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

nytimes.com

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

#521

Post by bzbarsky »

magduf wrote: post #250
bzbarsky wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In this case, "chemicals" is shorthand for "bad chemicals." One problem is that lots of people include tons of known harmless stuff under "bad chemicals" because it's "artificial" (even if it's chemically identical to "natural" things that they praise at the same time). Or put another way, the use of "chemicals" in discussions like this often suffers from the problem described at " rel="nofollow">https://rationalwi…

>One problem is that lots of people include tons of known harmless stuff under "bad chemicals" because it's "artificial" (even if it's chemically identical to "natural" things that they praise at the same time). People who believe in homeopathy don't believe this, since they believe that purified water has "memory", so logically they would also think that naturally-derived and artificially-derived but otherwise ident…

I like that comparison!

One caveat, though: the identity of chemicals needs to be pretty carefully defined. Especially any time chiral things are involved, naturally-derived things are much more likely to be a pure enantiomer or close to it while artificial synthesis is more likely to produce racemates unless you are very careful.

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

#523

Post by tonmoy »

cmonnow wrote: post #439
tonmoy wrote: post #434

This may sound like a stupid question, but I am genuinely trying to know/see what people at HN think. Is it less ethical to kill and eat mammals/birds than plants? I know farming and eating animals is certainly worse for the environment, but I wanted to know the ethics aspects of it. Why is the life of a potato tree any less significant than a cow’s? Edit: wording

Probably the same reason why the life of a cow is apparently less significant than that of a human. There is a hierarchy of 'life'. Those who try to say 'All or Nothing' when it comes to harming a sentient being are either ignorant or simply trying to justify their meat-eating habits.

I am definitely justifying eating meat, but that is not a fallacy of the argument by itself. If you think of “hierarchy of life” as being closely related to us, then I could justify eating super intelligent octopus over cows. Again if you mean the hierarchy as intelligence then I would ask if it is ok to consume the less intelligent variants within a specific species. Moreover, would it be ethical if we bred/genetically engineered a cow/chicken which have near zero IQ and no emotion at all and consumed that only?

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

#524

Post by patothon »

mratzloff wrote: post #301
scott_s wrote: post #174

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…

As a vegetarian and former meat eater, I've had an "impossible taco" a couple of times. I don't want or crave meat, but they tasted very good. However, the texture totally weirded me out and both times I checked more than once to make sure they didn't accidentally serve me meat. I would wager a meat eater wouldn't know the difference if they were accidentally served these vegetarian tacos instead of beef.

I eat meat and occasionally eat impossible burgers to reduce my meat consumption, and you can definitely tell. Just not as good.

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

#526

Post by docbrown »

odyssey7 wrote: post #365
mratzloff wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a vegetarian and former meat eater, I've had an "impossible taco" a couple of times. I don't want or crave meat, but they tasted very good. However, the texture totally weirded me out and both times I checked more than once to make sure they didn't accidentally serve me meat. I would wager a meat eater wouldn't know the difference if they were accidentally served these vegetarian tacos instead of beef.

In a fast food environment, as a vegetarian, I don’t think I would order this unless there was an easy way for me to verify which burger I was eating.

Also as a vegetarian, there is a clear difference in the earlier veggie patties that Burger King served—Morning Star possibly, not these—and that of a regular whopper meat patty.

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

#527

Post by landa »

henrikschroder wrote: post #376
int_19h wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I'm not at all a vegetarian, but I will definitely try it, and if it's as good as they say, I see no reason to not prefer it. There's a small subset of the population for whom meat consumption is some kind of cultural statement, but most really only just care about taste, I think. If the same taste can be had in a healthier package and without killing anything, it's a win-win.

> If the same taste can be had in a healthier package and without killing anything, it's a win-win. Most people that are vegan or vegetarian choose that, because the ethics part of eating meat is the most important factor for them, with price and taste and nutrition trailing that. And then a lot of those people make the assumption that everyone who isn't vegan absolutely doesn't care about the ethics of it. But that…

You can't "care about ethics" if you care about something like taste more. That's like saying you care about the ethics of not stealing, but you care about having an expensive stolen thing more. You just don't care about the ethics.

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

#528

Post by Jedi72 »

jopsen wrote: post #414
scott_s wrote: post #174

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…

If you really like cheeseburgers that much how about just eating fewer? :) Does it have to be an all or nothing experience?

If you are vego for ethical reasons then yes, every time its bad.

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

#529

Post by dragonwriter »

gowld wrote: post #279
scott_s wrote: post #174

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…

It's an Impossible Burger, and left undersaid is that it's a fast-food burger. It's not an Impossible Steak or an Impossible Grill Burger. I just don't see the point, vs a high-protein high-fat patty made of bean or soy protein isolate that tastes good in it own non-fake-fast-good-meat-burger way. The only reason I am tempted to buy meat patties is that they are so much cheaper than Boca patties. An even-more-expensi…

> It's an Impossible Burger, and left undersaid is that it's a fast-food burger.

Since it's right up front in the headline that it's Burger King,I don't think the fast food part is “undersaid”.

> I just don't see the point, vs a high-protein high-fat patty made of bean or soy protein isolate that tastes good in it own non-fake-fast-good-meat-burger way.

If you don't see the point of fast food, you can, I hope, at least see that lots of people do.

And since there are people going off meat for environmental or ethical reasons, providing them an open which is both attractive in taste to their current palette and fitting with their existing lifestyle but for the change they are deliberately making seems to have obvious value.

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

#530

Post by dragonwriter »

Not_a_pizza wrote: post #369
scott_s wrote: post #174

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…

The irony is that most people have given up on Burger King because of the poor dietary selection. In the breakfast menu, there is almost nothing to eat that is not high cholesterol and/or fattening. If Burger King manages to leverage this new item effectively, they could assist in saving the lives of the same people that they are helping to make piss poor life choices with.

> The irony is that most people have given up on Burger King because of the poor dietary selection.

[citation needed]

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