Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Impossible Foods

Pat Brown’s New Job is to Build a Moonshot Factory For Food

This week we learned Pat Brown is leaving his role as Chief Science Officer at Impossible Foods to start a new research arm within the company, tentatively called Impossible Labs.

According to an email obtained by Insider, Impossible Labs’ goal is “to focus on the transformative innovation that will propel Impossible Foods to achieve our mission.”

In other words, Brown is building a moonshot factory for the future of food. In fact, the new mission and structure of Impossible Labs sound pretty much like that of X, Google’s not-so-secret secret research arm that exists outside of the company’s core R&D division and incubates new ideas on everything ranging from driverless cars to Internet-by-balloon to diabetes-detecting contact lenses.

The move comes just half a year after Brown stepped away from his role as CEO to become the company’s chief science officer, a move in which he said at the time would allow him to lead “research and technology innovation, strategic initiatives, public advocacy and, most importantly, our mission.”

So why start a new group when, to be honest, he just started a new role six months ago that sounds pretty similar to what he’s focused on at Labs? My guess is Brown found trying to build the future within Impossible’s existing product R&D group wasn’t future-focused enough. Impossible has lots of products now that need continuous iteration and improvement, and iteration and improvement involve a totally different focus and set of processes required for building disruptive breakthrough ideas.

We also can’t ignore that the move may have something to do with the moment Impossible finds itself in, one in which they’ve witnessed some executive departures and a flattening of plant-based meat industry sales. We’ve also seen some criticize Impossible (and Beyond)’s products as too processed, a claim that seems to have resonated with at least some consumers.

While I won’t pretend to be smart enough to figure out any specific scientific breakthrough Brown might come up with next, here are a few high-level guesses on what he might be up to next.

Create New Alt-Protein Building Blocks. Brown’s first breakthrough idea for Impossible – that we could use create a version of heme using plant-based inputs to give a meat analog many of the same attributes of the real thing – was a big idea that has now become a foundational concept for many alternative protein companies. However, as companies like Shiru have shown, there are a whole lot more molecular building blocks out there that could create functional or taste parity to animal-based products. Brown, no doubt wants to find more plant-based building blocks that could deliver sustainable alternatives to animal-based products.

Build Internal Discovery Platform. Speaking of Shiru, the company is gaining traction with its AI-powered approach that is allowing them to create a massive database of potential proteins. The approach contrasts with Impossible’s more traditional (and slow) approach to ingredient discovery. Brown (and Impossible) might be looking to create its own AI-powered discovery engine to speed up its own innovation process that will help uncover the next big idea.

Cellular Agriculture. Brown is famously skeptical of cell-cultured meat, so I think the chances of his company looking at creating cultivated meat or other protein product is pretty low. But, maybe he has an idea for a technology or process breakthrough he’s thinking of that he thinks could be a gamechanger.

Explore Entirely New Food Products, Processes, and Inputs. Impossible’s existing product road map is pretty straightforward and similar to lots of other products out there, but there are no doubt lots of entirely new products we haven’t conceived of yet that can use novel processes and inputs that have yet to be discovered. Maybe Brown has an inkling for another breakthrough idea similar to that of plant-based heme that will change the industry.

Non-Food Products. Impossible has shown they’re happy to move into new forms of food products, whether it’s chicken or milk. But what about products that aren’t food? Creating alternatives to products that use animal inputs would align with Brown’s mission of reducing greenhouse gas and fighting climate change, so maybe he has an idea for products in clothing, cosmetics, or other industries. Impossible Shoes, anyone?

Melt&Marble Raises €5 Million For Fermentation-Derived Fat That Tastes and Melts Like the Real Thing

In the first wave of plant-based “meat,” the marketing challenge was about convincing customers that giving up meat needn’t create a hole in their regular diet. For the Impossibles, Beyonds, and others, developing a reasonable, tasty facsimile to the beef or chicken experience got them into millions of homes and in demand on grocer’s shelves. For plant-based meat products to become a savory choice rather than a substitute requires innovators to “kick it up a notch.”

 While the horse race to alt-burger dominance is on, off to the side, innovators have been working on plant-based beef fat that would offer the mouthfeel and umami taste to a host of faux meat products. Included in the alt-beef fat space is Swedish company Melt&Marble which secured a €5 million Series Seed financing round to scale-up production and expand its team.

 Melt&Marble uses precision fermentation to create its plant-based beef fat. Like others in the alternative protein, dairy, meat, and seafood world know, precision fermentation is a robust process but requires a lot of capital to build a proper scalable infrastructure. CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Anastasia Krivoruchko told The Spoon that her company is currently at a lab-scale but will start scaling up in the coming months. It will still be a couple of years until it is fully industrial scale.

Dr. Kriviruchko believes the opportunity for Mouth&Marble is now and in the future based on conversations with plant-based meat providers. “We have talked with many companies about the challenges they are facing with their existing fats,” she said. “When designing our yeast strains, we have been looking into the structure of beef fats and asking ourselves what elements are important for overcoming these challenges. Our prototype has a similar mouthfeel and melting profile to beef fat, which is extremely important for replicating the taste of beef.”

