Talking about impossible and beyond meat, of course. I like their taste, so I’m not one of those burger fash who complains about not being able to taste the flesh wounds of their victims. Just need the skinny on how it compares in terms of it’s nutrient quality, health factors in terms of contaminants in production or as a result of (PFAS, lead), and the impact on the environment. I’m sure the production of fake borg is better than maintaining and slaughtering cows, but relative to other foods how much better is it?
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IMO beyond meat tastes more like junk food than actual burgers. What I really want is cheap, mass-produced, frozen bean burgers that I can buy in a big bag like chicken patties. We’ve long had the technology to do it. Sysco and other restaurant suppliers have it. But for some reason frozen bean burgers must remain a bougie luxury good. There’s gotta be some Boca-Beef conspiracy to keep the cheap shit off the shelves.
You can make a decent high protein chickpea burger at home but sometimes it would be nice to be able to just buy the darn things, but for some reason it’s either Boca Flavorless Hockey Pucks or Dr. Kale’s Kale Discs, Now With Extra Kale; no we refuse to consider other ingredients now please pay $12
If I’m going to spend an afternoon cooking a bunch of food its going to be something better than frozen burgers. Like I’d rather make flafels than chickpea burgers. The point of a frozen burger is being lazy AF.
Hence my frustration!
Indeed,
a decent high protein chickpea burger
Oh man i wanna make some flat falafel
I think Costco sells 12 packs of been burger patties in the $10 range.
its a pain in the ass to set u on your own, but you might have a “buying coop” near you. generally, they (a member) has access to a commercial space with a loading dock that doesn’t require a liftgate. the really slick ones have freezer and cooler space, because otherwise its coolers with ice and members have to be more organized for pickuo on delivery days.
but the whole point is that you can get in on bulk/institutional/restaurant supply ordering, split bulk orders, and take advantage of pretty impressive discounts.
as youve experienced, institutional/wholesale (business to business) markets have access to a wider array of products than us retail suckers, and generally below per unit costs with higher quality options.
there lots of these among old school hippies in areas that don’t have one of those co-op grocers. frequently, those weird little co-op grocers are the mature version of a buying co-op.
Yeah my area has a very well developed co-op already with a stunning array of boutique veggie burgers. No big bag stuff.
Really prefer if they’d actually commit to the bit of making veggie burgers their own distinct thing instead of chasing after the American burger experience. Like just imagine the rich flavor if they made the patty with dry sauted mushrooms, minced onions, garlic, carrots, celery, and whatever binders they use to help keep its form. And drizzle on top a nice spiced curry gravy made Kerisik style. And finish it off with some deep fried onion rings on the top and bottom of the patty for that nice crunch before you put them on the buns.
Seconded, veggie burgers are plenty good in their own right if we had any imagination, could open up a whole world of sandwiches.
Yeah like a well seasoned veggie burger with some of the texture tech from impossible/beyond would be awesome.
I like them on occasion, but I’ve mostly gone to this stuff for home cooking when I want something meaty.
*tips fedora*
i haven’t tried that but if you can get the beyond brand beef crumble that’s made it of protein, it has a real beefy flavor and the texture is good, it’d make great taco meat
This product might be similar enough though since it says gluten and soy free I imagine it’s also made out of pea protein
Yeah, primarily pea protein. I like the dehydrated stuff personally because it’s convenient to buy a lot and stick it in the pantry instead of dealing with meat-like shelf life. And there are all kinds of things you can do during rehydration to tweak what you’re making.
The stuff we use is basically just kept frozen until used but yeah if it’s a choice between dry or fridge storage i’d get the dry goods instead
That might even cook better since the beyond crumble seems to render out a lot of liquid when it’s cooked so it’s hard to get it to a browned or crisped consistency
impossible isn’t vegan, they do animal testing
also very expensive compared to actually vegan alternativesBeyond Meat also does taste testing with actual meat, some vegans (myself included) aren’t comfortable supporting this so I believe it is also worth mentioning.
