Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

meat alternatives

Impossible Foods Cuts Price to Reach Goal of Replacing Meat by 2035

Impossible Foods is now taking concrete steps towards its goal of replacing animal agriculture by cutting the price of its plant-based “bleeding” burgers. The Redwood City, California-based startup said today in a press release that it was slashing prices an average of 15 percent across all U.S. foodservice products (not including retail). The company is also rolling out new products, including quarter-pound and third-pound versions of its plant-based “bleeding” burger patty.

If you’ve ever ordered an Impossible burger out at a restaurant, odds are you’ve had to pay an upcharge. At fast-food spots like Burger King, subbing an Impossible patty is a roughly $1.75 add-on — but I’ve seen upcharges as steep as $5 at some higher-end burger joints. That premium poses a significant hurdle for Impossible Foods, whose long-term goal is to reach price parity with even industrially produced “cheap” beef.

Dr. Pat Brown, CEO and founder of Impossible Foods, hasn’t been shy about his company’s goal to usurp industrial animal agriculture. “Today’s price cut is just the latest step toward our goal of eliminating animals in the food system,” Brown stated in the press release. He also said that the company would continue to drive down prices through economies of scale until they could undercut the cost of conventional ground beef from cows.

That’s ambitious, for sure. But Impossible is certainly doing its darndest to establish its largest footprint possible. Over the past year, the company has forged new partnerships at an astounding speed, especially with high volume, fast-food chains. Its plant-based burger is now on menus at thousands of restaurants, including Burger King, Qdoba, White Castle, and, as of last month, Disneyland Resorts. The startup has also set its sights on international expansion in both Europe and Asia — including China.

With great fast-food growth comes great responsibility. (That’s how the expression goes, right?) The more partners Impossible gains, the more damaging it would be if the company hit another embarrassing product shortage. Impossible has for some time been aware of its need to dramatically increase production capacity in order to avoid future shortages. It seems that in doing so, the company is already beginning to reap the benefits of economies of scale —namely, cheaper plant-based beef for you and me.

When we interviewed Brown at CES in 2019, he called out price cuts as a key step in achieving Impossible’s goal: to replace traditional animal agriculture by 2035. Price parity is critical if plant-based meat is ever going to usurp cheap, delicious beef. Flexitarians — which are the target demographic for Impossible Foods — might try the Impossible burger once or twice out of curiosity, but it’s hard to convince them to make a behavioral change that will end up costing them significantly. Especially since Impossible burgers aren’t really healthier than their meaty counterparts.

Restaurants are conscious of this barrier. For example, Burger King added the Impossible Whopper to its 2 for $6 deal. I’m sure that BK and others are hoping that the Impossible price cuts will mean not only cheaper plant-based meat for all, but also more repeat customers coming in their doors.

Plant-Based Veteran Tofurky Launches Burger Amid Stacked Competition

Early plant-based food maker Tofurky, which turns 40 this year, today launched its own beef-like burger, joining the likes of Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, Nestle’s Sweet Earth, Kellogg’s Incogmeato and many others — it’s a crowded space, to say the least.

The company actually brought a formless beef alternative product to the market late last year, Forbes reports, but it was soon scrapped. Its new faux beef product includes two patties made of a combination of soy protein, vegetable protein and wheat gluten and lightly seasoned with salt, onion, garlic and black pepper. It is available now at more than 600 Target locations for $5.99.

Tofurky said in the release that its burgers have a more sustainable footprint than the competition since it uses all parts of the soybean. That’s not the case when it comes to pea protein, the primary ingredient used by Beyond Meat, Tofurky said. And unlike Impossible, Tofurky’s ingredients are non-GMO (FYI, no evidence exists to suggest that GMOs are harmful to humans). Tofurky also points to the sustainability of its packaging: “recyclable cartons that tout 23 percent less paperboard material, and inner packaging [that] has 69 percent less plastic film waste than others in the space.”