This begs the obvious question about the health-related issues, such as high cholesterol and heart disease, that come with consuming “real” beef fat. Dr. Kriviruchko says such concerns are not present with plant-based beef fat.

“Generally, our fats don’t contain cholesterol, trans-fats, and contaminants. With our technology, we could also potentially integrate healthy bioactive fatty acids into our fats, and this is something that we are keen to explore,” Melt&Marble’s CEO explained.

Melt&Marble’s technology platform was spun out from research work conducted over the past decade by co-founders Dr.  Krivoruchko,  Dr.  Florian  David, and  Professor  Jens  Nielsen at the Chalmers  University of  Technology in  Sweden.  Lever VC led the latest round; an early-stage venture capital firm focused on technologies and brands in the alternative protein space. Lever has previously invested in Good Plant, The Good Spoon, A Dozen Cousins, and others.

If it appears that plant-based beef fat (and other related healthy fats) is a niche market, the number of trailblazers in this emerging sector speaks otherwise. Among Melt&Marble’s competition are Meat-Tech, Mission Barnes, Nourish Ingredients, Hoxton Farms, and Cubiq Foods.

According to Grand View Research, Inc., the global plant-based meat market size will reach $24.8 billion by 2030. A likely scenario, familiar to most emerging tech markets, will be when a few of the best alt-beef fat companies survive by being purchased by either a mega food processor such as Tyson or Cargill or merge with a plant-based market leader like Impossible Foods or Beyond Meat.

Food Fight! Motif Looks to Invalidate Impossible’s Patent as It Fights Back Against Lawsuit

The Impossible vs. Motif legal tussle is heating up.

Last month, Impossible Foods filed a lawsuit against Motif Foodworks, claiming the company’s HEMAMI protein derived from precision fermentation infringed on Impossible’s patent for making plant-based burgers containing 0.1% to 5% heme protein.

In response, Motif filed a petition with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) to invalidate Impossible’s patent at the center of the lawsuit against them. The petition, known in legalese as an “inter partes review” (“IPR”), could allow Motif to ask a panel of judges from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) to review the Impossible Foods’ patent for to beef replicas.

Impossible’s lawsuit claims that Motif has been able to gain an understanding of Impossible’s process through information in the public domain, which then helped it in developing its HEMAMI protein. The lawsuit also calls out claims by Motif and parent company Ginkgo that its novel protein can essentially act as a replacement for Impossible’s proprietary heme.

Speaking about the petition, a Motif spokesperson said that the “ingredients that Impossible claims to have “discovered” have been sold in everyday food products for decades and continue to be sold today. Impossible did not invent heme – it exists in animal muscle tissues and plants that people eat every day. And meat substitutes have been around for centuries, there is nothing new about them.”

The move to invalidate the patent could pose a serious threat to Impossible, which has hung its hat for much of the success of its beef analog around the realistic taste profile created by its proprietary heme technology.

The Motif vs. Impossible legal battle isn’t the only fight over intellectual property in the plant-based meat market. Last year, Meati accused Better Meat Co. of IP theft, a claim which Better says is an attempt to bully a less-funded rival. The emergence of these types of legal skirmishes over IP signifies the market is entering a more competitive phase as companies pursue similar and related innovations designed to engineer better-tasting meat analogs.

You can see the petition filed by Motif below.

2022.04.20_IPR Petition_10,863,761Download

As Meat Prices Rise, Could Plant-Based Meat Become a Value Option for Consumers?

Have you seen the price of meat lately?

It’s not pretty. The average price of a pound of ground beef in the United States has jumped over 20% in the past year and seems to just keep going up.

Meanwhile, the cost of a 12-ounce package of Impossible ground has continued to drop and is showing up at under $6 at some retail establishments, about the same price of a pound of extra lean ground beef.

Not quite price parity…yet. But as Impossible and other plant-based meat providers continue to ramp up volume, it’s worth asking: when meat alternatives reach price parity and, eventually, sell at a discount to animal meat, could customers start reaching for plant-based meat to save a buck?

Meat Prices Likely to Stay High

While meat prices may crest eventually as COVID-related disequilibrium sorts itself out of the system, much of the inputs to create a pound of meat – chemical fertilizers for feed, rising labor prices for processors and distribution, etc. – may not be coming down anytime soon in an economy where inflation is at levels not seen since the 80s.

Retail price of ground beef in US 1995-2021. Source: Statista

And then there’s the demand side of the equation. The appetite for meat continues to grow worldwide, and American farmers are one of the primary beneficiaries as exports of U.S. grown beef grew over 20% in the last year. If demand continues to grow at double-digit percentages every year, prices could still go up even as labor and other price inputs plateau.

