’ so this is a good way of doing that. Or pizza, but after having perfected my woodoven chops over the past 2 years, I need to lay off the pizza for a little bit...

There's a vegan restaurant in town that has "pulled pork sandwich" listed on it's menu. That's misleading when there is no pork in it.

No one needs to be tricked to eat these delicious plant-based proteins.

I think the problem is that they are trying to create an alternative to pulled pork, but have no idea what to call it. I have a vegetarian in my family and I have made "vegetarian pulled pork", which is using shredded jack fruit as a meat substitute and cooking it in a pot or pressure cooker. Coming from a family where "pulled pork" means slow cooking a pork shoulder for 8-12 hours, cooking "vegetarian pulled pork" is absolutely nothing like real pulled pork, but what else would you call it? I guess BBQ Shredded Jack Fruit is more accurate, but it doesn't sound nearly as appealing (even though it's actually really tasty!).

This is an actual problem. You're calling something that isn't pork pork.

"Burger" isn't as specific. Culturally, people accept that the term "burger" can be modified by other words like "Pork" or "Black Bean" to imply "a patty of <product> meant to be used in the ways you would use a patty".

This isn't about protecting consumers from being tricked. It's about making it harder to communicate what a product is for producers.

Yes it is. Around here few different restaurants have added impossible meat as an option. And I have tried it in different forms as a burger patty or as a burrito filling. I can't say that the taste is the exact same as beef but its close enough and its good enough.

Fuck 'em.

Call it a "Vurger".

Let lazy phoneme substitution take care of the rest.

Visited one of these vegan restaurants. Took me a little while to realize everything on the menu was misspelled. They didn't have cheese they had "cheeze", they had "porc" instead of pork, etc. Immediately it felt quite dishonest, but I admit it would be obnoxious to have to qualify everything in a vegan restaurant.

> I admit it would be obnoxious to have to qualify everything in a vegan restaurant

For cheese I can understand, but pork is pork. How can you call a non-pig product pork?

Cheese is as specific as pork as far as constituent ingredients.

You're just attempting to replicate the sensory experience. Sweetness, texture, moisture, etc. As in, say, beef vs pork barbecue. Beef vs pork steak.

Jackfruit probably mimics pork better than beef - not all substitutions are equivalent.

> "If [plant-based makers] can't say that it's a black bean burger by using 'burger,' how are they to describe to the consumer what the product is?"

The same way meats intended for burgers are described -- patties.

That's right, you can buy "Beef Patties" right now.

We're obviously moving from the "then they laugh at you" stage to the "then they fight you" stage.

Related link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20511902 ("Tofurky takes Arkansas to court over the word 'meat')

The meat makers must really be afraid of substitutes when they are lobbying for regulations like these. In Germany they were successful in pushing a new regulation that says that vegetarian sausages must not be called sausages.

The ONLY factors that matter when it comes to food are taste, health and price. You can call it a shit sandwich for all I care.

A lot of traditionally foreign foods that have been Americanized are not their authentic version either. For example I’m pretty sure california sushi is not “real” sushi. Such is culture and language. It is not static.

I think the rise of plant based meat has shown that ethical sourcing is a huge factor for many people.

We don't let margarine be called butter.

Why is it suddenly ok/desirable to let corporate interests randomly assign words to highly processed* foods?

Today you think its a great thing that these magic mystery pastes can lie to other people about their contents? Those other people are dumb so it's OK to lie to them about the contents of their burgers?

Tomorrow? Oh we let words not have meaning because we wanted people to eat more plants....now the word chickpeas can mean anything because... oooops.

Create unique product names that aren't lies. Let people seek them out because they taste good and they are better for them.

* I've worked hard to get rid of highly processed food and I'm highly skeptical of adding back these highly processed industrial pastes that vegetarian startups are pushing.

> corporate interests...highly processed

Using phrases like that might pander to a certain crowd, but it doesn't help your argument. Personally, I'm less likely to trust someone who uses phrases like that because they lack nuance and signal that they're not really here for a constructive discussion.

I'm sorry are these not corporate interests?

Are these not highly processed foods?

Is it difficult for you to accept that because you want others to not eat meat?

> Are these not highly processed foods?

Is a McDonalds hamburger not?

Your response is suggesting that because we have very bad practices at McDonalds we should allow/accelerate them?

Do you think we should eat and promote highly processed foods?

My response is suggesting that if McDonalds can call highly processed food a "burger", your claim that it's the level of processing that matters is clearly not the case.