So why launch a faux meat burger now? Apparently, to capitalize on people resolving to eat less meat in the new year. “Many flexitarians resolve to go completely plant-based for the month of January, so we wanted to provide a new burger option now, ahead of summer grilling, that is affordable, delicious, and accessible,” said Jaime Athos, president and CEO of Tofurky.

The increasing popularity of the plant-based alternatives space has been kind to Tofurky, which for the first time in its history accepted private investment last year after seeing increased demand for its products. Tofurky also saw more good news when Mississippi pulled back on a proposed restrictive food labeling law that would have prevented plant-based companies from using words such as “burger,” “hot dog” and even “meat” on their packaging. The company had been part of a group suing the state as well as several others over similar proposed laws.

We’ll have to see if Tofurky’s hot streak continues and consumers embrace its burger.

Future Food: Why Are Companies Chicken about Plant-Based Poultry?

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Be sure to subscribe here so you don’t miss a beat!

Hi guys. Seeing as it’s summertime, the season for grilling, lately I’ve had some deep thoughts about (plant-based) burgers. Specifically, why they’re one of the only options in the meatless meat section of my grocery store.

Like the Little Mermaid, I want more. Chicken is the most popular meat in America, so why can’t I find a decent plant-based version of it?

Tastes like…
There’s clearly a demand for plant-based poultry. KFC in the U.K. recently tested out a plant-based chicken patty called the Imposter Burger that sold out in just four days.

But considering the popularity of chicken, innovation has been surprisingly slow when it comes to finding an alternative to the real thing. Perhaps that’s because poultry has a far smaller environmental cost than cattle, so companies have prioritized beef over chicken. Or maybe the texture of chicken is harder to emulate than that of ground beef.

Nonetheless, we are starting to see a few leaders hatch:

  • Poultry processing giant Tyson launched its Raised & Rooted line last month. One of its first two products was a vegetarian “chicken” nugget made of pea protein and egg whites.
  • Swiss startup Planted makes meat-free chicken from pea protein, pea fiber, water and sunflower oil.
  • Last week NUGGS launched its plant-based chicken nuggets, which it delivers in boxes right to consumers’ doorsteps.
  • Rebellyous, formerly called Seattle Food Tech, also makes vegan chicken nuggets. It sells them wholesale to large-scale foodservice providers like schools and hospitals.
  • In the U.K., THIS, whose chicken “chunks’ are pictured above, just launched its plant-based poultry in stores yesterday.
  • Meatless meat veteran Quorn, which is available in 18 countries, has a variety of vegetarian and vegan chicken products.
  • Freezer aisle staples Morningstar Farms and Gardein offer plant-based nuggets.

Photo: Beyond Meat

There’s the Beef

That’s not to say alterna-beef is going anywhere. In fact, it’s only going to get eerily closer to the real thing.

I found that out the hard way when I cooked up a package of Beyond Beef, the new, “meatier” ground beef product from Beyond Meat. I haven’t eaten meat in quite a while, but dang — this took me back. The flavor was full of umami and the texture really mimicked the juicy give and bounce of ground beef.

As a vegetarian, that verisimilitude grossed me out. But my colleague Chris Albrecht and my carnivorous roommate were both big fans, though my roommate noted it had a slightly “chemically” taste.

Despite the positive reviews, I think it’ll take a while before people flock to Beyond Beef like they did to the original burger. Right now it costs $9.99 for one pound. That’s roughly on-par with organic, grass-fed beef. Most people I know would rather spring for higher-quality beef — which has a smaller environmental footprint than industrial beef and, some actually argue, a critical role in the ecosystem.

In fact, with its new ground “beef,” Beyond Meat may be entering the Uncanny Valley, something we’ve referenced frequently for humanoid robots but not for meat alternatives. Beyond Beef is almost indistinguishable from beef. But it’s just different enough — slight discrepancies in flavor, aftertaste, and texture — that it could be off-putting.

