Fake meat : Taste the future In 30 years’ time, the row over plant-based burgers will seem ridiculous, say proponents. Sharon Stephenson reports.
In a small, windowless room in Silicon Valley, a woman tosses a burger patty on to a hot grill. Two minutes later, she flips it over and gives it a gentle prod. The unmistakable sizzle and aroma of a thousand Kiwi summers fills the room, and my stomach starts to growl. But I’m not expecting what happens next – the patty starts to bleed.
This isn’t any old burger and the woman cooking it, Celeste Holz-Schietinger, isn’t a chef: she’s the Director of Research for Impossible Foods, a Californian start-up that’s doing the impossible – producing a plant-based burger that smells, tastes, feels and even bleeds like a beef burger.
I sink my fangs into the patty and am struck by how thick and juicy it is. The texture feels as chewy as meat and tastes slightly sweeter, more caramelised, possibly even better than the real thing.
It’s certainly nothing like the bland, lentilsmasquerading-as-cardboard vege patties I’ve struggled with at barbecues over the years. As the non-meaty meat juice runs down my chin, I think I’ve tasted the future.
Dr Patrick Brown, a former Stanford University professor and doctor who’s renowned for his Aids and cancer research, started Impossible Foods in 2011 with the aim of making the global food system more sustainable.
‘‘I believe animal-based production systems will ultimately be unsustainable in the face of climate change, global population growth and pressure on resources and food security,’’ says Brown.
‘‘But we know people love to eat meat, so we’ve recreated the sensory experience of meat such as taste, texture, juiciness and mouth-feel but in a meatless form. You’re basically getting a burger that’s better for you, the planet and animals.’’
The patty is made of potato protein, wheat, coconut oil and vitamins, but it’s magic ingredient is heme, an iron-containing molecule derived from the roots of soy plants, and identical to that found in animal meat. Heme, it turns out, is what gives the Impossible Burger its ‘‘bloody’’ meat-like taste and colour.
Two years ago, Impossible Foods launched the meatless burger, now stocked by more than 2500 eateries across the US and Hong Kong.
Renowned American chef David Chang, a committed meat lover, became one of Impossible Foods’ first customers when he put the burger on the menu at New York’s Momofuku Nishi restaurant.
The company, which Bill Gates and Google invested in, edged a little closer to New Zealand when Air New Zealand became the first airline in the world to offer the Impossible Burger in its business-class flights from LA to Auckland from July until October.
As you’d expect, disrupting the way we eat has raised the ire of some hard-core carnivores.
‘‘Fake’’ meat, they believe, is unhealthy, unnatural and unpatriotic.
National MP Nathan Guy tweeted: ‘‘We produce the most delicious steaks & lamb on the planet – GMO & hormone free.
‘‘The national carrier should be pushing our premium products and helping sell New Zealand to the world.’’
Beef + Lamb New Zealand chief executive Rod Slater likewise challenged Air New Zealand to help promote local meat, and the rural sector backed him up.
But they increasingly seem to be on the wrong side of a global food paradigm, which believes eating meat is an outdated concept that’s not only unhealthy it’s also cruel, bad for the environment and unsustainable in a world where the population is getting bigger but the planet isn’t.
Meat substitutes are, of course, nothing new. Patties made from soy-based protein and wheat have been around since the 1960s. But it’s taken hitech companies such as Impossible Foods and its US rival Beyond Burger, as well as a slew of European and New Zealand producers, to create steak, chicken, lamb and beef from gluten, peas, rice, and even fungi that mimics the texture, juiciness and mouth-feel of real flesh. What’s more, the meat equivalents are so tasty, many consumers can’t tell the difference.
It’s a trend being driven by millennials, according to Mark Roper of Auckland-based Life Health Foods whose brands include Lisa’s Hummus, Bean Supreme’s range of vege burgers, the Naked Cuisine’s chilled soups, and The