Meat-free karma: the "Bloody Plant Burger"

Lindsey Hoshaw (Food For Thought, June 21, 2016, NPR.org, KQED, Facebook); Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; ImpossibleFoods.com

At Impossible Burger HQ in Redwood City, CA, Chef Traci Des Jardins grilled patties with vegan mayo, mustard, avocado, caramelized onions, lettuce, tomato (Maggie Carson Jurow).

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Silicon Valley's "bloody plant burger" smells, tastes, and sizzles like meat

Pope: For Lent on Fridays, it's good, I like.

Silicon Valley-based Impossible Foods has taken a high-tech approach to creating a [cruelty-free] plant-based burger that smells and tastes like meat.

This summer, diners in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles will get their hands on a vegan hamburger that has been five years in the making.

 

Kindness is good. Be kind. Never mind symbols.

The burger looks, tastes, and smells like beef [slaughtered cow] -- except it's made entirely from plants. It sizzles on the grill and even browns and oozes fat when it cooks.

It's the brainchild of former Stanford biochemist Patrick Brown and his research team at Northern California-based Impossible Foods.

 

The startup's goal is like many in Silicon Valley -- to create a product that will change the world.

 

"The demand for meat is going through the roof, and the world is not going to be able to satisfy that using animals -- there's just not enough space, not enough water," says Brown, Impossible Foods' founder and CEO.

 

Are what you eat: You eat cows! - You eat pigs!

Global meat production is expected to increase by 612,000 tons, or 1 percent, this year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

 

So Impossible Foods has developed a burger that it says is less resource-intensive, healthier and will eventually be cheaper to produce than red meat.

It's not the only faux meat company selling bloody plant patties.

Last month [May 2016], Los Angeles-based Beyond Meat made headlines when it released the Beyond Burger, its pea protein burger that sizzles like real meat and "bleeds" beet juice.

The burgers quickly sold out after debuting at a Whole Foods in Boulder, Colorado. More