I have had to fly out of Boston Terminal C many times since Jetblue has a direct flight to San Diego from there. I feel as though I have eaten almost everything everywhere there – Legal Seafoods, Wahlburgers, Boston Beer Works, Wolfgang Puck’s. Now with my new meat philosophy I haven’t found any good meat options (I’ve eaten plenty of burgers and shrimp at Terminal C don’t get me wrong). A menu item at Wahlburgers that has intrigued me since it was introduced this year has been the Impossible Burger.
The marketing material shown above is quite convincing right? Looks just like a burger but its made from plants. How will it be different from other vege burgers? The Impossible Burger differentiates itself from other vege burgers in that they are trying to mimic the meat eating experience with a plant based product. They want the texture and look to be just like a meat burger and their target audience is meat eaters that don’t want to eat meat from a cow since they are concerned about the effects that the meat industry is having on the environment. The company Impossible Foods has a lofty and admirable goal – to replace all animal protein by 2035. To learn more I encourage you to read the company’s mission written by the CEO – it’s quite an interesting read. Right now this company is still at the start up phase and their burgers are only available in some restaurants but they have plans to scale up to introduce to grocery stores.
When the burger arrived I got to say that it definitely looked like a real burger. A couple of bites and I was quite surprised how similar it tasted like a real burger as well. It tasted like a very low fat meat burger definitely need the cheese, all the condiments and extras to round out the taste. This was not a vege burger texture which can taste like a block of compressed food material of some sort. I was fascinated how they got this texture and feel like meat. There is a good recent article from Fast Company where they went to the Impossible Foods labs to explain how they made these burgers. The ingredients are quite simple, pressure cooked wheat, potato starch, coconut oil but the key ingredient is heme. For non-chemists, heme is a chemical compound and is the core structure of the constituents of blood. A solution of heme is red and is what gives blood a red color. Impossible foods even states on its website that heme is the flavor component that people crave. So basically what people want is the taste of cooked blood? Does that mean if you like your burger rare you crave the taste of blood and have vampire tendencies? Anyway, this combination of ingredients not only feels and tastes like a burger but also has a similar nutritional profile to real meat but with less fat. And its all made in a factory without an animal being killed.
I would definitely order the Impossible burger again and am curious to try different versions at other places. I can’t wait until it comes out in grocery stores so I can cook it for myself, curious to see if it mimics the cooking experience I also enjoy when cooking real burgers. The mission is admirable and is in line with my new philosophy on food. I have been a meat eater all my life and I don’t want to give up meat but if there is an alternative I am willing to give it a shot and if that alternative mimics the meat eating experience then even better. It’s Impossible to stop everyone from eating meat. It’s also Impossible to feed the world without Factory farm meat if everyone wants to keep eating meat the way we are right now. As noble as it may be to stick to a diet of sustainable responsibly farmed meat, there just isn’t enough of those farms and they wouldn’t be able to feed the world anyway. However meat alternatives made in a lab could be a solution if they can be scaled and can be cost effective. Is the Impossible, possible?
The Evolution of a Selective Flexitarian 
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