I think it's a great opportunity for exposure for these new meat alternatives, and also a potentially great income boost that will help them expand operations and secure their future business.
> Burger King’s chief marketing officer, Fernando Machado, said that in the company’s testing so far, customers and even employees had not been able to tell the difference between the old meaty Whopper and the new one.
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.
>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.
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'm a vegetarian. I love meat. I'd eat meat all the time if I knew it didn't cause horrifying suffering and environmental damage.
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.
Abstinence from meat seems like an extreme step if all you are concerned about is environmental damage. Just eating meat at a "normal" frequency of two or three times a week would be enough to mitigate much of the impact. True organic agriculture is not possible without meat production as a side effect, and this can only be replaced by nonrenewable synthetic fertilizers.
I'm not the person you're responding to, but for me it's much easier to abstain from meat than to moderate it to a certain amount of times per week. It's not difficult for me to eat meat, but it would be if I were to half-abstain.
Our family buys a whole animal from a local farmer periodically. We evaluate how the animal was raised, the sustainability of the farm, etc. to the best of our ability. It's the one exception to my vegetarianism. It results in me eating meat every now and again, but meat I know was treated humanely.
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).
For those like myself who have a diet largely consisting of meat, this sounds great for the exact reasons you described; reduced environmental impact and possibly greater personal health. I agree that the original Impossible Burger was disappointing, but if they manage to incrementally improve to the point of being barely distinguishable, I think overall its a really good thing.
Speaking as a vegan, by the numbers it's people like you not us who are the ones who are going to have the bigger positive impact on the environment by eating plant based options more often. It's encouraging to hear meat eaters being increasingly open minded...
> 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.
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.
I've had a lot of veggie burgers, my main problem with them is the lack of structure. If they're more than like 1/4" thick you try to take a bite and the whole thing squishes out the sides of the bun.
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.
"First: The vegetarians that I know don't like meat."
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.
The cravings are probably a sign that you are missing something essential that is in the burger. It tastes good because it is nutritious. I would eat a burger occasionally to stay healthy.
No, it doesn't taste (or smell) good because it's nutritious. The cravings are a psychological reflex of remembering something you liked the taste, nutritious or not.
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.
This is specious reasoning. A whiff of cigarette smoke can trigger cravings for nicotine. That doesn't mean one is missing something essential or that its nutritious. (or that one should eat a cigarette occasionally to stay healthy ;)
>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.
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.
> 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.
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.
I guess I fit into the "don't like the taste of meat" vegetarian. Except it's not actually the taste, I was never able to get past the "ewww... Gross... I don't want to eat dead animals" mental factor. When the idea of your food grosses you out, you don't enjoy the taste. Without the gross factor there, I can enjoy the taste. I had a vegetarian sausage patty recently that was very similar to what I remember sausage tasting like ("tastes like a McDonald's sausage patty" according to my meat eating husband) and I enjoyed it.
Funny I guess as a super meat lover I tried the Impossible burger and like it a lot even though it doesn't quite taste like beef it tastes good on it's own.
Yes, it is better! Part of the goal is to provide a "gateway patty" to make it easier for meat-eaters to reduce their consumption. Good for their health, good for the environment, good for the animals.
(Also, I've been vegan for years and _love_ the Impossible burger.)
Also the impossible burger has about the same amount of calories as an 80% lean ground beef burger, so it's no better as far as calories are concerned.
Speaking just for myself, yes a meat-replacement that tastes and feels very similar to real meat would be a huge step towards me eating less or no meat.
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.
A big thing for me was figuring out what vegetarian food I liked. There was a lot of experimentation. Building my own recipe bank for fast, easy to make food and more complex dishes. I am still expanding that knowledge.
Small steps are important on any road of transition. People often don't like big changes, and are more likly to go back to their old habits when the difference is to big.
It's also important to understand how much food is tied to culture and identity. It's not simply a matter of convincing them it's healthier or kinder to animals.
This question comes up quite often. I'm with you insofar as I also prefer a good vegetarian* product, but tbh, in my experience, almost every vegetarian burger (for example) one encounters day-to-day is in no way trying to "be" meat. Falafel patties, beetroot patties, sweetcorn patties, whole portobello mushrooms as patties, etc. I'd say the added diversity added by faux-meat products is not harmful.
