Ethical traveller
How to see the world without leaving a footprint. This week, Jamie Morton dreams the Impossible Burger dream
Facebook changed the media landscape, Uber transformed the taxi industry, and now another bold Silicon Valley trendsetter is about to disrupt the beef patty. For the next three months, Business Premier customers travelling on Air New Zealand’s LA-to-Auckland haul are being served a hamburger unlike any hamburger they’ve ever eaten. Its meat looks, smells, sizzles, bleeds and tastes like beef – yet it isn’t.
It’s the Impossible Burger, a plant-based innovation one Stanford University biochemistturned-entrepreneur wants to save the planet with, one patty at a time.
Dr Patrick O. Brown’s Impossible Foods has become a phenomenon amid the US food tech industry, simply because it’s already managed to achieve the impossible — making meat that isn’t meat, but which might just be better.
Brown, whose start-up has signed a deal that made Air New Zealand the first airline in the world to serve the Impossible Burger, was on the first flight himself overnight to see how passengers liked it.
While on a sabbatical at the end of the past decade, the former Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator decided the world’s biggest environmental problem was one where he could have the biggest impact.
And solving it came down to answering to a single question: what makes meat taste good?
Brown argued animal-based production systems would ultimately become unsustainable in the face of climate change, global population growth and pressure on resources and food security. Cow’s meat, he believed, simply wasn’t good for the planet and couldn’t last if we wanted to live in a sustainable world. “Every time we sell 2000 burgers, that’s one less cow.”
Available in nearly 2500 restaurants around the US, the Impossible Burger uses around 75 per cent less water, generates about 87 per cent fewer greenhouse gases and needs 95 per cent less land than conventional ground beef from cows.
It’s produced in a facility in Oakland, and doesn’t contain hormones, antibiotics, cholesterol or artificial flavours.
Ingredients include coconut oil; wheat, which provides its longevity and fibres; and potato protein, which holds water and gives the meat a juicy texture, along with the uncanny ability to sizzle and burn on cooking.
The magic of the patty, however, is what’s called haem, or heme — an iron-containing molecule in blood that carries oxygen, is found in all living organisms, and makes for meat’s red colour and distinctive flavour. By sourcing heme from the roots of soy plants, Brown figured he could effectively recreate the hamburger patty.
It wasn’t vegetarians Impossible Foods was mainly targeting, but carnivores hunting for something new.
“We started working on a problem six years ago, and now we have products, right now, that I would say run even with blind tests with anything from a cow.”
Soon, he expected plant-based meats like the Impossible Burger – fish, chicken and pork are all possibilities for the future – could beat beef with flavours and textures we haven’t even discovered yet.
“It’s getting better all of the time, and the cow isn’t — that’s basically it.” It’s why he’d like to see New Zealand explore the technology itself.
According to a recent study funded by Beef and Lamb New Zealand, Kiwi beef exports faced the Impossible Food guru Dr Patrick O. Brown. greatest challenge from alternative proteins, particularly to the United States.
It found that although alternative proteins are currently manufactured in small volumes, large scale production of burger patties and mince was likely to be a reality within just five years.
Asked whether the beef industry saw his innovation as something of an existential threat, Brown said there was “ambivalence” – but added his company wanted to work with farmers, rather than against them.
Last week’s launch did however cause controversy, with NZ First and National party MPs criticising Air NZ for failing to promote Kiwi premium products.
For Air NZ, the deal was a coup. “We chased them pretty hard,” inflight customer experience manager Niki Chave said of the start-up. The airline prided itself on being innovative and admired other companies with similar DNA. “Obviously it was important for the team that they work with partners that do justice to the product and look after it, and they trust us with that. We’re confident vegetarians, flexitarians and dedicated meat lovers alike will enjoy the delicious taste of the Impossible Burger — but it will sit alongside our regular selection of menu items prepared by our talented culinary team and consultant chefs.”
Air New Zealand will serve the Impossible Burger on flights NZ1 and NZ5 from Los Angeles to Auckland through until late October.