All that said, I’ll reiterate that I’m a vegetarian and Beyond Beef was too much like the real thing for me to enjoy it. It’s still quite new so we’ll have to see if flexitarians have beef with Beyond’s new offering.

Where in the world is Impossible Foods?

With all this talk about what will be the next hot plant-based meat, it’s easy to overlook the where piece. This week Impossible Foods’ SVP for International made the location question pretty clear when he laid out the startup’s expansion strategy.

One word: Asia.

We’ve seen this coming for a while now. Asia is the new hotspot for alternative protein innovation, both plant- and cell-based. It’s got a ton of consumer demand, a relatively open playing field, and ample manufacturing power. Add to that mixture the recent outbreaks of African swine fever, and Asia seems primed for an alt-meat revolution.

There are also a few local plant-based protein companies gaining traction there, including Omnipork and Phuture Meat. But there are currently lots more U.S. and European players, and they have more funding. We’ll likely see quite a few of them trying to carve out a piece of the Asian alt-protein market before the competition gets too fierce.

Photo: Business Newswire.

Protein ’round the web

  • A new food hall is opening in Providence, RI. The draw? All the businesses inside are entirely plant-based (h/t Forbes).
  • Beyond Meat will be popping up in Blue Apron’s meal kits this summer. Will the plant-based darling’s fame help the struggling meal kit company? Probably not.
  • Integriculture, the Japanese cellular agriculture company, is launching a joint research project with food processing giant NH Foods Ltd. to develop large-scale production processes for cell-based meat.

If you happen to be in Tokyo in August, you can see the founder of Integriculture, Yuki Hanyu, speak on a panel at SKS Japan about the future of protein. Tickets here. 

Be careful what you wish for. Finally, remember how Arby’s made meat into vegetables as a cheeky response to the rise in plant-based meat? Apparently, they got a lot more than they bargained for.

Eat well,
Catherine

Are Soy Burgers Enough to Tempt Meat Lovers? Sweden’s Oumph! is Counting on It

There’s a new plant-based burger in town, and its name is Oumph!

And by town, I mean Europe. The latest offering from Swedish company Food for Progress, the new Oumph! burger (pronounced “Oomph!”) is soy-based — like Oumph!’s entire plant-based product lineup — and gets its red, beefy color from beets.

In fact, after speaking with Oumph! marketing director Henrik Åkerman, the burger seems to be made only out of soy and beet juice.

I haven’t tried the Oumph! burger yet and don’t know what sort of technology goes into transforming their products. However, my gut tells me that with an ingredient list like that (read: basically just soy) it’ll be hard to stack up to other meat-like vegan burgers, like Beyond and Impossible. The latter two companies have spent years tweaking their burger recipes in labs, harnessing technology and different ingredient ratios in an attempt to make plants taste better than beef from a cow. Impossible even went so far as to genetically engineer heme to emulate the taste of blood. I’m skeptical that a burger made out of what seems like just soy with some beet juice for color could tempt people away from beef in the same way.

Some of Oumph’s other offerings [Photo: Oumph website.]

The Oumph! burger debuted last week in Stockholm’s Fastfood & Cafe, and will roll out in Scandinavia, the U.K. and Singapore early this spring. According to Åkerman, a two-pack of quarter-pound patties will retail for around €3.5 ($3.95). Compared to Beyond, which costs £5.50 ($7.00) for two patties, that’s a steal.

The company intends to sell the new plant-based burgers both through retail channels and in restaurants, though they have yet to reveal any specific partners. However, they currently sell their other plant-based products in supermarkets throughout Scandinavia, as well as in Tesco and Whole Foods stores in the U.K., so we can safely assume the new Oumph! burger will make an appearance over there during the next few months.

If so, that means that in the U.K. they’ll have to compete with Beyond, which debuted in Tesco at the end of 2018. But there’s plenty of room for more vegan “meat” offerings. Demand for plant-based food is on the rise: according to Mordor Intelligence, between now and 2023 the European plant-based protein market will increase at a CAGR of 7.1 percent.