* 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.
Well, what I was really trying to say is—I don't really mind the "it's just like meat!!" products. I may personally prefer the "it's just vegetables" products, but having more options is fine.
Same here, I prefer a black bean burger to one of these. I don't dislike the impossible burger but still have the uncanny valley sensation while eating them.
I imagine that whatever culture is developing the vegetarian/vegan food products will do whatever they can to emulate the foods that are already part of their culture, as that is going to be the primary replacement request.
In the US, I'm guessing the biggest items are burgers, dogs and sandwich meats.
They allow vegetarians to utilize hundreds of years of meat-based recipes with a simple substitution. Instead of your whole diet changing, you can just swap some ingredients.
For the same reason, they're great for restaurants to retrofit their menus to be veg friendly.
I tried the impossible burger and personally didn't notice a difference. The boyfriend tried a bite, and liked it, but could taste something off. I'm kinda excited to see where both the impossible burger goes, and where other restaurants take this.
Also for the price to come down, it was like $3 more than the boyfriend's burger
I'm hoping the Burger King trial goes well so we can get nationwide expansion, in large part to help bring the price down. That premium is still a little rough, Impossible is in a lot of restaurants but doesn't have the in-store presence that Beyond Meat has at the moment. Scale, scale, scale!
I’m curious about this. I had the first generation many times and found it to be pretty good.
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?
My impression of Impossible Burger v1.0 was that the pinkish/uncharred bits had an odd sweetness and moisture/texture that made it most distinguishable from a beef burger. With 2.0, the texture is a bit more firm and beef-like, and it seems they've put less emphasis on the 'bleeding' which I think has reduced the sweetness as well.
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 really liked it. At medium doneness, it was like really soft ground meat, and had a pretty beefy flavor, but perhaps a little bit sweeter. I found myself wanting seconds after I finished my burger.
I should note that I have never tasted V1 so I can't compare the two.
I bought some from the supermarket and cooked it up. While the impossible burger does resemble, smell, and taste like meat, it doesn't smell or taste like a hamburger. It smells and tastes almost exactly like Spam. It'll be great once the price goes down.
Impossible burgers are awesome and I've had quite a few. It also really depends on how it's made and how it's dressed up - as with any burger. My only lingering issue is that it is a highly processed food, and psychologically it helps to know what you're eating.
Yeah, it's basically an ethical burger, which, if that's what you're looking for, that's great. While I can tell it tastes different, when dressed up in a burger it hits the spot just like a hamburger does. The problem is when people try and convince themselves that just because it's vegetarian it's healthy, which isn't the case at all. After all, Oreo's are vegan.
> My only lingering issue is that it is a highly processed food
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.
"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."
They're really decent tasting, and it's exciting as a gateway to vegetarianism. I personally like veggie burgers that don't try to be meat better, but there's still a market for meat-likes.
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.
The Impossible Burger patty is not available in grocery stores yet. I suspect that you are thinking of the Beyond Meat patties, which are sold in grocery stores and do smell unappealing while cooking.
Damn, this day is ruining me. Took me way too long to realize that the title has beef-less written, not bee-less.
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.
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 really hope McDonalds adds a veggie burger to their menu soon, too. I try to avoid meat, but often end up eating it in fast food for the convenience and due to a lack of alternatives.
Taco bell is a surprisingly good fast food option for vegetarians I've heard. You can make basically all their options meat-less and add options you like and you're good. (note I'm not vegetarian, just going by advice I've heard others mention this)
Same here. McDonalds has long had veggie burgers available outside the US, most notably in India, but also in many of the (Arabian|Persian) Gulf countries.
In terms of resources used in their production, a $6 burger expends more resources than a $3 burger.
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.
> In terms of resources used in their production, a $6 burger expends more resources than a $3 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."
There's not a lot of hard data I can find on where the money goes, but the table on Wikipedia (2004) indicates that we mostly subsidize livestock feed grains, then cotton, wheat, and rice. Those four added up to 64%. Soybeans and products come in 5th at 7.6%. Fruits and vegetables, pretty much zero.
Health-wise, it makes all the wrong things cheaper.