As I said in other comments -

"""I also object to Taco Bell being able to call their products even "meat" to be quite honest, I think we should change that."""

Cool Strawman Bro!

McDonalds is allowed to call their extremely processed foods "burgers". The contents of their "burger" and the contents of 80/20 beef-only patties marketed as "burger patties" at the store are not the same.

The point is, "burger" doesn't mean what you're trying to imply it means. It's a loose term for a type of sandwich at best. Saying patties intended to be used for "burgers" can't be marketed as "burgers" is equivalent to saying that "sandwiches" made with <ingredient of your choice> aren't really "sandwiches" because they don't contain the contents that the Earle of Sandwich included in his concoction hundreds of years ago.

Because you didn't seem to get it -

I think its a travesty that McDonald and Taco Bell are allowed to do what they do to hamburger and are still allowed to sell it at all. Full Stop.

The "Veggie" in "Veggie Burger" is a highly processed industrial food paste that has nothing to do with chopping up some chickpeas and garlic and eating it on flatbread.

Look at the ingredient lists and read up on all the steps the make to fool you into thinking it has the mouth feel, tast etc of meat.

None of those steps are about making the base ingredients healthier for you. They leech nutrients/phytonutrients/fiber at every manipulation.

Grinding peanuts and making peanut butter? Hey that's ok with me.

This is making terrible food paste and using virtue signalling to market it.

Your post history shows that you do this a lot. Just wanted to let you know:

> Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thank you, I'll watch that.

Look out for the Capslock police. What a weird policy.

> We don't let margarine be called butter.

What about “peanut butter”?

What about Almond Milk?

First I'd say its in long use and common understanding.

Second you can make both of them at home.

Third I'm really broadly objecting to highly processed food pastes being labeled as "burger" or X. I also object to Taco Bell being able to call their products even "meat" to be quite honest, I think we should change that.

Cool slippery slope bro!

Margarine =/= butter. These are words with very specific meanings that everyone has agreed on.

Burger =/= beef. "Burger" is, generally, a style of sandwich. "Turkey Burger" is fine. "Pork burger" is fine. The assumption is that, unmodified, it means that it contains beef. However, everyone in the US understand that a "black bean burger" doesn't contain beef and instead contains black beans.

Both sides of this fight are just "corporate interests randomly assigning words to foods". The beef industry wants "purity" and the veggie industry wants "common sense". Let's not pretend this is actually about the consumer being protected, because isn't. It's about how to market products.

Burger is ground meat not a sandwich?

"Veggie" in "Veggie Burger" is what exactly? Tell us in detail please.

I make mine, at home not in a sinister lab, from black beans, garlic, onion, bell peppers, bread crumbs, egg, salt, pepper, cumin and olive oil.

I take the onions, peppers and garlic and go put them in a food processors to chop them (oh god, the processing!) to approximately fine dice because I'm usually making them in bulk and don't feel like cutting by hand. If you prefer a thicker cut to the veggies, go ahead and cut with a knife.

I then take that out, and put half of the black beans into the food processor (ahh, terror, horror!) until they reach a paste consistency. I mix the other veggies, spices and remaining black beans into this. I then eggs to bind and bread crumbs as needed to get it to hold shape. If I take it too far, I'll add some olive oil to loosen things up.

These aren't super great on a grill, and I prefer to pan sear or cook them on a griddle (which I find to be the best to get some really great maillard reactions going on for flavor) and top with a slice of cheese and arugula and put it on a bun.

My point is, "burger" is a style preparation, not a specific thing. "Soup" "Sandwich" "Taco" "Breakfast". These are vague shapes, not specific D.S.O.P terms. So is "burger", at least in the US currently.

I'm a former chef my dude. I'm invested and have a lot of opinions on food. You want to fight on the behalf of the beef lobby, that's fine. But this is all about protecting corporate interests from other competing corporate interests. This isn't about protecting consumers. It's Bad Actors fighting Bad Actors.

Don't even get me started on that "organic" nonsense...

You make that at home, sounds great. (and of course your friends and family trust you and know you wouldn't slip garbage onto their plate)

So you know all this work we do to remove processed foods by making it at home right?

Do you think this is what is in these industrial pastes at the store? In a box on the freezer isle?

Taco Bell is allowed to call their product meat and thats NOT ok with me.

Vegetarians jumping on the corporate lying train with Taco Bell is a terrible terrible idea.

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