Plant-Based Meat Still a Premium Product

For now, though, plant-based meat is still more expensive. Consumers are still asked to pay a plant-based meat “tax” when substituting an alt-meat patty at many fast food joints. While found for $5.99 at some stores, a package of Impossible or Beyond Meat ground is still priced significantly higher at premium grocers.

But that all may eventually change. Back at CES 2019, Pat Brown made it clear his goal was to drive the price of his company’s product down to where it was cheaper than the price of animal meat. While he’s not quite there three-plus years later, he and others are making progress on closing the difference.

So when the two meat types reach price parity and plant-based prices possibly drop even lower than conventional meat, it will be interesting to see what happens to the demand for alternatives. One could imagine consumers reaching for plant-based as a lower-cost alternative in one scenario. But, on the other hand, there’s also a chance some will continue to prefer animal meat and be willing to pay a price premium for what they see as “the real thing.”

However it shakes out, there’s a good chance we’ll see how big a factor pricing plays in the consumer calculus in the next couple of years as the two types of meat continue on their current cost trajectories.

Impossible Sausage Link Review: Tasty, But Missing That Familiar Sausage ‘Snap’

Today, Impossible Foods announced the debut of their plant-based sausage links, the sixth retail product from the alt protein pioneer in the last eight months.

The new products come in three different varieties – Spicy, Italian, and Bratwurst – and the company claims they have the same snap and savory flavor as conventional pork sausage.

The Spoon got a hold of some samples in advance of today’s news, so I thought I’d try them out. I was excited because I like sausage, and my favorite Impossible product – by a long shot – is the company’s ground sausage product which came out last year.

I pulled the sausages out of the package, and this is what they looked like:

While the Impossible sausages look link-ish, they also struck me as looking a bit, well, squooshy. And, when I picked them up, they felt soft and didn’t have the same firmness I associate with traditional sausage. This, of course, has a lot to do with the casing (which I’ll talk more about a bit later).

You can see in the video below what an Impossible sausage link looks like grilling up in a pan. The instructions suggested I heat the link up at a medium heat. I put a couple of drops of olive oil in the pan to give it a little more sizzle while cooking.

The Impossible Sausage frying in a pan

After cooking the link for 10 minutes, rotating it every minute or two to give it that nice sausage crispiness, I plated it. It looked pretty close to what a conventional pork sausage link looks like on a plate, with slight exception of the casing, which looked a bit loose at the end of the link.

I cut up the sausage into smaller pieces and gave it a taste. I liked the flavor of the interior sausage and thought it tasted pretty darn close to what a conventional sausage filling tasted like. The mouthfeel was similar and, overall, it definitely didn’t give me uncanny valley “vibes”.

But where the sausage fell short is, you guessed it, the casing. The casing is what gives a sausage link its famous “snap” when eating, and, truth be told, the Impossible link just doesn’t have it.

Of course, I understand there are tradeoffs, and no doubt it’s really hard to mimic a conventional casing made of (yes, gross) animal intestines. But the reality is Impossible’s isn’t there yet.

Would I try it again? Yes. I think the Impossible sausage links taste good and I would happily replace conventional pork sausage with these in future meals. But, unfortunately, those craving that traditional sausage snap won’t find what they’re looking for with Impossible’s plant-based alternative.

Impossible’s New CEO Will Need to Navigate a Fast-Changing Plant-Based Meat Marketplace

This week Impossible Foods announced that founding CEO Pat Brown is stepping down from his current role and assuming the new role of Chief Visionary Officer. The company’s new CEO will be longtime Chobani exec Peter McGuinness, who recently served as the yogurt pioneer’s president and COO.

Explaining the move in a company blog post, Brown said that as Impossible has grown in size and scale, he’s had less time to devote to strategic initiatives, communicating the company’s mission to the public and policymakers, and guiding R&D for new products. Brown said the demands on the role of CEO at Impossible Foods will only continue to grow, which means now is the time to appoint a proven executive to lead the execution of the company’s day-to-day business.

From the post:

Peter and I will work together to lead Impossible and its long-term strategy, combining our complementary strengths and experience. Peter will be our CEO and a director, and will report to the board. I will continue in my role as Founder and director, and take on the role of Chief Visionary Officer reporting to the board, leading research and technology innovation, strategic initiatives, public advocacy and, most importantly, our mission. 

McGuinness comes aboard at a time of uncertainty for the plant-based meat industry. Starting last fall, we began to see signs of a potential slowdown in sales across the segment. This year, companies like Kellogg’s are warning of continued soft sales and predicting a possible shakeout.

It’s important to note that Impossible has signaled their sales are doing fine. They very well could be, but there’s no way to have 100% certainty around the health of Impossible’s income statement since we don’t have any real visibility into the company’s numbers since they are still private. Still, it’s hard to see how Impossible could completely sidestep what seems to be a growing set of concerns for the space.

One potential concern is consumers’ growing questions about the ingredient lists for plant-based meat. With Impossible’s genetically engineered heme and a long list of other ingredients, they are one of the companies whose products might get a hard look from a segment of consumers who are looking for simpler, clean ingredients.