What I want to see is what the pricing would be without the subsidies.
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?
Somebody is spending those dollars, they’re not burning them.
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’d put that under labour and/or capital. And the equipment bought for the R&D requires building (ie: uses up resources), or the people involved spend that money on other stuff.
You really cannot strictly equate price with "resources" like this. Does a $10,000 designer shirt require 1,000 times the resources of a $10 t-shirt to produce?
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.
I said production costs or fancy vacations to the process owners.
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.
A more profitable alternative to meat that's popular with the mass market would be a huge victory for conservation and animal rights.
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.
I'll 100% be giving it a try (I'm already a long time vegetarian though). I like that it's BK doing this because BK has served a veggie burger (Morningstar Farms Patty) for around ~14 years, so they should be familiar with the demand for meatless products.
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.
Carl's also has the beyond burger, which I personally think is superior. My wife disagrees, and prefers your standard veggie burgers (we are vegans of 15 years).
I haven't been able to compare the Impossible Burger. I had a Beyond Burger, and it was very good. If somebody were to hand it to a meat eater at a cookout, without calling attention to it, they'd eat it without noticing the switch. Pile on a few toppings (which people usually do because of the flavorless nature of most fast-food and grocery-store beef), and most people would be hard pressed to tell the difference in a blind tasting.
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.
I too prefer the Beyond Meat burger to the Impossible Burger, but I don't know about a meat eater not noticing. I love meat - especially beef, but lately I've also been trying meat alternatives.
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.
Beyond Meat products are at a lot of stores, including Safeway and Target. In mine they're located over by the fresh meat. The web site has a locator: https://www.beyondmeat.com/where-to-find/
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.
>because of the flavorless nature of most fast-food and grocery-store beef
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.
My girlfriend (vegan of 12ish years) actually has trouble eating any of the more realistic fake meats. She says she has just lost the taste for it and that it grosses her out now.
This is roughly what it's like for me, too, as a vegetarian of over 20 years. I wouldn't say it grosses me out, personally. It's more that that, after many, many years of eating food with much brighter flavors, it would seem that that whole corner of the flavor spectrum just isn't palatable to me anymore.
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.
My current diet is “intermittently vegan,” and when I’m not eating meat, I find myself preferring the taste of actual veggies in my veggie burgers. Where traditional veggie burgers fall short in my experience is their texture. No matter how much breadcrumbs or potato starch or xanthan gum you add, a patty based on beans and veggies is gonna be squishier than one based on muscle fibers.
I had a homemade one once, of brussel sprouts, where the leaves must have intermeshed in such a way as to be pretty damn similar in texture. No similarity in taste, though.
I pretty much hate fast food (as opposed to fast casual) burgers in general so I won't be eating this. But I have (in fact, unknowingly--don't ask) had an impossible burger in a good burger place and I actually didn't learn it wasn't meat until a few months later. It tasted like a perfectly good burger to me.
I'm an angel investor in both plant based meat and clean meat and I'm actually more optimistic for plant based meat becoming better than animal meat in the short term. The rate of innovation has been really impressive and momentum is picking up steam.. once prices get under animal meat huge amounts of people will switch
Hopefully carbon taxes and such would kick in at some point and would include the real environmental cost of beef, so the switching to plant based beef would be even more swift.
Beef only is responsible for 3% of greenhouse gasses in America. I'm not sure an "emission" tax would really affect the price all that much. In addition, you have to account for and tax the emissions produced in plant production (fertilizer, agricultural soil, transportation, etc...). Agriculture is a total of 9%, whereas livestock only accounts for 3% of that.
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.
Minor note; "Manure management accounts for about 15 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions from the Agriculture economic sector in the United States."
If you include the emissions from manure management you end with 45% of all emissions emanating from livestock production.
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.
You are right, but I was discussing in reference to a U.S. based emissions "tax". Maybe I misunderstood and they were suggesting a worldwide tax? Not sure how that would work.
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.
Plant based products have similar transport & manufacturing impact so I am not including that.
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.
