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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

#571

Post by Already__Taken »

dragonwriter wrote: post #529
gowld wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lea…

Like you point out, it's maddening people are missing this all over. This isn't for vegetarians to eat something like meat again, it's for meat eaters to carry on not giving a shit about what they eat.

And it can't be cheaper than a real meat burger, because consumers will kill its adoption by calling it the "cheap" product. Regardless of merit or quality.

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

#572

Post by andygates »

dotancohen wrote: post #546
Jedi72 wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Every time you press the accelerator pedal on your car you are spewing CO2 into the atmosphere. Every time is bad. That does not mean that we stop driving. We drive less.

That's not fundamentally ethical at scale, it's a systems problem. "Do the least damage" is the interim fix while the industry decarbonizes.

Not eating cute critters is fundamentally ethical.

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

#573

Post by Emma_Goldman »

tialaramex wrote: post #568
patothon wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, the place in Brixton that sells these has made a big deal every time I've eaten there about how hey, this doesn't have meat in it, and I'm like "I know, believe me, if you made burgers with meat that were like this I would never eat here again". It's passable, but it is not good. Like you I'm conscious of the need to consume less meat, and these burgers are a step, but let's hope this isn't the destination. The…

"They've taken the "veggie burger" from "actually I've changed my mind, I'm not hungry after all" to reluctant acceptance."

This sounds like small-minded prejudice. Of all of the ingredients with which you can make veggie burgers, you would refuse all of them? Keep in mind that you can make burgers out of virtually anything.

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

#574

Post by lapinot »

rconti wrote: post #157
veryworried wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is basically the vegetarian version of an unhealthy burger. If you wouldn’t normally eat a whopper for health reasons, then you have no reason to start eating this.

Burgers aren't really that unhealthy. Skip the fried onions and fried jalapenos and aioli and mayo and it's no big deal. I just had a 1/3lb bison burger last night in a pita, with all kinds of good stuff (feta, sweet hot mustard, ketchup, jalapenos) and it's something like 550 calories. It's quite easy to have a healthy-ish meat burger. Skip the fries and soda. I make black bean burgers sometimes, and they actually h…

Yeah right, i'm sure BK is really putting a lot of money into small family businesses with diversified farming light on the ecosystems using no herbicides/insecticides, and not mega food-industry with fields that have thousand of hectares of a single crop and get farmed using a whole fleet of huge diesel machines, get a load of pharma chemicals dropped on their head preventively to make sure no other life form gets to survive in that field.

I'm picking on you now but it fcking freaks me out how this whole page seems to feel concerned about "healthy food", "veganism", "ecology". This is a fast-food mega-corp, they are part of one of the ugliest side of the already disgusting industrial food chain. They are right on incompatible with any kind of healthiness you could imagine (of human beings, of crops, polinators, overall countryside ecosystems, farmers). Hey, fast-food/sweet-drink business uses the same marketing strategies than tobacco groups. Or pharma. These are the people that created all the massive public health issues we've got since say '50s. Cancer, diabetes, obesity, one-off epidemics (h5n1, h1n1, mad cow...).

And i didn't even start talking about work conditions or economic aspects of these bastards (the corps, not targeting any individuals here).

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

#575

Post by Emma_Goldman »

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 consider it wrong to torture and kill animals for your pleasure, as many vegans and vegetarians do, then it's unlikely that you think that occasionally torturing and killing animals, and eating their dead bodies, is either moral or appetising.

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

#576

Post by imtringued »

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 would wager a meat eater wouldn't know the difference

If this is true the processed food industry would no longer use real meat if the fake meat is cheaper.

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

#577

Post by imtringued »

Already__Taken wrote: post #571
dragonwriter wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 lea…

Like you point out, it's maddening people are missing this all over. This isn't for vegetarians to eat something like meat again, it's for meat eaters to carry on not giving a shit about what they eat. And it can't be cheaper than a real meat burger, because consumers will kill its adoption by calling it the "cheap" product. Regardless of merit or quality.

No it wouldn't kill the adoption. It would become practically mandatory for processed food and the only way to eat real meat would then be to buy it and prepare it yourself.

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

#578

Post by hkyeti »

tfehring wrote: post #539
bitesociety wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now plant based meat is well under 1 percent of the meat market in the US and it's realistic it could become the majority within 10 years. Who will get the bulk of that is up for grabs, I invested in a smaller competitor to beyond and impossible which had a much lower valuation but with product I think it's right up there with them. Personally I'm a big supporter of them all

I'm really bullish on the possibility of a wide range of competitors for any given meat alternative. There are probably 10+ different brands of prepackaged beef burgers at most grocery stores, and there's a lot more room for differentiation if you're building a product from scratch than if you're just deciding which cows to grind up and shape into a patty. Do you mind sharing the name of the company you're referring…

Sure, have emailed you the company name. Thx

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

#579

Post by tialaramex »

briandear wrote: post #520
delfinom wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forget that in America, we'll just bail the farmers out and start shoveling subsidized overproduced meat everywhere we can.

Farmers in Europe and Canada are also heavily subsidized.

Food security. Anywhere paying attention to history knows that you can get starved into submission, so if you don't have food security any money you spent on walls, navies, missile silos etcetera was pointless. So it makes good public policy sense to subsidize local food production and/or have high tariffs on imported food.

In WWII Britain came closest to having to surrender due to food shortages. It didn't have then (and doesn't have now) enough food production to feed everybody, it relies on imports, and during a war that gets tricky. It got down to, I think, one week's rations on hand. If the U-boats had been just a little bit luckier for just another couple of weeks the British government anticipated uncontrollably levels of public disorder and then one way or another surrender.

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

#580

Post by macintux »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #573
tialaramex wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the place in Brixton that sells these has made a big deal every time I've eaten there about how hey, this doesn't have meat in it, and I'm like "I know, believe me, if you made burgers with meat that were like this I would never eat here again". It's passable, but it is not good. Like you I'm conscious of the need to consume less meat, and these burgers are a step, but let's hope this isn't the destination. The…

"They've taken the "veggie burger" from "actually I've changed my mind, I'm not hungry after all" to reluctant acceptance." This sounds like small-minded prejudice. Of all of the ingredients with which you can make veggie burgers, you would refuse all of them? Keep in mind that you can make burgers out of virtually anything.

Someone who repeatedly tries veggie burgers is prejudiced against the concept? Or simply hasn’t found one they like?

Per the HN guidelines:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

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