I remember some dubious online talk about Impossible’s animal testing being required by the US Gov as part of some meat replacement/GMO thing but that may be 100% cope idk - not that it makes impossible vegan because it’s government mandated lol
Quoting directly from their website, bolding mine:
in 2014, we submitted extensive data (which did not include rat testing), to an academic panel of food safety experts from the University of Nebraska, University of Wisconsin Madison, and Virginia Commonwealth University. Based on this data, the panel unanimously concluded that our key ingredient is “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS. This means that Impossible Foods has been complying with federal food safety regulations since 2014. In addition, we voluntarily decided to take the optional step of providing our data, including the unanimous conclusion of the food-safety experts, to the FDA via the FDA’s GRAS Notification process
It’s their voluntary decision to take an optional step that led to:
The FDA reviewed the data and had some questions. To address them, we conducted additional tests. It is industry standard to perform rat feeding studies
Thanks for the quote! So it was
thenWonder why they would choose to take that optional route. Is it as simple as animal testing being seen as the easiest way and industry standard?
You can read the rest of their justification if you’d like, where they say things like:
without the rat testing, our mission and the future of billions of animals whose future depends on its success was thwarted
But they don’t actually make any attempt to address why an optional and voluntary step was necessary to their mission and its success.
I’m going to assume it’s expedience and profit motive then.
Replacing animals in the diets of meat lovers would absolutely require heme
Seems, from that page, that they’re committed to the idea of Impossible and similar products not being intended for vegans, but for carnists who want to reduce their animal consumption, which is probably a larger market in the US at least. Disappointing but not really surprising.
We designed the study rigorously so that it would never have to be done again
I don’t see how this justifies…anything? If it was optional, and was a small-scale test that only had to be done once, why do it at all?
My idle thought goes to “does that make them currently vegan then?” but that’s pointless when there are infinite vegan options that don’t require supporting a brand which did animal testing. Nobody needs a hyper realistic borger
If they were already overly focused on carnists, it only gets better from there! The CEO+founder whose name appears under that post was replaced:
Peter McGuinness, the current CEO of Impossible Foods, has said that the plant-based sector was previously too “woke” and “divisive” for mass appeal.
He also referred to the original marketing of Impossible Foods’ plant-based meat products as a solution to the climate crisis as a “mistake,” and called the original leaders “zealots.”
Impossible has pivoted to focus primarily on meat-eaters and flexitarians under McGuinness’s leadership.
too “woke” and “divisive”
fake meat burger is too woke
see my pfp for reaction
American burger brain and its consequences… The structural, load bearing brainworms can’t be removed, the entire thing needs to go
Also fuck off with that “flexitarian” shit. “Limited vegetarian” my ass, that’s just carnism! God I hate this liberal-ass mindset
Seems, from that page, that they’re committed to the idea of Impossible and similar products not being intended for vegans, but for carnists who want to reduce their animal consumption
That’s the take vegans generally seem to have on them. It doesn’t help that their site is full of phrases like ”Everyone loves meat because it’s so delicious”, strong pick me energy. Personally, I’m not a fan of the ”vegan food needs to taste like meat to appeal to carnists” approach in general.
It’s good to have and use that knowledge, but also don’t forget that basically every single large vegan product company is owned by a company that creates and sells straight-up animal products. Morningstar (which itself sells egg products) is owned by the Kellogs mega conglomerate. Quorn is owned by Monde Nissin. Chao/Field Roast is owned by Greenleaf, which also owns Lightlife, and it’s a subsidiary of Maple Leaf. To my knowledge, Tofurky is the only big one free of this.
Also don’t forget to apply the same logic for whole food! Beans are the best! But who owns the bean brand? Usually some other megacorp that sells animal products. And the beans are often grown on farms with animal inputs (like fertilizer).
When you dig more than 1 level deep on supply chains and ownership, very little is actually free from animal exploitation. It is nearly impossible to actually rid your life of it, if that is the bar. However, we can do a lot that is practicable.