Right now plant based meat is well under 1 percent of the meat market in the US and it's realistic it could become the majority within 10 years. Who will get the bulk of that is up for grabs, I invested in a smaller competitor to beyond and impossible which had a much lower valuation but with product I think it's right up there with them. Personally I'm a big supporter of them all
I'm really bullish on the possibility of a wide range of competitors for any given meat alternative. There are probably 10+ different brands of prepackaged beef burgers at most grocery stores, and there's a lot more room for differentiation if you're building a product from scratch than if you're just deciding which cows to grind up and shape into a patty.
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.
I think ultimately the price will be determined through government subsidies. Current Meat and Dairy Industry receives massive subsidies (~38$Bn) and the lobbying groups won't appreciate a cut of profits.
I had the impossible burger at Momofuku and... it's just nothing like a burger, the two big differences being in flavor and in texture. (It looks the same as a regular burger.)
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.
There is a significant difference between the v1 and v2. v1 is a reasonable copy of a meat burger. v2 is nearly indistinguishable. Many restaurants are just now finishing up their v1 stock, so you may still see it around.
Really enjoy them but I found they were a bit too thin from A&W. Managed to get the retail version (4oz vs the A&W 3oz) and was really impressed. There is one thing that I've found with them that I don't like. They have a very peculiar smell (think cat food) while cooking which tends to linger.
White Castle has had Impossible Burgers available for about a year now. Just interesting to see the trend emerging from what I would consider the "bottom-most" market segment. I suppose they had the most to gain from drawing in a meat-averse audience.
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).
I had the White Castle version, and my estimation is how it's cooked will be the biggest determining factor in its taste. Sadly, all the big fast food joints can't cook a burger worth a crap, so this plant burger probably won't sell much under their brands.
You also can't really taste the beef in a white castle anyway!
(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).
The patty in the normal $1 White Castle slider is so thin, that the $2 Impossible Slider feels like an improvement already just because the patty is thicker.
Agreed - As someone who enjoys the taste and the effort being made, Impossible burgers still feel very much like a novelty. There are several restaurants in my area serving Impossible burgers, but they are usually the most expensive burger on the menu. Given that this is going to be a dollar more than a standard whopper, it'll cost the same as a double whopper.
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.
Agreed as well. I find this encouraging given beef's large carbon footprint, and think low-grade burgers are the best target for replacement by synthetics (forget trying to engineer a steak). I don't expect them to become popular until they're almost indistinguishable and at least as cheap, but I think that could happen soon.
It's already most likely cheaper when you take into account false pricing signals due to the fact that the US meat industry is heavily subsidized through taxation. Add to that lower healthcare costs due to less heart disease and realistically it should be pretty cheap comparatively.
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.
Be careful, ounce for ounce, the meat substitute burgers may not be all that healthy.
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).
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?
Nutrition per mass is irrelevant -- that depends on water content (meaningless) and starch content (minor). your choice of toppings and bun dominate the "per unit measure" analysis.
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.
Calling out the cholesterol is kind of a distraction, because it is no longer what is associated with heart disease. The level of saturated fat in the impossible burger is actually very high.
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.
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.
The real change is going to happen when people can't tell a difference in taste and Walmart starts selling synthetic meat at a substantial discount to meat. At that point the consumer won't care just like the consumer doesn't care if their strawberry flavored cereal has real strawberries in it.
Strawberry flavoured cereal and synthetic meats are miles apart - if we're talking lab grown meat that's amazing - it's tender meat that has no ethical issues. If you're talking the impossible burger, that's a burger that again has no ethical issues and a minor compromise in taste. Nutritionally it's basically equivalent to a normal burger.
Strawberry flavoured cereal is nothing like a strawberry, and can't possibly hope to emulate any of its properties (not even taste).
The HN crowd is not the typical consumer that shops at Walmart. The typical consumer buys things that they can afford and makes compromises on flavor.
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.
There can be ethical issues surrounding lab grown meat, mostly around how much energy it takes to produce lab grown meat, and the nature of that energy production.
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.
you can tell the difference in an impossible burger?
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.
I'm curious as to how Impossible burger compares on the health impact. I understand that it's plant based, but it seems to be highly processed and perhaps (not sure) loaded with bunch of chemicals and potentially unhealthy ingredients that make it taste like meat.
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?