There’s also growing evidence of consumer apathy towards plant-based meat. At this point, most alt-meat curious consumers have tried it out, and some are not coming back for seconds. This might be for various reasons, including they don’t like the taste, the higher price tag or they just prefer animal meat. Whatever the reason, plant-based meat companies need to figure out how to make their products a mainstay on the weekly grocery shopping list.

Finally, while a large pipeline of interesting plant-based (and cell-cultured) meat products is coming to market, there’s been an over-saturation in a few categories like burgers and chicken nuggets. While Impossible is likely a market leader in the burger category and seems to hold a decent shelf share for their nuggets, there’s lots of competition for their flagship products.

All of which brings us back to Pat Brown. By clearing his schedule of running the company day-to-day, Brown can now focus on what he is no doubt good at (and I assume probably prefers) in innovating new products. The company has teased new products ranging from whole cuts to a new milk product, and imagine we might see even more as Brown sets his sights full-time on building out the product roadmap.

And while he’s famously opinionated, Brown is also one of the industry’s best ambassadors. The plant-based meat industry owes him a debt of gratitude for much of the early excitement built around the category, so having him focus on messaging could help both Impossible and the rest of the industry as consumers cast a more discerning eye on plant-based meat.

Impossible has raised a massive amount of money, and its investors have big expectations of seeing a return on their capital through the equity markets. I am pretty sure this is one of the rationales for transitioning to a food industry executive with experience in growing a brand. And so, while McGuinness has his work cut out for him running a company that has exited the honeymoon phase of the market, his job will no doubt be made easier by letting Pat Brown do what he does best.

The Spoon Weekly: NFT Dinner Clubs, Robocorns & Impossible’s Burger Joint

This is the web version of the Spoon weekly newsletter where we wrap up of some of the most interesting stories in Food Tech. If you’d like to subscribe to The Spoon Newsletter, you can do so here.

The NFT-Powered Dinner Club Has Arrived

After eating at home for much of the past 18 months, most of us are itching to get out into the real world and have dinner with interesting people. If this is you, may I suggest a new way to break bread: An NFT dinner club.

That’s the idea behind Dinner DAO, a new community creating IRL (in real life) dinner clubs using non-fungible tokens.

Here’s how it works: Prospective diners become members of a club – or Dinner DAO (DAO stands for ‘decentralized autonomous organization’) – by buying a Dinner DAO NFT. The cryptocurrency raised during the sale of the NFT is pooled in a shared treasury and used to purchase meals whenever the club gets together throughout the year.

For those who’d prefer to create a Facebook group, get together with friends and split the bill with a bunch a credit cards, your old-world ways go against the central organizing principle of the virtual currency and NFT movement: decentralization. Dinner DAO members are ok with taking more time to create a crypto-based dinner club because, in doing so, they are pioneering a new way to meet for a meal without having to rely on big technology companies or banks. In other words, they are getting together in real life by putting their dinner club on the blockchain.

The Dinner DAO concept is the brainchild of artist and designer Austin Robey. Robey, who lives in Brooklyn, created the first Dinner DAO NFT for New York City, and the first meal was at a restaurant in Little Italy called Shoo Shoo Nolita.

You can read the full story about Dinner Dao at The Spoon.

The Spoon & CES Bring Food Tech To The World’s Biggest Tech Show

Did you know food tech will be a featured theme for the first time ever at the world’s biggest tech show in January and The Spoon is CES’s exclusive partner to help make it happen? 

Learn more here in my announcement about the partnership. If you want to sponsor the event, let us know. See you in Vegas!

Hacking Refined Carbs? That’s Better Brand’s Plan

So many of our favorite foods contain refined carbohydrates like white flour and white sugar. These ingredients reliably produce delicious foods, but they’re also associated with health problems like Type 2 diabetes and obesity.

California-based startup Better Brand is on a mission to hack refined carbohydrates, recreating their flavor without the health consequences. The company’s first product, the Better Bagel, has the carbohydrate content of two banana slices, the protein content of four eggs, and the sugar content of a single stalk of celery.

Company founder and CEO Aimee Yang told The Spoon that she set out to develop products that would make healthy eating easier while improving consumers’ relationships with food.

You can read The Spoon’s full interview with Yang here. 

Sponsor Message

With the Trattoria pizza oven from GE Profile Innovation Studio, the journey to restaurant-caliber pizza at home is closer than ever. Reserve yours today.

Startup Showcase Alumni Incredible Eats Lands Investment on Shark Tank

Dinesh Tadepalli has landed his shark.

Tadepalli, the CEO of Incredible Eats, appeared on Shark Tank last night to pitch his company and ended up getting four offers from various sharks before walking away with an offer from Lori Greiner for 15% of the company.

Regular Shark Tank watchers will know four offers are a lot, but it’s not all that surprising since Incredible Eats checks many shark boxes: an easy-to-understand product, proven success, and mission-driven.

