A Fresh Take On Fake Meat

JMarshall writes: Impossible Foods, a Silicon Valley food start-up started by a Stanford professor who quit his job, just raised $108 million to pursue a plant-based burger that truly tastes like meat. This ACS article explains how Impossible Foods and other startups and researchers are tackling the tricky chemical and engineering challenge of making fake meat that tastes real. "Meat flavors and aromas come from thousands of volatile small molecules released by muscle and fat cell destruction. Flavor precursors start with an animal’s diet, which influences the molecular composition of its cells. After slaughter, enzymes in an animal’s muscle cells begin breaking down biomolecules into simpler amino acids, sugars, and fatty acids. This means some flavor molecules develop even as the meat ages during its trip to the store. Other flavor and aroma components emerge from reactions between sugars, amino acids, or fatty acids as the meat is cooked."

Comments

I found another unicorn!

[__aaclcg7560]

In short, they're reinventing the Tofu burger.

Re:I found another unicorn!

[tchdab1]

Are people who are concerned about what they eat going to embrace a chemical s**t storm just because it's meatless?

Re:I found another unicorn!

[HornWumpus]

In other words, Almond 'Milk' drinkers.

Re:I found another unicorn!

[Your.Master]

They will if they are the sort who abstain from meat due to ethical considerations (the "fish are friends, not food" crowd). Your chemic shitstorm isn't alive so there's no ethical debate about eating them.

Also normal people who don't give two shits will eat it. I eat normal meat but if this tasted like real meat, and wasn't substantially less healthy or more costly, I'd eat it for sure.

If it comes even close in price I can see restaurants choosing it because then they don't have to have separate vegetarian and vegan menu options.

Re:I found another unicorn!

[ganjadude]

to be fair, there are some of us who simply dont like the taste of cow milk, (me) and almond "milk" is a nice option

Re:I found another unicorn!

[Darinbob]

But it doesn't have to taste like meat. That part is pointless I feel. If they don't want to eat meat than that's fine. Veggie burgers are good too (not the tofu junk) and even meat eaters like them. It's just that the need to make faux meat seems strange to me. It's not like they're coming off of a lifetime of heroin and need something like methodone to keep themselves clean.

I know when I visit the veggie line for lunch the worst things they have are the meat substitutes, like seitan or tempeh.

Re:I found another unicorn!

[Your.Master]

You're being unfair and unnecessarily polarizing. Just because you've met people who have both beliefs doesn't mean they always go together. People aren't always either right about everything or wrong about everything.

I'm not convinced there's any correlation at all, though there could be. As anecdotal evidence, at the time of writing there are four responses to my post. Two of them are explicitly meat eaters who are making the "chemicals are bad" argument and both precluding any possibility they are wrong. Clearly none of them are vegans.

I've also met lots of vegetarians and vegans, and literally none of them have irrational fears of chemicals in foods (they have rational fears of things that actually cause food poisoning and such). The only time I've seen those two beliefs together are in stereotypes.

In fact, the person I know who is most irrational about food is almost a complete carnivore. He's all-in on his keto diet. He lost like 150 lbs when he switched to basically only ever eating sausages, and from that he's drawn the conclusion that a co-worker of ours could cure her Multiple Sclerosis by cutting the grains and veggies out of her diet. Second place goes to a vegetarian who was pretty convinced that ancient humans never hunted for meat.

Why not eat meat?

[grimmjeeper]

Our bodies evolved over millions of years to eat meat. The fact that your senses crave the smells, taste, and texture of meat means... your body wants meat. Now, we all know that you should eat it in moderation because of the problems of overeating. But meat in reasonable portions is naturally good for you.

All of this biochemical engineering to come up with a meat substitute is reminiscent of all the chemical companies trying to come up with artificial sweeteners. The end result is probably as bad for you or worse than the original.

Eat your meat. That way you can have your pudding.

Re:Why not eat meat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the professor I guess... Could be just to cash in on the vegetarian / vegan / health market like everybody else seems to be doing. Could also be a 'think of the future' thing. Meat produced from grazing animals (e.g.: beef) is pretty inefficient to raise for our tables. As the worlds population grows we might need to start thinking about alternatives to satiate our bellies. In the future you have an alternative to that beef flavored partially refined locust protein burger everybody has been talking about if the professor is successful :)

Re:Why not eat meat?

[ohnocitizen]

There's a few reasons, and people might find all or just some of them convincing.

• The impact on the environment
• The impact on your body for certain kinds of meat
• Objections to killing and consuming animal flesh

I eat (and enjoy) meat myself, but if there's a way to get that texture and flavor (texture is the most important part, I think) in a healthier and more sustainable way - I'd love to see it happen so long as the final result is actually more efficient to produce and healthier to eat. As you say, many artificial foods have ended up being worse than what they were meant to replace.

Re:Why not eat meat?