Well that's kind of my point... a burger isn't a healthy thing, the burger patty is probably the most healthy part of it outside of plain vegetable toppings
I drink 32oz of whole milk a day, bacon with grits and butter for breakfast, steak at lunch, then my dinner varies. I have normal levels of cholesterol. I believe genetics play a bigger impact.
Burgers aren't really that unhealthy. Skip the fried onions and fried jalapenos and aioli and mayo and it's no big deal. I just had a 1/3lb bison burger last night in a pita, with all kinds of good stuff (feta, sweet hot mustard, ketchup, jalapenos) and it's something like 550 calories. It's quite easy to have a healthy-ish meat burger. Skip the fries and soda.
I make black bean burgers sometimes, and they actually have more calories and less protein than beef or bison.
Yeah right, i'm sure BK is really putting a lot of money into small family businesses with diversified farming light on the ecosystems using no herbicides/insecticides, and not mega food-industry with fields that have thousand of hectares of a single crop and get farmed using a whole fleet of huge diesel machines, get a load of pharma chemicals dropped on their head preventively to make sure no other life form gets to survive in that field.
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).
Actually a real burger is often healthier then a carb loaded veggi burger. We should finally move beyond the 'red meat' bad analysis that has unfortunately dominated scientific discourse for a long time.
A burger is fat and protein and there is very little reason not to eat if for health reasons for normal people.
Mayo and cheese might be skipped if the person is trying to be more vegetarian. I've always found mayo to be unnecessary and kind of gross on burgers anyway. It's only useful if your meat is lousy or you've overcooked it really badly.
Many high-quality burgers have mayo by default. Au cheval/small cheval come to mind. Mayo is useful for adding flavors, and can protect the lower bun from water-based liquid penetration that would weaken the structural integrity.
Right. But there's a difference between drinking a glass of water and glass of bleach. You are claiming they are equivalent.
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.
Right. It's a synonymous fallacy. We get it. Apparently we cannot move on until everyone is elevated to the same level of reading comprehension. Stop trying to score petty points, and discuss the issue that yes, there is some pretty nasty shit that is manufactured by chemical companies and put into our food, and stop trying to derail the argument to "own the libs." In other words: grow up.
I can assure you that I am never trying to "own the libs"; I am often the kind of person such people would want to own. But I do care about unstated assumptions about what is "good," when I fear those unstated assumptions are rooted in some form of magical thinking.
You just said that someone is claiming that water and bleach are identical.
Let me put it to you this way, instead of saying "everything is a chemical": If you stand with the poster above worrying about "chemicals", perhaps state your question more clearly so we know exactly what we're getting ourselves into. I will even give you some examples. Do you perhaps mean chemicals known to cause cancer or other diseases? What about chemicals known to aggravate diseases or conditions? Or would it be enough to be simply suspected? Maybe your threshold of what is a sufficient amount of research should be mentioned. How many studies do you wait for before you eat a certain ingredient? Do all regulatory bodies need to agree?
That's certainly a lot of work going into asking a question, I suppose, almost as much as answering something like "are there [bad] chemicals in it?" What research is out there, is out there. Only you know what will make a "[bad] chemical" not just a "chemical".
Of course, if you know of a place that lists all the "[bad] chemicals" that you agree with, this [practically extreme] "lib" wouldn't mind seeing it.
Here's an easier answer: eat real food, not to much, mostly vegetables. Happy mr/mrs practically extreme lib?
You've just played the no true scotsman on me. Well done!
It's a pretty easy choice for me: I literally eat no food with added chemicals. I simply don't know what is good and what is bad because I've given up following research and meta-studies. There is literally no way to be informed, even if I had a PhD and spent a lifetime studying nutrition and the relevant sciences.
Know what the easy answer is? I'm vegan. I literally eat nothing with added preservatives or chemicals. Nothing. Except when I got to restaurants every now and then, and I don't know what's in the food I ordered. But it isn't 12 meals a year that change you, it is 1,000 meals a year.
It is trivial for me to bypass the good/bad chemical debate.
Given the nature of evolution, I think that the appeal to nature in nutrition is a much more substantive argument than can be immediately dismissed. Grossly speaking, natural foods have also existed for longer and been better studied, meaning we are more likely to know about the impact of natural foods than newer foods that aren't yet common to our diet.