That easy to understand product is edible cutlery that replaces disposable plastic spoons and forks. IncredibleEats’ edible spoons and sporks come in both sweet and savory versions — chocolate and vanilla for desserts, oregano chili and black pepper for soups and such — and in both large and small versions.

To read the full story about former Startup Showcase contestant Incredible Eats’ showing on Shark Tank, head over to The Spoon. 

Alt Protein

BIOMILQ Raises $21M in Series A Funding With Focus on Mission-Aligned Partners

In June, The Spoon reported on North Carolina-based startup BIOMILQ’s success in recreating human milk outside of the breast. The company is working toward manufacturing cell-cultured milk at commercial scale, hoping to provide parents who cannot breastfeed regularly with a nutritionally equivalent option.

BIOMILQ announced they’ve closed their Series A financing round with $21 million. This week, The Spoon got on Zoom with company co-founder and CEO Michelle Egger to discuss the funding round and BIOMILQ’s next steps toward commercialization.

“In the grand scheme of fundraising rounds in cellular agriculture, $21 million is par for the course,” says Egger. “But we’re particularly proud because we’re an all-female leadership team. It’s less about celebrating the dollar value and more about celebrating the fact that we were able to raise it with specific partnership criteria that helped us find mission-aligned partners.”

To read our interview with BIOMILQ CEO Michelle Egger, click here. 

Fruit Cells, Space Bread, and Cultured Meat Cartridges: Deep Space Food Challenge Announces Phase 1 Winners

On planet Earth, we face the challenge of feeding a rapidly growing population that is set to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050. In space, we face the challenge of feeding astronauts traveling through the galaxy for an extended period of time. Novel and innovative food technology could offer viable solutions in both realms.

For the first time ever, NASA and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) have come together this year to host the Deep Space Food Challenge. Companies competing in the challenge must be able to offer a solution to feeding at least four astronauts on a three-year space mission. The solutions should be able to achieve the greatest amount of food output (that is palatable and nutritious) with minimal input and waste. In addition to being used in space, the solution must also improve food accessibility on Earth.

To read more about the Phase 1 winners of the Deep Space Food Challenge, head over to The Spoon.

Food Robots

Ten Chili’s Restaurants Are Now Using a Server Robot Named Rita

Want your baby back ribs brought to your table via robot?

You may be in luck as Rita the robot, a version of the Bear Robotics Servi server robot platform, has now been deployed in 10 Chili’s restaurants across the US.

The news, shared via a social media post on Linkedin, marks the latest in a string of deployments for the Bear Robotics robot over the past year. The northern California-based company has seen wins across the US in 2021, from Florida’s Sergio’s to the Country Biscuit in North Carolina to Sangam Chettinad Indian Cuisine Restaurant in Austin.

But with over 1600 locations, Chili’s is the biggest win yet for Bear Robotics, and one which looks like it’s growing quickly. Bear announced they deployed Rita to a fifth Chili’s just a week ago, and since then, new locations have been added almost daily.

Read the full story here.

Dawn of the Robocorn? Micro-Fulfillment Robot Specialist Fabric Raises $200M on $1 Billion Valuation

Fabric, a maker of robotic micro-fulfillment solutions for grocery and e-commerce retailers, announced they have raised $200 million in a Series C funding round. The new funding puts the company’s valuation at $1 billion.

Formerly called Common Sense Robotics, Fabric works with large online grocers and retailers such as Walmart, Instacart, and FreshDirect to build automated micro-fulfillment centers via a mix of fulfillment-as-a-service and hybrid ownership models. The company’s solution involves an intricate blend of robotics, vertically stacked storage of products, and human operators and packers that help package up the final delivery and handoff to delivery drivers.

To read the full story and see a video of Fabric’s system, click here. 

Restaurant Tech

Impossible Foods Opens a Burger Stand in Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena

Nowadays, if you want an Impossible Burger, you have your choice of thousands of fast food joints or grocery stores to pick up the plant-based patty.

But last night, the Impossible Burger showed up in a new kind of place: its own.

This week Impossible and Climate Pledge Arena, the world’s first net zero-carbon sports arena, announced that the Impossible patty had been named the venue’s official burger. They also announced Impossible is opening two branded food stands in the home of the NHL’s newest franchise, the Seattle Kraken.

Called Impossible Market, the new plant-based burger stands feature a menu with the Impossible Burger, Impossible chicken nuggets, and other items made with Impossible plant-based beef like chili fries and street tacos.

Read about Impossible’s new burger stand here. 

Spyce Closes Location of First Robot Restaurant as It Turns Focus To Sweetgreen

When Sweetgreen acquired robot restaurant startup Spyce in August, one of the outstanding questions was whether the new owners would continue to operate the standalone Spyce restaurants. Finally, it looks like we now have an answer.

According to a post today by Spyce on their Facebook page, the company’s original location at Downtown Crossing in Boston will close at the end of this week.

Read about Spyce closing down its original location here at The Spoon. 

