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Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide

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Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide

#141

Post by [deleted] »

sgillen wrote: post #100
goda90 wrote: post #41

Here an interesting quote[0] from the founder of Impossible Burger that kind of touches on the meatless vs vegetarian/vegan discussion happening a lot in this thread: "[Before becoming a vegan] I loved putting milk in my coffee and cereal, but plant-based milks don’t work for me so far. No-one is trying very hard to deliver the full experience of what consumers value from milk. We don’t want to follow the course of s…

Ironically I find that I (vegetarian, not vegan) tend to enjoy meat replacements that don't try replicate meat. I find the ones that DO try to replicate meats taste are just not very good at it, and it ends up tasting pretty bad. The good stuff is still tasty and savory but it's doing its own thing. edit: Not to say the impossible burger can't be good (I've not been able to try one) Just a comment on existing product…

[deleted]

Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide

#142

Post by dsfyu404ed »

ndespres wrote: post #132
goda90 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not going to just convince the average consumer to not buy the $1.55 burger in front of them by telling them to think about the upstream. You need to provide them with a straightforward alternative. Right now a $5 meatless burger might be able to compete with a $5 beef burger, but it's still going to lose in the $1.55 weight class.

If people had to pay the true cost rather than the often subsidized one, it would be a more equal choice. I wouldn't propose to market "meaty" vs "meatless" on the basis of these hidden costs. The irony to me is that the $1.55 burger is truly the "impossible" one. Without massive subsidies for feed corn, water, farm labor, etc the value meal burger would not exist.

There is no "true cost". It always boils down to an whether or not any given side effect should be covered and that always boils down to subjective and opinionated arguments.

Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide

#143

Post by arcticbull »

sgillen wrote: post #100
goda90 wrote: post #41

Here an interesting quote[0] from the founder of Impossible Burger that kind of touches on the meatless vs vegetarian/vegan discussion happening a lot in this thread: "[Before becoming a vegan] I loved putting milk in my coffee and cereal, but plant-based milks don’t work for me so far. No-one is trying very hard to deliver the full experience of what consumers value from milk. We don’t want to follow the course of s…

Ironically I find that I (vegetarian, not vegan) tend to enjoy meat replacements that don't try replicate meat. I find the ones that DO try to replicate meats taste are just not very good at it, and it ends up tasting pretty bad. The good stuff is still tasty and savory but it's doing its own thing. edit: Not to say the impossible burger can't be good (I've not been able to try one) Just a comment on existing product…

In general I agree with you, though I will say that the Impossible burgers are just plain good. I order them over meat when I get the chance, and I'm not a diet activist. They just made a good product.

Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide

#144

Post by scruple »

rmason wrote: post #64
hhs wrote: post #32

I lived in England for a bit and remember fast food places commonly having veggie burgers. This was both in Burger King and McDonald's. It was super convenient for that occasional quick bite. In the US, Burger King has been supplying veggie patties for some time, but I wonder why it took American fast food places so long to expand. For instance, why is there still an absence of veggie burgers in a typical US McDonald…

In America only one or two percent are vegetarians. In England it's over twenty percent! That's the reason it pays to cater to them. My sister is a vegan and on my urging she tried an impossible burger when it first came to San Francisco and she loved it. But Burger King is cooking the impossible burger on the same grill upon which they're grilling the meat. I haven't asked her but I'm guessing most vegans won't be b…

> But Burger King is cooking the impossible burger on the same grill upon which they're grilling the meat.

Why is the corporate world so hopelessly stupid?

Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide

#145

Post by kuusisto »

moate wrote: post #54
friedman23 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegetarians are not common outside of certain metropolitan areas in the US

Data or it didn't happen.

Total percentages of vegetarian and vegan Americans do appear to be quite low, and they skew more liberal and lower income[1]. I'm not the person you're responding to, and it requires some extrapolation, but the liberal skew does at least suggest that vegetarians may skew "metropolitan" as well.

[1]https://news.gallup.com/poll/238328/snapshot-few-americans-v...

Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide

#146

Post by everdev »

SilasX wrote: post #122
honkycat wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a vegan. But I do hold a lot of environmental values. There is a LOT of interesting writing on the economy of the meat industrial complex. In essence: It is totally propped up by with subsidies from the US Government. They LOSE money on every cow slaughtered. They destroy our planet. All of the profits go to the billionaire farm owners who lobby to keep the laws in place. It is so horribly corrupt. Personall…

>It is totally propped up by with subsidies from the US Government. They LOSE money on every cow slaughtered. I don't think the math works out on that one. This page [1] gives total meat consumption per person per year as 222.2 lb, which would be (x320 million) = 71 billion lb/year. This page [2] gives total farm subsidies (which is a high estimate since it include all subsidies not just those to meat) as $20 billion…

222.2 lb / year sounds high!

I'm not sure if 7M vegetarians would move the needle much, but even ignoring them, that's about 0.6lbs of meat every day for every man, woman and child.

Assuming toddlers and the elderly don't eat that much, that puts some adults closer to a pound of meat a day every day.

That's a lot more meat consumption than I would have estimated.

Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide

#147

Post by rhinoceraptor »

everdev wrote: post #129
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think more needs to be done to promote grass fed beef as well. If done well, it can have a negative carbon footprint, versus imitation meats which have many of the same problems that grain fed beef does (monocropping, destruction of local ecosystems, use of pesticides, etc.).

How would grass fed beef generate a negative carbon footprint?

They eat grass, distress the soil and leave their fertilizer behind. The grass regrows, which captures carbon via photosynthesis.

Obviously I have no idea what I'm talking about, so I don't know if the methane produced by cattle has a bigger impact. But it definitely seems better than both grain fed meat and monocrops, in terms of energy input and environmental/ecosystem impact.

The major energy input in the system is the sun, not fossil fuels for fertilizer/pesticide production and farm equipment to plant and harvest crops.

Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide

#148

Post by rootusrootus »

jbob2000 wrote: post #98
wccrawford wrote: post #69

As far as I can tell, I'm the target demographic for this. I eat beef (and other meat) burgers because I like how they taste. If this comes close, I'll gladly switch, even though they cost a little more. I'm far from vegetarian, but I've been thinking more and more that I'd like to slim down on my actual meat eating for a few reasons, including the environment, the animal living conditions, and the cholesterol. The o…

I've been eating the Beyond Meat (pea protein) burger from A&W for a while now. It's pretty damn close to the taste of beef, I'm happy to make the switch. It has an aftertaste that some might describe as metallic, but you really have to look for it, it's not that strong. What shocked me was how much the taste of a burger comes down to texture. There's enough toppings on burgers that you don't really get the beef tast…

That metallic aftertaste is the only thing I found disagreeable about the Impossible Burger I tried recently. The texture wasn't exactly right, either, but it was not objectionable.

Also, if you cannot really taste the beef, you're eating crappy burgers :). My #1 trick for making an inexpensive burger palatable is to get it as a double, just to try and get enough meat for the flavor to come through.

Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide

#149

Post by dsfyu404ed »

pastor_elm wrote: post #107
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #37

This is nice for all the reasons mentioned but honestly I'm probably not going to ever eat it until it makes its way onto the value menu. I don't go to fast food to get a $5 burger, I go there to get a $1.55 burger. I can't be the only one.

You're not. the mcdouble is the cheapest, most nutritious sandwich every made. A vegan burger can't compete.

Agreed. You might not want to build your entire diet around them but under $2USD for ~400kcal in about as balanced as a format as you can expect from a burger is pretty damn impressive. The fact that you can walk into a McDonalds on just about any continent and get said McDouble and it will be just like any other McDouble is a miracle of modern logistics and process control.

Re: Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide

#150

Post by TillE »

rmason wrote: post #64
hhs wrote: post #32

I lived in England for a bit and remember fast food places commonly having veggie burgers. This was both in Burger King and McDonald's. It was super convenient for that occasional quick bite. In the US, Burger King has been supplying veggie patties for some time, but I wonder why it took American fast food places so long to expand. For instance, why is there still an absence of veggie burgers in a typical US McDonald…

In America only one or two percent are vegetarians. In England it's over twenty percent! That's the reason it pays to cater to them. My sister is a vegan and on my urging she tried an impossible burger when it first came to San Francisco and she loved it. But Burger King is cooking the impossible burger on the same grill upon which they're grilling the meat. I haven't asked her but I'm guessing most vegans won't be b…

Veganism isn't an allergy, and it's not about maintaining perfect bodily purity. It's about making ethical choices.

Most people aren't going to worry about incidental "contamination".

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