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.
Nature has also evolved lots of stuff that would kill you. And many things that are just plain unhealthy. And even those foods you consider 'natural' are highly evolved plants that have been optimized for human consumption by generations of humans. There is very little natural about many of the fruits and vegetables we eat that are actually truly natural.
I agree, there is a lot that's harmful in nature. But we as humans have been developing knowledge about how these natural foods affect our health for thousands of years, across a sample on the scale of billions.
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.
> In this case, "chemicals" is shorthand for "bad chemicals."
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!
>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).
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.
True, but even here we're not talking about identical molecules. Chiral molucules are ones (which are usually organic--based on carbon) which have both "left handed" and "right handed" versions. The two versions have the same molecular formula, but they're opposites of each other. So it's like having a left-hand drive car versus a right-hand drive car: they might look identical using a mirror, but they're really not, and you can't use them the same way because the way they interact with their environment is different (a driver in a RHD car in a LHD country will have a hard time seeing everything properly because the roads aren't designed with this configuration in mind).
There is an association between processed foods and poor health outcomes. There are some processes that have a clear causal link with poor health, most obviously the use of nitrates in meat preservation. It is not clear that all (or even most) processing is harmful.
Another aspect of this is that processed foods require less calories for your body to metabolize, since they are already partly broken down. While that doesn't specifically increase the rate of exposure to pathogens/toxicity, it does increase the net calories consumed in an already high-calorie category, and contributes to obesity.
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.
many soy studies are heavily influenced by corporate interests not unlike how Coca Cola and tobacco companies in the past have had extreme influence on the scientific community so while I still eat soy I will continue to avoid the industrially processed variety, but thanks for showing me things I already have read.
Including "natural flavors" in an ingredients list is a way to incorporate any number of undisclosed substances in a product. No substance obscured by the "natural flavors" label needs to go through any safety testing or analysis[1]:
> 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.
My wife and I have been studying nutrition for several years. Processed unnatural "foods" having bad effects on humans is an undeniable pattern that shows up over and over again.
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.
I'm curious, what would you consider an appropriate food? I personally look for high fat/protein when picking my food, and the there isn't much reason to believe salt is bad for you.
That's cool, I mean definitely do what is best for you. I think there is a lot of room for self-discovery of our own optimal diets. The salt debate is one of those things where nutrition science can't seem to settle on it, depending on the survey.
High salt consumption is linked to high blood pressure, stroke, and cardiovascular disease.
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.
If you have a specific disease its one thing but please do not advocate and claim what is healthy or not for most people based on that. Many vegi burgers that people would eat as replacements are far more unhealthy.
Blood tests. However, what spurred me have blood tests in the first place were symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis (in my case: painful swelling of the joints).
That saturated fat and salt are bad has been falling out of favor scientifically for a long time. They specifically built the burger to be like a normal burger because many people actually consider it a healthy thing to eat.
I should have chosen my words more carefully. It's about the big picture. You can keep it easy by choosing a diet with fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish, nuts, and unsaturated fats.
Apologize for the late edit (home now) but you might want to scrutinize closer your sources on saturated fat:
> 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).
> loaded with bunch of chemicals and potentially unhealthy ingredients that make it taste like meat
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].
> I never understood why one would want to make a veggie burger taste like meat.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
So the major thing that Impossible Foods puts in that "makes it taste like meat" is leghemoglobin, which is an ortholog of regular hemoglobin from cows blood, though in this case it was isolated from a legume. The argument, as I've heard it, is that since it's an oxygen binding molecule, it catalyzes all kinds of tasty reactions when you brown it.
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
it seems to be highly processed and perhaps (not sure) loaded with bunch of chemicals and potentially unhealthy ingredients
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.
People should be aware that Burger King has had (MorningStar) veggie burgers for a very long time that they just don't broadcast. This announcement is not about introducing a vegetarian patty but rather about introducing a _specific_ vegetarian patty.
My first complaint about the nutrition of the Morningstar burger is the ratio of carbs to protien. Restaurants are already throwing tons of carbs at me. I really want protein in my burger patty.