Grocery stores are taking note of the growing demand for plant-based foods. In fact, Tesco recently increased its vegetarian and vegan offerings after observing that sales of refrigerated and frozen plant-based products rose by 50 percent in 2018.

“Beyond and Impossible have done a great job, but there is definitely room for some competition,” Åkerman told me. I’m just not sure if soy will be giving them much of a run for their money.

Beyond Meat Debuts Their Own Burger 2.0 with New Protein Formula

This week at CES Impossible Foods unveiled their “burger 2.0” amid lots of fanfare and mini-sliders.

They’re actually the second plant-based company this week to debut a new and improved version of their product. On January 2nd, Beyond Meat announced the release of their own “Beyond Burger 2.0″ (albeit with much less pomp). The new iteration still has pea protein (the primary ingredient of the original burger), and also adds mung bean and rice proteins into the mix. It’s apparently lower in saturated fat and has a better, more meat-like texture than the Burger 1.0.

As far as I can tell, this is the first big product revamp by Beyond since they launched their burger back in 2016. I haven’t tried it yet, but I have tried the Impossible burger 2.0 and have to say, it’s a high taste bar for Beyond to beat.

But in the end, it doesn’t really matter: plant-based meat companies’ biggest competition isn’t each other, it’s the industrial meat industry. “If other people are making great products… we love it,” Ethan Brown told The Spoon in an interview. “They’re not our competition — they’re on the same mission we’re on.”

The announcement came two days after Beyond Meat announced its partnership with fast food chain Carl’s Jr. In addition to Carl’s Jr., their new “burger 2.0” will also be available at all A&W locations in Canada (who have been serving Beyond burgers since July 2018).

A Peek Inside JUST’s Clean Meat Lab

Last June, JUST, the company formerly known as Hampton Creek, announced out of nowhere that they would bring lab-grown meat to market by 2018. If they succeed, they would be the first to do so; Finless Foods hopes their cultured fish will gain price parity with bluefin tuna by 2019, and Memphis Meats is aiming to premiere their cultured meat in 2021.

But it’ll be an uphill battle to get there. Soon after their announcement about lab-grown meat nearly all of JUST’s board resigned, leaving only Josh Tetrick, their very charismatic (and polarizing) CEO. Their former cellular agriculture director also left the company in early 2018 to start his own cultured animal product venture. (The new CTO who oversees the cellular agriculture team has been there since November.) At the same time, though, JUST has raised a total $310M in funding over the years, which is light years away from other clean meat startups (Memphis Meats has currently raised $20.1M). Can a company such high-profile turnover and drama, along with 125 employees and some pretty hefty capital, achieve its very ambitious vision of being the first to bring cultured meat to market?

On a recent trip to San Francisco, I was able to get a peek behind the heavily guarded doors of JUST (well, there was only one guard, but still) and take a tour of this buzzy startup — including their clean meat lab. I came in feeling skeptical and left much the same … but also oddly inspired.

A few of the plants in JUST’s library.

JUST is the prototypical millennial-heavy food tech startup, complete with geometric logos, repurposed factory workspaces, and lots of robots.  First I was led through the discovery platform, the part of JUST where scientists use custom-built robots to test plants from across the globe, determining their potential in vegan food products. Next, those plants go to the product development area; a fancified, high-tech kitchen staffed by chefs, many with Michelin stars.

During my tour I got to try a few flavors of JUST’s signature eggless mayo (really darn good) and their vegan cookies (tasted like normal cookies, though I suppose that was the point). But the coolest thing I sampled was their eggless scramble. Made of mung beans, the pale yellow liquid perfectly acted just like eggs, forming curds in the hot pan that were virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. The only giveaway was the beany flavor, though their VP of Product Development Ben Roche told me they’re working currently working on a new version that tastes more egg-like.

