
The Impossible Burger - ingve
https://www.wired.com/story/the-impossible-burger
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jluxenberg
They serve this patty at Umami Burger in SF. We tried it a few weeks ago and
everyone was really disappointed. It definitely doesn't bleed. It's cooked
well-done and can't be ordered any other way. The taste is similar to a well-
done beef patty.

I'd love to try the burger they're describing here. Maybe the product is
difficult to work with and Umami is unable to get these results? Or maybe
they're describing some version 2.0 Impossible patty that isn't available yet?

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dylz
> The taste is similar to a well-done beef patty

Isn't this basically the goal?

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nsxwolf
Are you interpreting "well-done" to mean tasty, high quality, etc?

It means overcooked to the point the meat is completely gray. Highly
undesirable to many (though preferred by some).

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nilkn
Just to be clear, it's far less safe to eat ground beef rare than a steak.
With a steak, potentially harmful bacteria are all on the outside, which you
sear. So the interior can be practically raw and the steak will be safe to
consume. If you grind it up, the outside is now mixed into the inside.

One cool trick to get around this is to cook the beef sous vide. Beef can be
pasteurized at as low as 130 F as long as it's held at that temperature for
long enough. That's basically medium rare.

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ouid
less safe, but not far less safe. since 1998, there have been less than 400
deaths from foodborne illness in the united states. 12 of those were from
ground beef. Your risk is utterly negligible.

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awinder
These numbers do not come from the CDC:

“[https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html”](https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html”)

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DanBC
Don't put urls in quotes!!

[https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html)

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jxcole
The fact that they argued that leghemoglobin is safe because it is similar to
other globins is kind of weird. A chemistry professor once told me that the
chemical Thalidomide is a medicine that can be used to treat morning sickness,
but if you only reverse the chirality it can cause birth defects.

In case you don't know, if you reverse the chirality of a molecule it is
essentially what the same molecule would be when viewed in a mirror, with all
it's directions reversed.

source:
[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Organic_Chemistry/Chirality](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Organic_Chemistry/Chirality)

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legulere
If you look into the superfamily of globulins, globular proteins you can even
find the highly toxic ricin.

Also wikipedia states about non-human globulins that "these proteins can cause
allergic reactions if they bind with human IgE antibodies."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globulin#Nonhuman_globulins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globulin#Nonhuman_globulins)

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davidmanescu
I would expect these are broken down by enzymes in the mouth/gut long before
they have a shot at entering the bloodstream to bind with any antibodies.

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rmason
Read all the stories about this burger, they made it sound so amazing. So when
I heard it was available in SF I called my sister who has been a vegan for 35
years and asked her to try it.

She had a high degree of anticipation but said afterward it wasn't that
different than other alternatives. In fact she said the company was better at
marketing hype than any real breakthrough.

So the impossible burger is coming to Detroit. Next time I'm in the city think
I'm going to try the new Shake Shack instead.

[https://detroit.eater.com/2017/9/15/16313768/impossible-
burg...](https://detroit.eater.com/2017/9/15/16313768/impossible-burger-
michael-symon-b-spot-burgers-restaurants-midwest-expansion)

~~~
waisbrot
But why would someone who's avoided meat for 35 years be interested in
something that pretends to be meat?

I've not had milk-based ice cream for more than 5 years. There's a great
variety of non-dairy frozen treats and I've eaten most of them. But I would
not be a good person to ask which would be most palatable to someone who loved
real ice cream -- I can't even remember what that tastes like.

~~~
goeric
Because they don't usually avoid meat because they don't like the taste - they
do it for morale reasons. And sure, in 35 years a person may forget what that
taste is, but if you make the best tasting plant-based burger then all sorts
of people will be interested.

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expectsomuch
I reeeeeally want to like the impossible burger. But the one I tasted at
Jardinerre is SF tasted... like sloppy joe taco meat. So, meat, I guess?

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Taek
That's honestly a big upgrade though. When was the last time you had a veggie
thing that tasted remotely like beef? I haven't had the opportunity for an
impossible burger yet but I've never found any veggie product to be remotely
close to meat imitation.

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Moto7451
For what it's worth, I don't want veggie burgers to taste like beef. I want
them to taste like a veggie burger. The ones that try too hard to taste like
meat (save for this one perhaps), taste weird at best and terrible at worst.
Beets, oats, and beans make for a pretty good meal.

For health reasons I don't eat much beef these days, so a veggie burger is the
way to go at a lot of stands (or Chicken if I'm eating meat that day). I'm
pretty happy deciding between the two instead of choosing one instead of the
other.

I can appreciate the ideal of a marketable plant based product that tastes
like beef but from a culinary standpoint I think it makes sense to just enjoy
it for what it is. No one is trying to make Falafel taste like pulled pork.
It's good as it is.

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dkonofalski
This burger is not for you, then.

