Plant-based burger looks and tastes like meat
This news came out a little while ago but I don’t know how it slipped past my chubby radar.
A company in the USA called Impossible Foods is set to launch a burger in late 2016 that looks and tastes like meat but is made completely from plant protein and grains.
Honestly, take a look at this video:
I am amazed by how they have managed to make plant protein look like minced meat.
The company has the following to say on their website about how their burger looks and tastes just like animal meat:
We spent three and a half years understanding what makes the experience of cooking and eating meat so unique, and discovering proteins and nutrients from plants that recreate the experience on a molecular level.
Our biggest discovery was that a molecule called heme is the “magic ingredient” that gives meat its craveable flavor and smell. Although it’s exceptionally abundant in meat, heme is essential to every branch of life, including plants. A heme-containing protein naturally found in plants gives our meat its truly meaty flavor.
With that breakthrough, we embarked on the journey to creating a really delicious burger. We searched the plant world to find the best sources of each of the building blocks of meat, which led us to some unexpected ingredients, like coconut and honeydew melon. The result? A burger with the look, feel, smell, sizzle, and most importantly, the taste of ground beef—but made entirely from plants.
What do you think?
Would you eat something that looked and tasted as realistic as the Impossible Burger?
This early article on the development of the burger suggests it has a texture that emulates gristle and muscle tendons plus it oozes a blood-like substance when it is sizzling. All made from plant protein!
You can read more about Impossible Foods on their website, you can like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.
Sounds completely disgusting to me, but if it convinces people to go without meat, I’m all for it.
Yuck! I don’t like my food pretending to be meat so i would avoid it like the plague.
The Linda McCartney quarter pounder burgers have recently become a lot more like meat – taste and texture. I discovered I don’t like them that way! But we need hundreds of brands selling different flavoured versions to satisfy everyone – burgers that taste like meat and those that don’t. I prefer more seasoned seitan style, or a good bean based burger.
I only stopped eating meat 5 months ago, at the age of 26, and loved burgers before. Yet I think even after such a short amount of time I’d feel a bit freaked out about eating this! Would be tempted though…
Not too sure about this. The smell of meat is a turn off to me now.
Yikes. Not sure. Been of my non-meat-eating ways for the majority of my 23 years so I’ve never really been attracted to the look of meat. To me it looks exactly what it is: the rotting carcass of a living thing :S. I love the Quorn vegan range but this just seems far too realistic. But hey, if this helps those currently eating meat move over to our gang, fair dos!
Why would you want to eat a plant-based burger that looks and tastes like meat, if you are vegan?
I’m really excited about this! I know many people say why would you want it to taste like meat but for non vegans this will help hugely! I tried to get my dad to go vegan and he wouldn’t bc he wanted meat – this would help a lot! And I’ve been vegan for 4 years yet I still go past a mcdonalds and remember how much I used to love their burgers, I would love to have that again without harming animals. It’s the pain of taking someone’s life away from them that I’m against not what it tastes like (which on its own is no harm) however I understand how people would not like this but it’s definitely great news for a lot of people and I can’t wait for this to launch!