The real impact of this kind of technology will be when it becomes cheaper and starts to interest the general public.
Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods
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Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
You really cannot strictly equate price with "resources" like this. Does a $10,000 designer shirt require 1,000 times the resources of a $10 t-shirt to produce? I imagine they are charging a premium for the impossible burger because it's a novelty and they think they can get it. Time will tell if that pricing model is sustainable in the long run.
I said production costs or fancy vacations to the process owners. Ie: cost + profit = price. The $10000 shirt may pay for a lot of “designers” to tour the world about how great their shirt is, or for a celebrity to build a bigger house in exchange for an endorsement. Or it could pay for $9990 in subsidizing reforestation, but doubtful.
A more profitable alternative to meat that's popular with the mass market would be a huge victory for conservation and animal rights.
Even if you hate those greedy rich people, their greed will mean their interests (more profit) will align with yours (fewer mistreated animals, less land devoted to meat-production).
Holding out for the capitalists to spontaneously get religion ("$9990 in subsidizing reforestation") seems like a losing bet here.
Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods
#73Damn, this day is ruining me. Took me way too long to realize that the title has beef-less written, not bee-less. Anyway, Fast Food-Franchises are IMHO the perfect breeding-ground to raise lab-grown meat to success. Most of their meat is processed to a degree, that you can't taste the original texture or figure out their real source of it. And they are one of the biggest sellers for meat. Removing this chain will be…
I agree, but Impossible isn't lab grown meat, it's just made from plants. https://faq.impossiblefoods.com/hc/en-us/articles/3600189374...
Oh, thx! TIL.
Seems I had a bad misconception here. This brand is not available in my country and I only ever heard of indirectly. But reading up on it, I see where it's coming from.
Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods
#74I tried the impossible burger and personally didn't notice a difference. The boyfriend tried a bite, and liked it, but could taste something off. I'm kinda excited to see where both the impossible burger goes, and where other restaurants take this. Also for the price to come down, it was like $3 more than the boyfriend's burger
There's a version 2.0 with different ingredients that supposedly tastes even closer to real meat.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18855695
I tried version 1 and it tasted indistinguishable from meat.
Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods
#75The real impact of this kind of technology will be when it becomes cheaper and starts to interest the general public.
Agreed - As someone who enjoys the taste and the effort being made, Impossible burgers still feel very much like a novelty. There are several restaurants in my area serving Impossible burgers, but they are usually the most expensive burger on the menu. Given that this is going to be a dollar more than a standard whopper, it'll cost the same as a double whopper.
With that, the only real incentive to eat the impossible whopper over the standard whopper would be personal motivation to eat less meat. And I'll hazard a guess that most people eating Burger King aren't immediately concerned with cutting down their meat consumption.
Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods
#76I had the impossible burger at Momofuku and... it's just nothing like a burger, the two big differences being in flavor and in texture. (It looks the same as a regular burger.) In flavor, it just doesn't have it. It has the same char flavor that a burger has... but without any meat flavor behind it, which is of course most of the flavor of a hamburger. Which makes sense, of course, because there's no meat. It's like…
Maybe try version 2.0, if that wasn't version 2.
Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easy to make spurious claims like "a $6 burger expends more resources than a $3 burger" when you don't define what "resources" mean in this case.
Somebody is spending those dollars, they’re not burning them. If you have an extra dollar, what do you do with it? You either spend it on land, labour or capital. Stuff, property, or other people that will spend it on one of the three above things.
Ever heard of R&D...?
Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods
#78The article says a 90% reduction in cholesterol for the impossible burger, but shouldn't a vegetarian option have 0 cholesterol?
Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods
#79> Burger King’s chief marketing officer, Fernando Machado, said that in the company’s testing so far, customers and even employees had not been able to tell the difference between the old meaty Whopper and the new one. Ugh. First: The vegetarians that I know don't like meat. So making a veggie burger that tastes like the thing they don't like is just dumb. Second: When I tasted an Impossible Burger, it was awful. It…
For those like myself who have a diet largely consisting of meat, this sounds great for the exact reasons you described; reduced environmental impact and possibly greater personal health. I agree that the original Impossible Burger was disappointing, but if they manage to incrementally improve to the point of being barely distinguishable, I think overall its a really good thing.
There is a version 2 now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18855695
Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somebody is spending those dollars, they’re not burning them. If you have an extra dollar, what do you do with it? You either spend it on land, labour or capital. Stuff, property, or other people that will spend it on one of the three above things.
Ever heard of R&D...?
I’d put that under labour and/or capital. And the equipment bought for the R&D requires building (ie: uses up resources), or the people involved spend that money on other stuff.