I Taste Tested the Impossible Chicken Nugget Against Three Other Brands. Here’s How It Fared.

You may have heard that Impossible Foods plant-based chicken nuggets are available today at select restaurants. To generate a little buzz for today’s launch, the company behind the Impossible Burger offered to send bags of the new plant-based nuggets to journalists around the country. Not being one to pass up free nuggets, I was happy to try them out.

To make things interesting, I decided to give Impossible a little competition with a side-by-side taste test against two chicken meat nuggets (Tyson and McDonald’s) and another plant-based nugget (Incogmeato).

My nugget taste test was a family affair. Participants included my son and daughter, the true experts in the family on chicken nuggets.

Both kids tasted them blind. There were two things I wanted to know with a blind taste test: First, could they tell the difference between the animal meat nuggets and plant-based nuggets? Second, what did they think of each nugget’s flavor? I also tried each nugget (non-blind, of course) to compare and contrast with the new Impossible nugget.

I cooked a batch of each frozen nugget in my oven for the time specified on each bag. While I generally prefer to cook nuggets and other prepackaged freezer food in an air fryer (see my note at the end), for the taste test, I wanted to use the method most consumers still use when they get the nuggets home. As for the McDonald’s nuggets, I had a friend run through a McDonald’s drive-thru while I was cooking the other nuggets so they would still be warm.

Soon the nuggets were all plated and ready to be dipped.

The Nuggets: Impossible (yellow), Incogmeato (pink), McDonald’s (green) and Tyson (blue).

We started with the Incogmeato. Both kids knew right away it was a plant-based nugget. And while they thought it was passable, neither loved it.

“I like the spices,” shrugged my son.

I thought the Incogmeato nugget was fine, but I also could tell it was a plant-based nugget. I also thought the outside was a bit spicier than the other nuggets.

Next up was McDonald’s. Both kids guessed these nuggets were from Mickey D’s, in part because they’ve each eaten them a hundred times over their lifetimes, but also because they looked like McDonald’s nuggets.

The McNuggets have what looks like a fried batter coating, which sets them apart from the frozen home-cooked nuggets which all have breading on the outside. As it turns out, it was this outside coating that saved the McNugget in our taste test. Both kids like the batter-y coating.

“Good outside,” one of them said.

So what didn’t they like about McDonald’s chicken nuggets?

“The chicken is not that good,” my son said.

“That’s my thing,” agreed my daughter. “The chicken kinda ruins it for me.”

My thoughts on the king of fast food nuggets? Not that great. The chicken inside was dry and a bit spongy, and I didn’t really like the outside batter.

Now it was Tyson’s turn. Perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out the biggest maker of frozen chicken food products knows what they’re doing when it comes to nuggets:

Both kids liked these nuggets the best.

“My favorite is this one,” said my daughter.

Her brother nodded. “This is only one that is definitely chicken.”

I agreed with them that the Tyson nugget was good.

Finally, it was time for the Impossible. What did my kids think? Both liked them.

“The flavor is great,” said my daughter.

“It’s really good,” said her brother.

They both suspected the Impossible nuggets might be plant-based, but they weren’t completely sure. In the end, though, it really didn’t matter to them since they both said they’d definitely eat them again.

For my part, I thought the Impossible nuggets were delicious. The plant-based meat tasted like real chicken. The breaded outside was tasty, just like the Tyson nugget. A parent could serve these, and any nugget-loving kid would scarf them up.

After all was said and done, here’s how the nuggets ranked in our taste test:

  1. Tyson – the best tasting nugget. The chicken was moist and the breaded outside was crispy.
  2. Impossible – A close second with yummy plant-based meat that tasted like the real thing and a nicely breaded outside.
  3. McDonald’s – The kids liked them, I suspect out of childhood nostalgia and sheer muscle memory. These were my least favorite.
  4. Incogmeato – No one disliked them, but my kids just like them less than the other nuggets. I thought they were fine, but I thought the Impossible was definitely better.

Bottom line: This is a good performance for Impossible. The nugget, which uses soy as its main ingredient (as does Incogmeato), is nearly indistinguishable from a real chicken nugget and is both kid and parent-approved.

If you or your kids are chicken nugget fans, I would definitely recommend trying out the Impossible nuggets. And heck, why not even have your own taste test?

Finally, an updated serving suggestion. The next day I tried the Impossible nuggets in the air fryer (10 minutes). As suspected, the results were much better. The outside was crispier than my oven batch, and the inside was juicy. I’d definitely recommend using the air fryer for the Impossible (and any other nugget).

Want a Whole Cut Fungi-Based Steak? Head to Sacramento This Weekend

Curious what a steak made from fungi tastes like?

You’re in luck if you are in Sacramento, California this weekend because that’s where the Better Meat Co will debut their mycelium-based steak. Made using Better Meat Co’s proprietary Rhiza mycoprotein, the alt-steak will be available for one day only at Bennett’s American Cooking steak house this Saturday.