No ethical consumption etc etc. We should be doing the best we can, but shit is fucked all the way down the chain just about any way you slice it.
Some animal testing is a huge moral step up from constantly killing animals. And just to make this concrete, they fed soy leghemoglobin to 188 mice to get FDA approval for the ingredient, and it turned out to not be harmful to the mice.
So impossible don’t currently do animal testing, they did it exactly once.
Admittedly, I don’t know what the testing company did to the mice after the experiments finished.
Weighing 188 mice vs preventing the suffering and death of millions of cows/chickens/pigs in the future, I’d say I’m okay with that?
The rats were dissected and the animal testing was optional. Are there degrees of harm? Absolutely. Theirs could have been lower.
I said elsewhere that I haven’t yet completely cut them out, so it’s not like I’m coming at this from some moral high ground either. I would certainly still be eating more of their products though if they hadn’t taken the optional step to test on animals.
The commonalities across brands here are some sort of protein isolate (pea and/or soybean), fat (avocado or coconut oil), a binder (methylcellulose, available over the counter as wallpaper paste), and some additional sources of flavor and color (I think impossible is the one using GMO yeast to make heme, which gives the product a more meaty flavor).
Nutritionally speaking these things are going to be slightly worse than whole foods like beans or tempeh (there’s some very limited evidence that suggests that fermentation improves the digestibility of soy) but it’s not exactly like vegans eating a balanced diet are coming up short on fiber, especially compared to the typical western diet, and if you’re not eating these things as your exclusive protein source you should be fine.
No idea on contamination/food safety but there’s not really any red flag ingredients. PFAS mainly come from contaminated water sources if I recall correctly, and lead from contaminated soil, so it probably depends on where the source ingredients are coming from. Anything produced in a bioreactor has to be purified out, so I wouldn’t worry about fermentation products.
In terms of environmental/resource impact the fake borgar is considerably lower than a real one and probably marginally above the impact of a block of tofu.
a binder (methylcellulose, available over the counter as wallpaper paste)
Sore spot for me maybe but I’d just like to point out if you were to eat a burger on a non homemade bun, with a non homemade sauce and cheese you’re likely eating the stuff anyway when consuming burger.
Yeah, it’s totally safe as a food additive and pretty common, not trying to knock it.
I haven’t had one in a while.
I like to have everything homemade, especially because it’s cheaper that way (also, see the other points about Impossible testing on rats and whatnot), but I just haven’t really thought to do any kind of burgers. If I were more financially stable and all that, I might be willing to order things like TVP and VWG in bulk to do so. Maybe later some day, but most of what I eat is stuff like beans and pasta.
Made these hot dogs out of tofu, though!
Nutrient quality: it’s a somewhat high protein junk food. Don’t eat it too often. It’s mostly pea protein and a high viscosity oil, fairly salty. It isn’t going to have hormones like the actual animal product.
Health factors: mostly just the salt and high fat content to think about. And maybe think about how much pea protein you’re in taking, as processed foods can amplify things like heavy metals in their concentrations. We aren’t privy to their internal processes.
Environment: much less impactful than the animal product. Not sure whether it’s more impactful than just eating the beans and oil in some other dish, mostly due to weight. If you buy your beans dry, beans probably win. If you buy your beans canned, then you have to compare impacts of transportating something concentrated and processed (fake borger) to something very un-concentrated and with lots of water (bean can). In my opinion this is where you should stop thinking about it because it leads to total process analysis in a system that is opaque and interdependent.
Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.