All the usual players, but vegan.

The fact that it cooks so much like regular scrambled eggs would make it an easy swap for foodservice — even easier than the real thing, since they don’t have to blend up the eggs first. Roche told me that they’re also working on pre-cooked eggless patties. I could see them putting those on the breakfast menu of a fast-food chain, following in the footsteps of partnerships like Impossible Foods and White Castle. For now, though, Just Scramble is only available in only a few restaurants in San Francisco and Hong Kong, though they’re hoping to expand it soon. 

No eggs, just mung beans!

The area of JUST I had the highest expectations for was their clean meat lab. It’s also the area where I learned the least — though I suppose I wasn’t really expecting JUST to give away all their secrets so easily. (Sorry, no photos allowed in here.)

For a company that claims they’ll produce enough cultured meat to bring to market by the end of this year, the lab was surprisingly small. The room was filled with incubators growing cells cultures, bioreactors, and a small area behind a plastic curtain where a scientist was pipetting something into wells. (I was not allowed behind the curtain.)

In the corner of the room was a machine filled with shaking bottles. Vitor Espirito Santo, the Senior Scientist of Cellular Agriculture at JUST, explained to me that the bottles contained proliferating muscle cells; in order to scale up their meat production to a marketable scale, they have to grow them in suspension. Espirito Santo told me that the plan was to transfer the cells into larger and larger bioreactors (the vessels where cultured meat is grown) as their technology improved. The largest one they had in the lab was 2 liters — which is pretty small, though JUST says they want to scale up to pilot plant facilities in the near future.

What JUST’s lab-grown burger will look like.

Despite my skepticism, Espirito Santo was adamant that JUST’s lab-grown meat would be available by the end of 2018 as promised. When I pressed him for details but all I got was “It will be something avian.” The technology required to grow meat with the texture of a chicken breast isn’t evolved enough for mass production, so I’m predicting that their first product will be some sort of ground turkey or chicken. JUST’s press office also clarified with me that they were aiming to make the first commercial sale of clean meat by the end of 2018, subject to regulatory considerations — which, as we’ve written about before, could slow things down considerably. 

Though they’re planning to be the first to bring clean meat to market, JUST’s chief focus seemed to be developing plant-based media. If they’re successful it would be a huge boon for the cultured meat industry. Many clean meat labs use fetal bovine serum (FBS) as the media in which to grow their muscle cells. FBS, however, is very expensive and also (duh) not vegan. If JUST can succeed in developing a plant-based media as effective and versatile as FBS, they have a real shot at making clean meat affordable, scalable, and 100% animal-free.

They’re not the first company to work on developing an alternative to animal-based media. In fact, Shojinmeat, a resource for people growing cultured meat at home, has found a way to do away with FBS altogether, using yeast extract as their media. Yeast extract isn’t a perfect solution — it only works with certain types of cells and doesn’t catalyze as much growth as FBS — but it is an exciting step towards inexpensive, plant-based media.

To me, the most provocative part of the clean meat lab wasn’t what Espirito Santo and his team were doing (or not doing), but what they hoped to do someday. Two drawings on the wall of the clean meat lab laid out their vision for the future of meat: a utopian architectural plan of a vertically integrated cultured meat production facility.

On one end of the property is a farm where they grow the plants for their cell media. On the other are the giant vats where the meat is grown, which lead to a factory where the meat is “assembled” on conveyor belts with 3D printing technology. The only humans involved in the process were walking between the belts doing quality control. The factory has glass walls, so the whole affair is transparent – literally and metaphorically. Consumers could come to the facility, watch their meat being printed out, and select cuts for their dinner. Sort of like a visit to one of those places you can watch cheese being made before buying a wheel, but with cultured meat. 

Espirito Santo said they want that setup to be the same size as the largest slaughterhouse in the U.S. If he and his team can make plant-based media, and if 3D printing technology improves to allow for those production speeds, their goal could actually be attainable. 

