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Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

arstechnica.com

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Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#11

Post by [deleted] »

tjr225 wrote: post #9
peterlk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're joking or not. Smoking used to be considered healthy, leeches were healthy, letting blood was how you got over sickness, drinking a mercury-based concoction was once thought to be an elixir of immortality. Maybe coffee is good, maybe it's bad. Maybe wine is good, maybe it's bad. How often are diets shown to not do the things they are supposed to? Humans are wrong about nutrition (and health) a…

Are you seriously comparing smoking and bloodletting to a veggie burger? What sort of insanity is this Maybe HN has jumped ship and I need to simply move on.

[deleted]

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#12

Post by grandpoobah »

tjr225 wrote: post #9
peterlk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're joking or not. Smoking used to be considered healthy, leeches were healthy, letting blood was how you got over sickness, drinking a mercury-based concoction was once thought to be an elixir of immortality. Maybe coffee is good, maybe it's bad. Maybe wine is good, maybe it's bad. How often are diets shown to not do the things they are supposed to? Humans are wrong about nutrition (and health) a…

Are you seriously comparing smoking and bloodletting to a veggie burger? What sort of insanity is this Maybe HN has jumped ship and I need to simply move on.

Yep, peterlk speaks for all of us. You'd better leave.

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#13

Post by foobiekr »

cosmojg wrote: post #3
pmoriarty wrote: post #2

It'll be interesting to see what effect this stuff has on people after 20 years of use. Until then, I'm not touching it. There are plenty of other tasty meat substitutes out there with more tried-and-true ingredients.

It's an analog of hemoglobin. What kinds of dangers can it possibly pose?

I'm on your side, but not too long ago people would just as easily have asked "it's an analog of estrogen, what kinds of dangers can if possibly pose?"

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#15

Post by clankfan »

I've had several impossible burgers and they completely live up to the hype. They taste very good indeed. But I have noticed a slight uptick in anxiety after eating them, maybe 30 mins after or so. This anxiety comes out of the blue, the first few burgers I had, I had zero health or safety thoughts in my mind that might have precipitated the anxiety. Interested if anyone else has had a similar experience.

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#16

Post by jlawson »

maxxxxx wrote: post #14

I don't get the point of having a veggie burger bleed. I tried an Impossible Burger a while ago and didn't find it that great. It doesn't taste like real meat and is just an average veggie burger. I think it's more of a gimmick.

The goal isn't just to have a "veggie burger bleed", it's to replicate the experience of eating meat.

Perhaps they have failed so far (according to your taste test), but the goal is valid. If someone can find a way to make a product near-indistinguishable from meat without raising and killing animals, it would be a massive victory for the environment (meat production is CO2-intensive), for the cause of bringing decent food to poor people, and for reducing animal suffering.

It may be one of the most underrated technological efforts happening right now IMO.

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#17

Post by perl4ever »

tjr225 wrote: post #9
peterlk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're joking or not. Smoking used to be considered healthy, leeches were healthy, letting blood was how you got over sickness, drinking a mercury-based concoction was once thought to be an elixir of immortality. Maybe coffee is good, maybe it's bad. Maybe wine is good, maybe it's bad. How often are diets shown to not do the things they are supposed to? Humans are wrong about nutrition (and health) a…

Are you seriously comparing smoking and bloodletting to a veggie burger? What sort of insanity is this Maybe HN has jumped ship and I need to simply move on.

I'm not saying the concern is right or wrong, but...the sort of people who aren't fussy about what they put in their mouths may be off somewhere happily eating a burger from McDonald's.

Being concerned about the quality of what you consume is likely to be correlated with being skeptical about meat substitutes made in a lab. I suspect the whole project of incorporating a little inherent contradiction.

If you tell me meat is not good for my health, or the planet, and I'm convinced, then I'm going to reason that I should probably just minimize my meat consumption and eat things based on age-old recipes, not be a fanatic about meatless purity or seek out weird meat substitutes.

This may not be an obvious point of view if you see avoiding meat as primarily an animal rights issue and associate it with technological progress.

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#18

Post by Jade_Jet »

peterlk wrote: post #6
cosmojg wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an analog of hemoglobin. What kinds of dangers can it possibly pose?

I can't tell if you're joking or not. Smoking used to be considered healthy, leeches were healthy, letting blood was how you got over sickness, drinking a mercury-based concoction was once thought to be an elixir of immortality. Maybe coffee is good, maybe it's bad. Maybe wine is good, maybe it's bad. How often are diets shown to not do the things they are supposed to? Humans are wrong about nutrition (and health) a…

http://web.uconn.edu/mcbstaff/graf/Medical.html

Leeches actually are valid medical science. There just were not better alternatives at the time, and they sometimes can still be used today.

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#19

Post by maxxxxx »

jlawson wrote: post #16
maxxxxx wrote: post #14

I don't get the point of having a veggie burger bleed. I tried an Impossible Burger a while ago and didn't find it that great. It doesn't taste like real meat and is just an average veggie burger. I think it's more of a gimmick.

The goal isn't just to have a "veggie burger bleed", it's to replicate the experience of eating meat. Perhaps they have failed so far (according to your taste test), but the goal is valid. If someone can find a way to make a product near-indistinguishable from meat without raising and killing animals, it would be a massive victory for the environment (meat production is CO2-intensive), for the cause of bringing decen…

I think for that purpose it's better to work on lab-grown meat. Making veggies taste like meat seems misguided to me. Either eat real veggies or eat real meat.

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#20

Post by dnbgfher »

maxxxxx wrote: post #14

I don't get the point of having a veggie burger bleed. I tried an Impossible Burger a while ago and didn't find it that great. It doesn't taste like real meat and is just an average veggie burger. I think it's more of a gimmick.

So I'm coming at this from the perspective of somebody that has been vegetarian for about a decade or so.

I agree the bleeding bit seems pretty gimmicky, but if it helps convince non-vegetarians to give it shot it might make sense.

Otherwise, I rather disagree with your post. It's certainly one of the better veggie burgers that, to me, tastes quite a bit like real meat. The Beyond Burger, which is in the same niche as the Impossible Burger, actually tastes too much like meat for my mother (vegetarian for far longer than me) to enjoy. I don't think I'd confuse either of those for real meat, but it does hit a lot of the same notes which is more than I can say for any other veggie burger I have tried.

A friend who really enjoys his meat tried the Impossible Burger and found it almost identical to some non-burger meat. I think it was some sort of pate from an animal I don't think many Americans usually eat.

I suspect you haven't tried many of the standard grocery store veggie burgers. Like so many vegetarian and vegan products, despite their branding they are really more for making a new dish that's similar to the meat version. I think if they branded themselves more as alternatives rather than exact replacements they would be far more acceptable to people.

Only recently, with products like the Imposible and Beyond Burger, have we started to see products that are really starting to push into the realm of direct replacements. I don't think it's fair to call them just average veggie burgers.

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