Meat replacements feel very ::Baudrillard::
I get what you say about the taste. I’m not vegan or vegetarian (though I do keep my meat consumption pretty low over the whole month, just because it’s expensive and I can’t really afford it), but I do definitely really like veggie burgers and I think a lot of them actually taste better than meat burgers. Different, of course, they don’t taste like meat, but that’s not why I eat them, I eat them because I like the taste of a veggie burger. But then, I don’t go for the ones that try to mimic meat, I go for the ones that are upfront and in your face about being veggie burgers.
amen. vegan food should just be itself, not a substitute for meat that challenges us to tell the difference (it’s always obvious to someone who eats meat). then again, i guess i’m not the target audience. my vegan friends seem to love vegan burgers/wings/cheese/etc.
amen. vegan food should just be itself,
as a vegan chef i’mma tell you that vegan chicken stocks add 20x more flavor to everything that I’ve used them in, and vegan animal product imitation in general allows for a greatly increased variety of foods and flavors
I can’t stress enough how much better every single gravy I make with that vegan chicken stock is, attempting to add savory and umami flavors with onions and roasted veg stock and mushrooms/mushroom powder is just really insufficient.
Yeah. Maybe my perspective is different because I will eat meat, when I can get it, but I definitely like stuff that’s made of veggies and is just trying to be a yummy meal/foodstuff way more than veggie/vegan imitation animal products. Not to mention, fake animal products often cost more than real meat, and the main reason I don’t eat a lot of meat is because I’m cooking on a budget, a lot of veggie stuff that’s just trying to be appealing in its own right is more reasonably priced.
The AI bubble deflated the Lab Grown Meat stock bubble, so the other day I was watching Canal Rural and a rancher porky was joyously saying “vegans failed, the price of meat is skyrocketing and all the fake meat startups are dead, vegan restaurants failed and the ideology is not so on vogue”
I hated so much their disgusting smile
vegan restaurants failed
(i know this doesn’t apply to everyone from that country but) does this person not know that Indian restaurants still exist and are basically everywhere?
Do they think that vegans are gonna be owned by the prices of something they’ll never buy skyrocketing?
i was about to post animal meat vs meat alternatives but! i read your post again and you mean “relative to other vegan food options” rather than a “comparison between animals vs vegan meat”, yeah? in that case i have no clue where i’d begin to search and I’ll just wait here with you
I haven’t tried any burger products but of the meat replacement products we’ve used at work
Gardein chicken/beef strips suck total ass. They’re like a soy/wheat gluten thing maybe trying to imitate seitan but the one time the sous chef tried to make seitan it seemed really different ( and also shitty tbh) and the texture and the taste is just ass. The beef ones are a little beefier, the chicken ones are really meh.
I HAVE however made them taste really good by steaming to soften them, chopping them up, marinating with a vegan chicken stock, and roasting. That with a root beer bbq sauce I make = the last time I made it these children on a school trip came in and ate all of it because they couldn’t tell it wasn’t meat and I was really mad because I had to make like 3x more of it then I expected to
The impossible meat we’ve only used as pre made sausages and it’s like, okay, it’s sausagey
the Beyond beef crumble made out of pea protein has slight texture differences from beef (it’s hard to get it to “brown” in the pan, too, like the way it renders out its moisture is weird) but it tastes very beefy, definitely the closest to meat of any meat imitation product I’ve tried, if I made a “beef chili” with it and didn’t tell you you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Also it doesn’t have any allergens unless you consider peas to be an allergen
Dinner tonight was vegan bacon cheeseburgers with lightlife bacon and impossible burgers and they tasted pretty good.
I don’t prefer making (faux)meat-forward meals but I do occasionally and I don’t look down on them. I don’t think the meat substitutes are that unhealthy (almost certainly healthier than what they’re replacing) but they’re expensive and I genuinely enjoy cooking with veggies, beans, tofu, etc. more than just a burger or whatever. I never liked the concept of a chunk of meat being the centerpiece with some sides or vegetables scattered throughout when most food has so much potential flavor. I love that veganism really challenges that dynamic, forcing the chef to create meals that integrate ingredients rather than isolate them.
I admittedly haven’t fully cut out Impossible yet myself, but I’ve been leaning into other options far more frequently after learning that they did testing on rats.
Tastes okay, doesn’t hold up as well on the grill and sure doesn’t have the same browning and texture. I like a well made beef burger, but black bean burgers slap and grill up much better than the lab meat.