I couldn’t help but wonder if it might be more productive, from a price and efficiency point of view, for JUST to simply put their resources into developing plant-based meats that taste the same as the “real” thing. For example, Seattle Food Tech is developing vegan chicken nuggets — and manufacturing technology to make them scalable — which seems like a much more feasible way to take a bite out of the meat industry. Omnipork and Beyond Meat are developing plant-based pork and beef burgers, respectively. Which begs the question: If people can’t taste the difference, will they really care if their pork chop is made of muscle cells grown in a bioreactor, or plants made to have the same taste and texture as meat? This question seems especially relevant since, outside of the clean meat lab, all of JUST’s resources are focused on making plant-based versions of animal products, such as their eggless scramble.

While I think that JUST’s claim that they’ll bring lab-grown meat to market by 2018 is definitely a stretch, you have to respect their self-assuredness. The word “disrupt” gets thrown around a lot in the field of food innovation, but JUST really is trying to radically shake up the way we eat. They want to replace some of our most beloved foods — scrambled eggs, mayonnaise, and hamburgers — with vegan taste-alikes, and so far they’ve been pretty successful. We’ll have to see if their vision for cultured meat comes to pass, or if it’s just a drawing on the wall. 

——

This article has been updated to reflect that JUST plans to be the first to make a commercial sale of cultured meat, not bring it to mass market, barring regulatory considerations. We also clarified that the CTO overseeing the cellular agriculture program has been at JUST since November. 

Beyond Meat Burgers Blew Me Away

I love cheeseburgers, but the harmful environmental effects of raising beef has all but sapped my appetite for them. Which is why I’m so excited by alterna-meats (or whatever we’ll wind up calling them), and why I was even more excited to see that my local grocer has finally started carrying Beyond Meat burger patties.

Filled with the same adventurous spirit Mike and Catherine had on their recent Impossible foods field trip, I snapped up a package of Beyond Meat burgers and rushed home to do my own taste test.

We’ve written a lot about Beyond Meat. They use pea protein as the basis for their burgers and have celebrity backers like Bill Gates and Leonardo DiCaprio. Their company wants stores to stock their burgers in the meat aisle, which is not without controversy.

Unlike earlier incarnations of “veggie burgers,” which often just substituted beans, soy, or tofu for beef and called it a day, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are trying to replicate the experience of eating meat. So have they succeeded?

Hell yes they have.

Beyond Meat burgers probably won’t fool any die-hard carnivores (they don’t “bleed” like Impossible burgers), but if you don’t have to have beef, this is an excellent substitute. When I sampled them, I found Beyond Meat burgers flavorful and light, with a pleasing texture that was beef-like.

Which is good, because Beyond Meat burgers are not cheap. It was $6.49 for just two patties. Despite Beyond Meat’s marketing demands, their burgers were located in the meat alternative section in the freezer aisle, instead of in between the ground beef and sausage links.

Frozen, they look just like thick beef patties. As they cook, they don’t brown very much, staying pretty rose-colored. I cooked my patties frozen, which, in retrospect, was a mistake. It required a longer cook time to warm the middle and I feel I may have overcooked the outside. Next time I’ll thaw them out fully before putting them on the stove.

Once cooked, I covered my burger with cheese and slid it on to a bun. I decided to eat it without any ketchup or mustard or other added flavorings to get the best sense of its taste. Beyond Meat definitely has that umami flavor, but the word that lingers most as I think back on eating it is… springy. The burger felt light and delicate — without being fragile — but it also had this elasticity to it. This gave it more of a meat texture, though it didn’t feel as dense or heavy as beef.

The biggest sensation I got from my experience eating a Beyond Meat burger was excitement. I loved every bite. And I can’t wait to make another one. I’d like the price to come down a bit, if only to entice more people to try it, but I’m sure that will come. Until then, I’m just happy to be eating cheeseburgers without any guilt.

