Slashdot Mirror
Impossible Burgers' Key, Bloody Ingredient Wins FDA Approval (cnbc.com)
The FDA has approved the key ingredient used in the vegetarian-friendly Impossible Burger. "The ingredient, soy leghemoglobin, releases a protein called heme that gives the meat substitute its distinctive blood-like color and taste," reports CNBC. The burger comes from a company aptly named Impossible Foods, which started raising millions of dollars in 2015 to pursue a plant-based burger that truly tastes like meat. From the report: In a letter to Impossible Foods released Monday, the FDA deemed soy leghemoglobin GRAS, or generally recognized as safe, in its most recent review. "Getting a no-questions letter goes above and beyond our strict compliance to all federal food-safety regulations," Impossible Foods founder and CEO Patrick O. Brown said in a statement. "We have prioritized safety and transparency from day one, and they will always be core elements of our company culture."
...I can't say that I've ever missed that specific meat-like taste (even less so the color) in any of the many meat facsimiles I've tried. I suppose the reason why one becomes a vegetarian plays a big role in this.
It's weird... after having been vegetarian for 17 years, the concept of making a vegetarian burger taste more like meat only strikes feelings of "eww, gross" in me. And I imagine that's a pretty common reaction.
But I guess it's good for non-vegetarians and maybe people who are newly vegetarian.
On the upside, I imagine this product is a good source of iron, since heme iron is well absorbed.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
Reading TFA (I know), it turns out that new food ingredients don't actually require FDA approval, since food companies can simply state that their novel ingredient is safe, and then the FDA probably won't challenge that. ~10% of all food ingredients haven't been FDA tested/assessed, due to this self-approval loophole, and a concerned party is suing the FDA to close it.
Reading elsewhere on the net, the Impossible Burger tastes/looks/smells remarkably like a real hamburger. The Beyond Burger smells closer to real beef, but doesn't taste/feel as similar. If vegetable-based burgers can get this close, it makes me wonder if there'd be any market for lab-grown meat, which would presumably cost more to produce. Both veggie burgers seem to have the same amount of protein as beef burgers. One hitch: the impossible burger's heme is from GMO yeast, so the anti-GMO people will have a problem with that (probably a significant fraction of vegetarians).
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Why do we never see reports that steak is being processed to taste like tofu?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I these days steer away from foodstuffs that are heavily processed (vegetable and animal sourced). My diet consists of mostly vegetable matter as it comes off the plant and animal protein as it came off or out of the animal/bird - preferably pasture fed.
As a male, I also avoid soy.
I'm not convinced that one can make something with a concoction of chemicals that is even closely as healthy to put inside your body than it is to just get it how nature has made it for millennia and our bodies are finely tuned to utilize through generations of selection?
I actually agree with other vegetarian posters: the likeness to meat of fake meat is actually a detractor, not a good selling point. If you make a choice to eat vegetables, you want your food to taste like that.
From the letter it actually looks like the FDA said that they see no reason not to take the manufacturers word for it that it's safe, not that they have actually concluded for themselves that it is safe. I don't know if that counts as "approval", but I think the distinction is important.
Based on the information that Impossible Foods provided, as well as other information available to FDA, we have no questions at this time regarding Impossible Foods’ conclusion that soy leghemoglobin preparation is GRAS under its intended conditions of use to optimize flavor in ground beef analogue products intended to be cooked. This letter is not an affirmation that soy leghemoglobin preparation is GRAS under 21 CFR 170.35.
... to get the meat junkies off their fix. The eco-balance of meat is truely abysmal. Like just a few notches short of plutonium or something. If we could switch to a substitute without anybody noticing, that would be awesome and also finally get anti-biotics out of meat production and back into healthcare, where they belong. That would also get agriculture back into sane waters.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Avoiding animal products. People who do not eat any meat, fish, poultry, or dairy products are at risk of becoming deficient in vitamin B12, since B12 is only found naturally in animal products. Thatâ(TM)s why vegans should make sure to include B12-fortified foods or a B12 supplement in their diets. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/n...
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Oh my god, so much wrong with this sentence:
source: I am a biochemistry lecturer and wikipedia
Strange that no one of the die hard vegetarians knows that ...
No idea why you americans keep spreading that myth. First of all the vitamin in question is not "B" but "B12".
Then: there are plenty of vegan foods that have plenty of B vitamins of any type, like 11 or 12. E.g. mushrooms, Sauerkraut, fermented Soy, like Tofu, Algae, even black tea comes to mind, everything containing yeast, e.g. beer! Who had guessed that, beer contains vitamin B! Carrots and other "root vegetables".
Sorry, that you only can get vitamin B* from meat is the biggest lie in the internet.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Meat's not Murder, as much as I enjoy Morrisey; It's slaughter. And I admire meat-eaters who address sustainable farms to address factory farming and respect any perspective to appeal to HOW animals are raised and rendered after I had read Diet for a Small Planet (https://www.smallplanet.org/diet-for-a-small-planet) and Robbins' book (the Baskin/Robbins heir who was conned by Madoff) in 1990. I went lacto-ovo vegan and made soy "milk", and my own gluten (ashamed I couldn't master tempeh cultures) and supplemented my diet with nutritional yeast for B complex vitamins and explored every meat substitute available and can claim I was spared seasonal flus for years. Fifteen years later, friends half a generation younger, mocked my preferences to seek out substitutes with the same texture and "mouth feel" as akin to wearing a fake fur. It was my first experience with shifts in generational perspective, I think. (The second is a pervasive belief microwave appliances are dangerous.) Anyway, Morning Star brand was some of the best commercially available (and affordable) product (but used egg whites for texture) and leveraged by the growing market of baby-boomers reduction of cholesterol consumption: Tinfoil Advisory-- Morning Star's "Prime" product was the best I had ever experienced and disappeared from the market for over two decades because (I believe) it was TOO Good. At about this time, Oprah took on the Beef trade associations and was summarily silenced on the subject, the only topic from which I believe she has EVER backed away. Supply/Demand arguments have been the reason given for the 3-4X cost of livestock for three decades. Qorn was prevented from North American shelves for over a decade for reasons ignored when it came to Frito-Lay's potato chip products...end of Advisory...
In 2010, I returned to being an omnivore, but I miss the days of chasing down "mouth feel" substitutes because the science is interesting, and the business angles are very intriguing. Textured vegetable protein (a fantastic substitute in Chile adopted by Hormel a loooong time ago) is the best example of an affordable substitute and industrially compressed gluten that simulated a roast beef that I experienced in Oakland and LA's Whole foods deli sections is the most expensive (5X that of steak), but truly a delicacy.
In 1990, Robbins' claimed that, without government subsidized water rights, a dollar hamburger in the US would cost $6. I don't know if that's factual because there aren't many sources or studies to cross reference, but such an estimate goes a long way in explaining why the market is, in my humble opinion, so controlled.
Would were! Should is! Could be! And live a hundred times three.
Take a look in the mirror, and smile. The Incisors and Canines in your mouth evolved primarily for eating meat, and the premolars and molars evolved for grinding vegetable matter. I go with what my biology is optimized for.
I will add that almost every animal source is edible, and the vast majority of plant life is either inedible or actually toxic in some way. I stick with what works. . .
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sorry, terrible advice. And you seem to be conflating B12 and D (which is from sunshine). I don't understand why you'd avoid B12 in the summer. One thing in veganism is certain: those who make the bold step of skipping B12 supplements become ill, and change their tone a few years later and are fine once taking a regular supplement.