The debut of the company’s new cut comes just a couple of months after the company opened its Rhiza manufacturing plant in West Sacramento. Better Meat CEO Paul Shapiro told me in a video call this week that they were able to create a steak-like experience so quickly in part because fungi are much closer in texture and overall makeup to meat than plants.

“It takes a lot to get plants to taste like animals, but because we’re using fungi which are much closer to animals, you have a shorter distance to bridge,” said Shapiro. “We can create a more meat-like experience with our fungi than we can with plants.”

In addition to Rhiza, the steak also had added avocado oil, fava beans, beet juice for coloring, and some natural flavors. The results, according to Shapiro, are pretty close to the real thing.

“[American Cooking Steak House owner] Brian Bennett says it’s the most convincing alternative meat he’s ever had,” said Shapiro.

And while that may be true, the steak still isn’t 100 percent there, in part because it’s missing the structural and flavor complexity of the fatty marbling that comes in in a traditional cut of meat. Shapiro admits this is something their alt-steak 1.0 edition doesn’t have but says they are working on it.

“[Marbling] is something that we would like to pursue but we have not yet gotten that down,” said Shapiro. “However, when you eat it, it really does have a steak-like experience.”

Better Meat is not the only company working on alt-steaks. Whole cuts are quickly becoming an obsession in the alternative meat space, as startups like Novameat, Green Rebel Foods, Atlast, and even Impossible Foods are working on plant-based steak, while ingredient companies like Motif and Melt&Marble are developing building blocks like plant-based fat to help those creating consumer products get closer to the real thing.

According to Shapiro, he believes this is the first time an alternative steak has been served at a high-end steakhouse. Maybe, but it’s certainly not the first plant-based steak on the menu at a restaurant, as companies like Meati (also made with mycelium) have been showing up at places like SALT’s Bistro since last year.

Either way, it certainly won’t be the last steak made with Rhiza and, according to Shapiro, the next one could be from one of their partners.

“This is our 1.0. What we want to do is showcase what our ingredients can do, and work with companies who can utilize these ingredients to take them to even higher heights.”

Impossible Foods Launches its Plant-Based Impossible Sausage at Retail

Impossible Foods announced today that its plant-based Impossible Sausage is now available at retailers across the country. The new sausage comes in two flavors, Savory and Spicy. The product costs $5.99 for a 14-ounce package,and is rolling out at Kroger, Ralphs, King Soopers, Fred Meyer, Safeway, Albertsons, Wegmens, Stop & Shop, Hannaford, Gian martins, Giant Food, Shoprite, Sprouts Farmers Market and Heinen’s.

This is Impossible’s first new product at retail since the company’s Impossible Burger. Impossible Sausage made its debut at CES in 2020 and went to restaurants such as Starbucks and Burger King last year in the form of sausage patties. The plant-based sausage Impossible is introducing today is a ground product and not pre-formed into a patty shape like Beyond Meat’s retail sausage.

During a video chat this week, Michael Bortinger, Senior Manager of Retail Marketing at Impossible Foods told me why. “We always want to bring more products in different forms,” he said. “There really isn’t a ground sausage form in the segment right now. It’s a white space for us.” Bortinger said that the ground form will give the product more versatility to be used in casseroles, sandwiches and more.

Just like the Impossible Burger, the new Impossible Sausage uses heme as one of its ingredients. Because heme is derived from genetically modified ingredients, it does not yet have approval to be sold in the European Union. As such, Impossible is currently focused on the U.S. with this launch. Bortinger said that by the end of the year Impossible Sausage will be available in 13,000 stores domestically.

Impossible said its sausage has 30 percent fewer calories, 47 percent less total fat and 43 percent less saturated fat when cooked and “compared to the leading pork ground sausage.” Impossible’s Savory Sausage has 380mg of sodium per serving, and the Spicy version has 370mg, representing 17 and 16 percent of the daily recommended allowance, respectively. A similar sized package of Jimmy Dean pork sausage contains 415mg of sodium. One serving size of Beyond Meat Classic Sausage Patties (two patties) has 270mg of sodium.

In advance of this post, Impossible sent me samples of the new sausage to try out and it is definitely versatile. We made standalone patties, breakfast sandwiches, breakfast burritos and even mixed it in with some mac n’ cheese. The sausage is indeed delicious, though a little watery in its texture. While there is versatility with the sausage, there is also extra work to cook it. A frozen Beyond Sausage Patty is easy to throw in the oven to heat up as you whip up a morning sandwich. The Impossible Sausage is “raw,” so it takes more work and preparation (forming patties, frying up) and is messier. But having said that, Impossible Sausage will definitely be on my shopping list as I try to reduce the amount of meat I buy.

Impossible Foods Unveiling Plant-Based Chicken Nugget Next Week

Impossible Foods will unveil a new plant-based chicken nugget product next week, with plans to launch to launch it at restaurants in the fall, according to a story on Bloomberg this morning. The nugget will be made from soy protein and sunflower oil, but will not include heme, an ingredient used in its plant-based burgers to make them “bleed.”