[Locke2005]

Our bodies evolved over millions of years to crave the smell, taste, and texture of COOKED meat? Not sure where our ancestors found that in the wild...
I subscribe to an evolutionary theory of nutrition, which says that we do best if we eat what our ancestors ate for tens of thousands of years. We were designed to eat meat, but because we didn't have refrigeration, we didn't eat meat very often. Gorging on red meat a couple times a month should be fine; eating it for every meal, not so much.

Re:Why not eat meat?

[grimmjeeper]

Our ancestors were using fire to cook meat long before recorded history.

Re:Why not eat meat?

[Anonymous Coward]

medical literature shows significantly lower incidence of diseases such as cancer and ischemic heart disease in populations eating a vegetarian diet

Correlation is not causation. Those populations either have much poorer healthcare and die of other things, go undiagnosed, or they're young health nuts who don't have many unhealthy symptoms like smoking, lack of exercise, and overweight.

Re:Why not eat meat?

[rahvin112]

The dog will go for whichever one is closer and then try to eat the second one, at least judging by all the dogs I've known. Dogs are not as particular as you imply.

Re:Why not eat meat?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Try this test. Take a chunk of raw beef, slice it in half and cook one of them on an open fire (in an appetizing way so that you'd wanna eat it... don't burn it). Leave the other half raw. Present both halves to a dog and see which one it goes for first. Now repeat this test on a tiger or some other non-domesticated carnivore.

Ok, I tried this experiment. I ate the dog, and then I ate the tiger.

What do I do now . . . ?

Please advise.

Re:dont want it to taste like meat

[DRJlaw]

I'm a vegetarian because I don't like meat. It's so frustrating to have a veggie burger like a Boca burger that tastes way too much like meat. I want to have something else, or I would eat a real burger. There's a lot of non-meat protein that tastes good. Why the fixation on making it taste like beef?

Because it's a veggie burger, not a veggie patty. They are expressly trying to simulate meat, because there are also people like me who quite like meat and quite dislike vegetables. I might move to a veggie burger but sure as hell am not going to move to a vegemite patty, a bean patty, or 90% of whatever ground-vegetable-matter-in-puck-form you're after.

Don't complain that a thing called a "burger" is trying to simulate a "real burger." Complain that they aren't making something some other thing that tastes way too much like a vegetable.

Alternate plan

[blue9steel]

Why not just genetically engineer plants that grow meat, that way you get the best of both, flavor and saving the fuzzy animals. I look forward to sampling the bacon bush and porterhouse tree.

Re:dont want it to taste like meat

[ArmoredDragon]

Cheaper is about the only justification I could see for it. As the FDA has been getting more and more of a clue lately, it's basically been found that red meat isn't actually bad for you after all. The original belief in that (as well as the belief that meat causes high cholesterol) originated from some poorly done studies in the early 60's and late 70's.

Re:dont want it to taste like meat

[The Good Reverend]

There's also "I don't want to kill animals for the sake of my dinner". Meat in moderation isn't bad for you, but there are plenty of other reasons why a lot of us don't eat it.

I just don't get the point of mimicing meat

[bughunter]

Why even try to mimic meat? It struck me the first time I walked into a grocery in an Adventist community - there were multiple aisles of highly processed vegetable/fungus/grain matter trying to resemble meat.

I mean, especially if you're living a totally meatless lifestyle, why even kowtow to the omnivore food culture?

For example, look at Middle Eastern cuisine. Sure, they have kabobs, etc, but things like Falafel, Faul, Hummus, Baba Ghanouj, Tabouleh and Dolmas are all fantastic, and none of them are trying to mimic a hunk of beef or chicken.

Same with Asian food. There are fantastic meatless dishes that don't try to resemble an animal part.

Why do we do it in the West? Marketing?

Re:dont want it to taste like meat

[slew]

The original belief in that (as well as the belief that meat causes high cholesterol) originated from some poorly done studies in the early 60's and late 70's.

FWIW, there are many contradictory studies made in this area that correlate read-meat consumption with higher mortality. Earlier studies that blamed cholesterol and fat in meat were poor studies, but there are more modern studies that illustrate correlation. Some studies blame gut bacteria that converts Carnitine into TMAO. Some blame the nitrates in processed meat. Some studies show an increased link with certain cancers. Some studies blame poor dental hygiene causing a general inflammation response leading to heart disease.

We may not know the truth yet in this matter, except there is some correlation (but if there is actually causation is a bit of a mystery still).

Hey Mutant, most adult humans can't digest milk.

[billstewart]

Yeah, I called you a mutant. I'm one also, from the Northern/Western European version of the mutations that let adult humans digest lactose. (There are other groups of humans that also have that - the Masai in Kenya, for instance - and most of them evolved independently about 5000 years ago.) Most normal humans are lactose-intolerant as adults, so they get indigestion if they drink raw cow milk, though most of them can handle cheeses and some other sufficiently fermented milk products.

Theoretically I can drink milk; in practice I almost never do, unless it's got coffee or cocoa in it, or it's on cereal or something.

Re: Hey Mutant, most adult humans can't digest mil

[binarylarry]

Hello my Lactose Master Race brothers! Is this where the meeting is at?