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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

#252
post #150

Frankly, I'm a little tired of the meat-substitute products, as they don't taste as good nor are they likely to be as healthy as a proper, whole-food plant veggie burger. Impossible Burger 1.0 was vital wheat gluten based, and Impossible Burger 2.0 will be soy based. I'd probably rather have the 2nd over the first, but a lot of these announcements aren't specific about which formulation is being sold. I have tried th…

I would say Burger King isn't about healthy or good tasting, but rather fast, cheap and convenient.

My comment was more about Impossible / Beyond, and their ilk, the ones taking in lots of investment money, and inking deals with fast food, and gourmet chains alike.

Impossible started in "nicer" restaurants and is moving downmarket.

Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods

#253

The Impossible Burger is the best veggie burger I've ever had. I was a vegetarian for 10 years, and have now been a pescatarian for 8 years. It has been 18 years since I have had a proper cheeseburger, and since then I have had many thousands of veggie burgers. Cheeseburgers are probably my favorite food, and I haven't had one in 18 years. If someone told me that the world would end tomorrow, I would go out and eat a…

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Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods

#255

Every modern society, looking back fifty years, condemns behavior once considered normal (male-only voting, interracial marriage bans, jailing gays, etc). I'm convinced industrial animal agriculture will be one of the things today's society is condemned for, fifty years from now.

I don't think that will happen until we get both cheaper and better animal product substitutes. Vegan substitutes usually fail at both which means they are niche mid-upper class foods.

Although that seems like it would hopefully fix itself as demand for vegan substitutes increases. The Impossible Burger is a good example of a vegan substitute that tastes uncannily like the thing it imitates.

As for cost, it seems intuitive that turning soy into a milk substitute would be cheaper than feeding soy to a cow and milking it if both were done on the same scale. On top of that, some countries tax substitutes higher than the products they replace. In Germany, for example, non-dairy milk has a VAT rate of 19% while dairy milk gets the reduced 7% rate for staple foods.

Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's your motivation for eating fish/vegetarian? it sounds like you really want meat and your current situation is a kind of sacrifice?

I became a vegetarian for ethical reasons; I trust it's not hard to imagine or look up what those reasons are. At the time, I felt strongly about this. Over the years, I discovered I felt less strongly about it, but it was a deeply ingrained habit by that point. I also discovered that even though I no longer carried a deep moral imperative to not eat meat, I still carried a deep personal connection to the person I wa…

I stay pesca for ease of diet. Even in nowhere, US you can walk into a diner and get a fish sandwich.

"how often are you in nowhere, US?"

and that's about how often I eat fish. To me it's just a less bad choice, which in my brain is still a net positive gain on the meal.

Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods

#257
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people seem to go vegan because they're emotionally off-kilter. I'm in a few vegan Facebook groups and I've seen posts where people are way over-reacting to food cooked on the same surface, or talking about their emotional breakdown over the suffering of animals. I'm vegan almost two years and I'm pretty sure I ate mayo on a burger two weeks ago. I ordered it explicitly without, but sending it back would just cr…

> Some people seem to go vegan because they're emotionally off-kilter. And a lot of people have religious reasons for not eating meat.

Those two statements aren't mutually exclusive. Some are religious, some are off-kilter and some are both.

Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods

#258

Are they cooked separately from the meat burgers? Some people don’t care, but some definitely do. Carl’s Jr. doesn’t keep their Beyond Burgers separate, apparently.

Just out of interest, what's the reasoning behind a strict separation of the two? I understand it in the case of gluten free products because that can really have health implications, but when you are vegan for ethical reasons it shouldn't make a difference, right? But I'd say this is great news either way. I like meat, but when there's a way to get the same taste and texture without the bad consequences for animals…

Religious reasons, for one.

Some vegetarians are just very grossed out by it (I'm one of them).

I generally look the other way at very minor cross contamination, its probably going to happen once in a while, especially if I don't know about it, but if I taste meat juices in my food I completely lose my appetite. I once bit into sausage that found its way into my pizza (I suspect it fell into the cheese) and I couldn't eat pizza for a while after that. (of course, for a burger that's supposed to taste exactly like beef, you wouldn't know...)

If you think that makes me crazy or whatever, then so be it.

Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods

#259
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people seem to go vegan because they're emotionally off-kilter. I'm in a few vegan Facebook groups and I've seen posts where people are way over-reacting to food cooked on the same surface, or talking about their emotional breakdown over the suffering of animals. I'm vegan almost two years and I'm pretty sure I ate mayo on a burger two weeks ago. I ordered it explicitly without, but sending it back would just cr…

Interesting. Speaking as a carnivore, I find eating human flesh morally wrong, and would be quite insulted if someone cooked my burger next to some 'man' burger. So I can understand their point of view.

You are not the target audience for the Impossible Burger.

Re: Burger King is introducing a vegetarian patty from the start-up Impossible Foods

#260
post #184

The Impossible Burger is the best veggie burger I've ever had. I was a vegetarian for 10 years, and have now been a pescatarian for 8 years. It has been 18 years since I have had a proper cheeseburger, and since then I have had many thousands of veggie burgers. Cheeseburgers are probably my favorite food, and I haven't had one in 18 years. If someone told me that the world would end tomorrow, I would go out and eat a…

Why don't you think that fish is meat?

This question could be posed better, but it does deserve an answer. "Meat" does not have a precise biological meaning; its meaning is largely cultural. Some people distinguish "red meat" and "white meat"; others understand meat as separate from poultry, and seafood (is fish seafood? same story). In fact, in some languages the word for "meat" is more specific to mammal meat - e.g. french, "viande" vs "volaille" - in others less so: in Japanese, 魚 (fish) is definitely not 肉 (meat) but you eat 牛肉 (cow-meat) and 鳥肉 (bird-meat).

The vocabulary of cooking is full of these sort of things (legumes/vegetables/fruits/...is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? is a potato a vegetable?)

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