Honestly, it would be more surprising if Impossible didn’t make a plant-based chicken nugget because everyone is getting into that game nowadays. In addition to the smaller upstarts like Rebellyous, Daring, SIMULATE and Nowadays, Impossible’s big plant-based burger rival, Beyond Meat, just announced its own chicken tenders for restaurants last week. With two well-known brands in Impossible and Beyond now getting into plant-based nuggets, what will that mean for those other companies just starting out?

Chicken is the most consumed meat in the U.S., and the Good Food Institute reports that sales of plant-based meat have grown 72 percent over the past two years, with the market now worth $1.4 billion. Combine those two data points and it’s no wonder so many companies are vying for your dollar. The opportunity in plant-based nuggets is also slightly different than plant-based burgers. Kids eat a lot of chicken nuggets and are (at least in my experience) less likely to notice a plant-based substitute. Burgers, however, are enjoyed by kids and adults alike, and adults are less likely to be “fooled” by a plant-based burger analog (or may even be hesitant to try them out at all). Nuggets could also be the tip of the spear for both Impossible and Beyond to get into other breaded chicken products like patties.

Of course all of that hinges on these nuggets reaching price parity with traditional animal based ones. Though the price of Impossible’s burger has come down over the years, it’s still more expensive than actual beef.

An Impossible rep told Bloomberg that unlike with its burgers, the company isn’t using heme for its nuggets because they are a white meat product. Also worth noting in the Bloomberg story is that Beyond’s new chicken tender uses titanium dioxide as an additive, which the In May, the European Food Safety Authority no longer considers safe.

Bloomberg writes that Impossible will be showing off its new nuggets to potential customers next week at a trade show. Like it did with its Impossible burgers, the plant-based nuggets will then first appear in restaurants this fall before heading to retail. One big difference this time around is that Impossible now has an extensive retail network already in place that will make the launch of its nuggets that much easier and faster.

Impossible CEO Doubles Down on Doubting Cultured Meat: “Complete Vaporware”

You can’t say Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown is a flip-flopper when it comes to downplaying the future of cell-based meat. At our Smart Kitchen Summit in October of last year, Brown declared that cultured meat was “never going to be a thing,” and based on a Washington Post interview that ran this morning, he’s only strengthened his resolve over the past nine months.

In a Q&A, Post reporter Laura Reilly asked Brown whether he thought the labeling battles currently being fought over plant-based meat will repeat with cell-based meat. Brown responded:

Cultivated meat is complete vaporware. Don’t hold your breath. The fact is that the economics of animal cell cultures as a food production system in no conceivable way can compete with the current industry. If you could use cultured cells to make any reasonable replica of an animal tissue, which would you do: Sell it for $5 a pound as meat, or sell it for $1 million a pound to treat people with muscle-wasting diseases?

It’s actually hard to make a reasonable facsimile of an animal tissue from cultured cells. Theoretically it’s doable, and there’s no question that it will be done at some point. But it will never be done with anything remotely like the economics you need for food.

He went on to make an analogy about transportation and recreating a horse instead of building a car. His point being, trying to recreate existing animal meat means your stuck with the same limitations of those animals. Both points are pretty much the same arguments he made at SKS last year, but what’s interesting is that so many advances have happened in the cultured meat space since that time.

Perhaps the biggest milestone hit was that cultured meat is being sold to consumers. Sure, right now it’s just one company (GOOD Meat) selling it in one country (Singapore), but people are actually consuming cultivated meat right now. They’re even getting it delivered to their homes.

We’ve also seen a ton of investment in the cultured meat space, funding a range of startups tackling a variety of issues. The aforementioned GOOD Meat raised $170 million, Aleph Farms just raised $105 million, Misson Barns raised $24 million, and Meatable raised $47 million, just to name a few.

At the same time we’ve seen some companies drastically bring down the costs of their cultured products. Mosa Meat generated more than a 65x cost reduction in the creation of its cultured fat. Future Meat has reduced the production price of its cultured chicken breast twice this year, bringing it down to $4 per 110g serving. And Avant Meats said it has achieved a 90 percent reduction in the cost of producing its cultured functional proteins.

And finally, just this month, it was reported that CPG giant Nestlé has partnered with Future Meat to develop some type of plant-based/cultivated meat hybrid product. If this bears out, having a massive company like Nestlé involved could definitely push the cultivated meat sector forward and closer to a reality for consumers.

As the CEO of Impossible Foods, which has raised $1.6 billion in funding and is in the plant-based meat business, Brown obviously has a horse in this race. Part of his poo-pooing cultured meat is protecting his company, and part of it is generating headlines and discussion. He’s right to have some skepticism, cultivated meat still needs to reach price parity with animal meat, regulations need to be created in markets around the world, and we need to see if consumers will even want “lab-grown” meat. But doubling down on the exact same arguments against cultivated meat year after year, when so many obvious advances have been made, seems to just deny the reality of an evolving situation.