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!"
Why do we never see reports that steak is being processed to taste like tofu?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
... 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
Oh my god, so much wrong with this sentence:
source: I am a biochemistry lecturer and wikipedia
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. . .