It’s not as though some food is automatically bad for you because it came from Burger King, and even if it were, there is a huge range of how bad it is. I could get 500 calories from a burger or 2000 from a burger with a milkshake and fries. It’s not a good idea to make a fast-food restaurant a zone of nutrition nihilism where we just accept that we doom our health by entering and ignore the choice of what to order.
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.
Sometimes, you need something fast, cheap, and easy, so it's nice to have some fast food items in mind that have reasonable calories and macros. A great example is when I'm driving long distance, I'll swing by CFA if possible.
Don't worry about it. You probably eat too much protein anyway. Give it a few years and protein will be the enemy and everyone will be rediscovering carbs. Just eat good old fashioned food, a bit of everything, and what you like. Do you know anyone who lived to 100 that even knows what a "carb" is?
If I wanted a lot of carbs with some protein, I could always eat quinoa or something. There's no shortage of options there. What's interesting here is a vegan protein source that's actually a nearly pure protein source.
When you are targeting specific macros for athletic reasons, a pure protein source is pretty much a requirement. During aggressive cuts, you require a tremendous amount of protein to prevent muscle wasting. For endurance athletes, low carb diets can be useful for increasing lactate threshold. There are also low carb requirements for diabetes and epilepsy.
No way they could prepare it on the grill, unless they had a dedicated grill for it. Sharing the grill with real burgers would mean tons of meat grease contaminating the veggie burgers.
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.
> Many vegetarians/vegans don't mind cross .termination.
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.
Indeed and I do enjoy the MorningStar patty with all the toppings BK puts on it. Big difference is MorningStar is one of those "not really trying to be meat" veggie burgers, whereas the Impossible Burger is trying to be a one-to-one facsimile of meat. So I think they are similar but different.
Another big difference is the Impossible Burger is vegan and the MorningStar burger is not (IIRC).
This is a good thing. More vegetarian fast-food options are coming down the pipe.
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.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 316 ms ] threadBut 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
https://impossiblefoods.app.box.com/s/edwcfyvojzsvzn5d633dxt...
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.
Looks like it isn't available in the US though, https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/our-food-y...
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.
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.
Part of BK's draw for me is the place smells like a backyard cook out.
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.
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18855695
https://web.aw.ca/en/our-menu/burgers/beyond-meat-burger
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
What are you, a Burger Architect?
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.
Let me put it to you this way, instead of saying "everything is a chemical": If you stand with the poster above worrying about "chemicals", perhaps state your question more clearly so we know exactly what we're getting ourselves into. I will even give you some examples. Do you perhaps mean chemicals known to cause cancer or other diseases? What about chemicals known to aggravate diseases or conditions? Or would it be enough to be simply suspected? Maybe your threshold of what is a sufficient amount of research should be mentioned. How many studies do you wait for before you eat a certain ingredient? Do all regulatory bodies need to agree?
That's certainly a lot of work going into asking a question, I suppose, almost as much as answering something like "are there [bad] chemicals in it?" What research is out there, is out there. Only you know what will make a "[bad] chemical" not just a "chemical".
Of course, if you know of a place that lists all the "[bad] chemicals" that you agree with, this [practically extreme] "lib" wouldn't mind seeing it.
You've just played the no true scotsman on me. Well done!
It's a pretty easy choice for me: I literally eat no food with added chemicals. I simply don't know what is good and what is bad because I've given up following research and meta-studies. There is literally no way to be informed, even if I had a PhD and spent a lifetime studying nutrition and the relevant sciences.
Know what the easy answer is? I'm vegan. I literally eat nothing with added preservatives or chemicals. Nothing. Except when I got to restaurants every now and then, and I don't know what's in the food I ordered. But it isn't 12 meals a year that change you, it is 1,000 meals a year.
It is trivial for me to bypass the good/bad chemical debate.
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.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/
> 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.
https://www.cdc.gov/features/sodium/index.html
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63FHZy_7-qs
*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 ?
https://www.chick-fil-a.com/
When you are targeting specific macros for athletic reasons, a pure protein source is pretty much a requirement. During aggressive cuts, you require a tremendous amount of protein to prevent muscle wasting. For endurance athletes, low carb diets can be useful for increasing lactate threshold. There are also low carb requirements for diabetes and epilepsy.
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).
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.