We Tried The Impossible Burger, And It Was…

On a rainy day in Seattle, Mike Wolf and I set off on a mission. We were going to sample the much-hyped Impossible burger. As a vegetarian who hasn’t tried a beef burger in 4 years or so, I was pretty psyched to sink my teeth into one of these look-alikes. But would it be everything I dreamed of?


Look at all of that excitement!

First off, a little background about Impossible Foods: the Silicon Valley-based millennial darling trying to make meat alternatives that are as good as the real thing. Their plant-based burgers are sweeping the country by storm, garnering a mega Instagram following and pretty favorable reviews. While the patties were originally available at only a few trendy restaurants, they’re now on menus in a lot of major cities.

Impossible patties contain wheat protein, coconut oil, potato protein and their ace in the hole: heme. An iron-containing compound found in blood, heme is what gives red meat that rich, umami taste. Impossible Foods’ scientists have found a way to extract heme from plants, which they hope will give their burgers a magic meatiness missing in so many veggie burgers.

Unlike plant-based burger competitor Beyond Meat, which is sold in grocery stores across the country and online, Impossible burgers are only available in restaurants. They premiered on the menu at celebrity chef’s restaurant Momofuku Nishi in 2016 and have since expanded to restaurants around the country. This business model might change, though, as their website hinted that they do have retail plans in the pipeline.

An Impossible burger, ready to go on the flat top.

So did it live up to expectations? Mostly. The Impossible burger is definitely good: it’s savory, has a good texture, and even has that umami flavor that comes from red meat. I suppose that’s thanks to the heme, which is also what makes the Impossible burger “bleed” when cooked rare.


Don’t worry, we washed our hands first.

Sadly, ours was very well-done, so we couldn’t test the bleed. But that’s alright. The burger was still juicy, despite a seared, caramelized exterior. I was surprised by how much it reminded me of burgers of yore, and I even tasted a distinct animal-like funkiness (thanks, heme!). It wasn’t quite as chubby and rosy-tinted as the photos on their website, but it still beat my expectations. I didn’t even add ketchup, and I always add ketchup.

I also appreciated how fatty it was, chiefly thanks to coconut oil. Impossible isn’t trying to make a health-food burger—just one that tastes as good as meat. In fact, their patty has comparable levels of protein, iron and fat to an 80/20 beef burger, though it doesn’t contain cholesterol. This makes sense if they’re targeting a wide, flexitarian audience, instead of a health-conscious vegan one.

Of course, there’s the possibility that my perspective was skewed since I haven’t had beef in a few years. So Mike Wolf took a bite of each to compare and contrast.


The true taste test. 

We got cheese on our burgers and, according to Mike, there wasn’t a huge difference between the two patties. In fact, if you topped your burger with bold flavors like blue cheese, special sauce, and pickles, you might not even notice that you weren’t chomping into a quarter pound of cow flesh.

The Impossible burger also had a delicious taste of self-righteousness. We all know that meat isn’t exactly great for the environment and that we should probably be reducing our beef consumption. Impossible’s website claims that by replacing one meat burger with one of their wheat protein-based patties, you’ll spare 75 square feet of land for wildlife, save water equivalent to a 10-minute shower, and spare 18 driving-miles worth of greenhouse gases.

Now for the downsides: Most notably, the Impossible burger is expensive. It cost an extra $4 to replace a beef patty with an Impossible one, at least at the restaurant we went to. That put the beef burger at $5.99 plus tax, and the Impossible burger at $9.99. Customize it with cheese and a topping or two, and things start to add up. It’s not a huge difference, but if they’re aiming to nab flexitarians price could be a big deciding factor.

In the end, I really enjoyed my Impossible burger experience. In fact, if someone suggests a burger night, I would go out of my way to find a spot that serves their patties (they have a map for that). Now if they could get started on making plant-based pulled pork, it would be much appreciated.