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magic_beans
Who is the audience for this burger? I was a vegetarian growing up and to this
day I prefer a balanced veggie burger (made of beans, grains, and veggies) to
a beer burger. I would be horrified to eat something made of plants so
desperately pretending to be meat... or which "bleeds".

Why don't we just raise and slaughter cattle humanely instead?

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cbhl
Meat eaters that don't want to give up the "taste" of meat to become
vegetarian (e.g. for environmental or animal ethics reasons).

This is a "10x" sort of product -- for every 1 person who is willing to give
up food that they think is delicious to become vegetarian, there are probably
10 people who wouldn't mind switching because the reasons are valid, but don't
have the willpower or desire to give up burgers and fried chicken.

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et-al
Following this line of thought, imagine the reduction of cow slaughtering if
all the fast food chains started serving Impossible burgers.

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hateful
That Chrome update that won't auto play videos can't come fast enough.

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gjs278
I've eaten this. Aside from the weird crispiness around the edges, it's pretty
good.

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asciimo
I like this video of Adam Savage trying the Impossible Burger at Jardiniere,
from kitchen to table.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF9bf9uKQQk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF9bf9uKQQk)

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hprotagonist
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3opRTD6nHWg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3opRTD6nHWg)

even jezza the orangutan wasn't fooled.

More broadly, I, an omnivore, would be overwhelmingly more likely to eat a
good vegetarian meal than an ersatz meat-containing meal. Be honest with your
ingredients and your food will be tastier.

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dpiers
Impossible Foods' lab and tech is very impressive. It's like they are the
company Hampton Creek pretends to be.

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cestith
I wonder when people will realize that not all the land used by animal
agriculture is particularly suited to high-yield crop outputs. I'd be less
concerned with the portion of land being used for animal agriculture and more
concerned about the amount of crop land being used for animal feed.

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bradbeattie
Is the implication here that meat-reduced diets are less ecologically
sustainable in your opinion? Considering that biomass transfer efficiency
typically sits around 10%, it's likely still better to eat the majority of our
crops directly.

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cestith
Red-meat reduced diets are likely much more efficient, especially grain-fed
cattle. Animals that graze well on rocky, nutrition-poor land like goats or
that can be raised in small plots lots goats, chickens, and crickets can have
far less impact.

Primarily, though, I'm saying that the biggest impact isn't the raw amount of
land being used by animal agriculture. It's the amount of productive cropland
that's not being used for human crops but for animal feed. If your goal is to
eat the crops directly, then feeding the same grains humans eat to cattle is
counter to that goal.

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throwaway613834
Should I try this? I tried the Beyond Burger and was unimpressed... I found
the existing vegetarian patties tastier. Is this any better?

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RandomInteger4
Who the fuck wants their burger to bleed? Seriously, why is this a thing? If
it were real meat, I'd be even more concerned if it were bleeding, because
undercooked ground meat is one of the worst things you can put in your food-
hole.

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Larrikin
Ground meat is only dangerous if it's been sitting. Beef is perfectly safe to
serve at rare if it's been ground the day of serving. Personally I think
medium is the absolute minimum, not because safety concerns, but more because
burger falls apart more easily the less it's cooked.

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Domenic_S
> _Beef is perfectly safe to serve at rare if it 's been ground the day of
> serving_

Why would that be the case?

The reason we can cook and eat steaks rare is because dangerous bacteria form
on the outside surface of the steak, and cooking the outside while leaving the
inside rare destroys the bacteria. Grinding the beef mixes the surface of the
beef with the inside, meaning you should cook the inside to 165F as well.

That's my understanding at least...

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shadykiller
I'm still skeptical if veganism suits everyone. I don't think we lived 100%
off plants at any point in history. There isn't much evidence that plant based
protein is superior or equivalent to animal based(grass fed).

Also, agriculture itself isn't blood free. So many animals die while procuring
the land for agriculture or even while growing crops on an agricultural land.

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bhj
> There isn't much evidence that plant based protein is superior or equivalent
> to animal based(grass fed).

Where do you think the animals get the protein from in the first place? (hint:
you already mentioned it)

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detritus
Don't cows get protein from the gajillions of microbial creatures that digest
the grass they eat, rather than from the grass directly?

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empath75
It’s interesting that vegetarian types that are so obsessed with food purity
and GMOs would eat a frankenfood like this.

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stu_k
Vegetarian means you don't eat animals, not that you don't eat GMOs...

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rublev
You know very well what they meant. The same 'type' of person is more likely
to be into 'cleansing' and yoga and other middle class nonsense that others
don't have the time or money to think/care about and will freuquently deceive
themselves. "I don't eat meat or any of those fake GMO's! _Oh look, a non beef
burger!_ " in the same breath.

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throwaway613834
How many vegetarians do you know and what fraction of them fall in this
category?

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Fogest
I can say I don't fall into such a category and I am vegetarian. Definitely
have no problem with GM foods :).

