Veggie Burger That Tastes Like Real Meat Might Revolutionise Food Industry

By Mayukh Saha

You might have heard infinite arguments for and against both vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism. We are not here to preach non-violence, nor are we here to shame you for indulging in an occasional bite at the local burger joint. We are here to tell you, how eating meat is a larger environmental risk than your other not-so-ecofriendly lifestyle choices.

Eating the meat of an animal like a cow requires large amounts of fodder crops to be grown which in turn requires large quantities of water and more often than not chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

Moreover, cows produce large amounts of methane while they live and after dying too; how you ask?

The answer is: Carbon footprint. The amount of carbon that we produce digesting that beef is very much part of the equation.

The footprint is HUGE but there might be a way to stop that thanks to a revolutionary burger that’s literally called ‘Impossible burger’.

Impossible foods have done what seemed to have been impossible: made a burger patty out of wheat protein, coconut oil, potatoes and heme. And it tastes THE SAME. We know that the ‘this tastes better’ argument never works, so we won’t even try it on you carnivores.

Trust us though. It tastes absolutely the same, thanks to the heme.

Heme is a substance that gives meats their “meaty” flavour, or what the Japanese call umaminess. Using that, White Castle have finally created a slider that is absolutely delicious, and does not give you the guilt of killing a sentient and intelligent animal or of harming the environment with enormous amounts of methane.

The burger was first sold at the high-end New York based Momofuku Nishi and now is being sold at 140 branches of White Castle.

And it has big-time carnivores going ‘mmmmm’.

Now for the argument part (sorry): a single indulgent burger carries about a 5-kilo carbon footprint. Now you do the math by yourself. The figure for the US alone has been staggering.

Moreover many scientists have been writing about the need to at least cut down on the quantity of meat that Americans consume in a single sitting, if not go for a lighter or greener alternative.

Such alternative products like Impossible foods have been advertised before. The thing with the market is, that it is made up of people and people are averse to change. Moreover something so common and iconic like a burger is so deeply ingrained into people’s heads, it is difficult to make even a slight change to it.

But this is the era of homo wokus. Jokes apart, it is indeed the age of awareness and the internet. This is the time to be open and free to try new things, especially if they help save innocent animals and the environment. More importantly, if those things are delicious and come at only $1.99.

So, would you buy and try one of these impossible burgers?

To read up on a similar burger introduced in April, last year, click here

IMAGE CREDIT:  Andrey Armyagov