GRA
Well-known member
PBS Newshour story: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/c...repreneurs-fool-you-with-a-plant-based-burger
Owing to cattle raising being the most energy intensive meat there is, about a decade ago I shifted most of my meat intake from beef to pork and especially poultry (the least energy intensive), except for special occasions. I still like beef, though, and would love to have a veggie burger that looked, smelled and tasted like hamburger. When I was in my teens back in the '70s my mom was a serious health food addict - if it was unappealing and/or inedible, she'd serve it to me :lol: I tried many of the veggie meat substitutes back then, and they were pretty bad. Certainly no one who liked to eat meat would consider switching, even ignoring the then-exorbitant cost. I did have some organic beef once, grass-fed etc., and it tasted different from supermarket hamburger - it was better!
This new stuff seems to be meeting the taste, smell and texture tests, but currently costs about twice as much as grass-fed beef, six times as much as corn-fed, so it's at about Tesla Model S circa 2012 as far as mass-pricing goes. And one of the two companies' process is GMO, so that's out for those who care. Still, if they can get the price down and also manage to produce steaks and whatnot, we might be able to radically reduce our food energy use, not to mention the amount of land used for fodder (which would probably be used for ethanol, so no net gain there). Has anyone tried any of this - Whole Foods apparently carries Beyond Meat burgers, the non-GMO one: http://beyondmeat.com/? The other company is Impossible Foods: https://www.impossiblefoods.com/
Owing to cattle raising being the most energy intensive meat there is, about a decade ago I shifted most of my meat intake from beef to pork and especially poultry (the least energy intensive), except for special occasions. I still like beef, though, and would love to have a veggie burger that looked, smelled and tasted like hamburger. When I was in my teens back in the '70s my mom was a serious health food addict - if it was unappealing and/or inedible, she'd serve it to me :lol: I tried many of the veggie meat substitutes back then, and they were pretty bad. Certainly no one who liked to eat meat would consider switching, even ignoring the then-exorbitant cost. I did have some organic beef once, grass-fed etc., and it tasted different from supermarket hamburger - it was better!
This new stuff seems to be meeting the taste, smell and texture tests, but currently costs about twice as much as grass-fed beef, six times as much as corn-fed, so it's at about Tesla Model S circa 2012 as far as mass-pricing goes. And one of the two companies' process is GMO, so that's out for those who care. Still, if they can get the price down and also manage to produce steaks and whatnot, we might be able to radically reduce our food energy use, not to mention the amount of land used for fodder (which would probably be used for ethanol, so no net gain there). Has anyone tried any of this - Whole Foods apparently carries Beyond Meat burgers, the non-GMO one: http://beyondmeat.com/? The other company is Impossible Foods: https://www.impossiblefoods.com/