14 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
Coast Weekend’s local
restaurant review
Is the Impossible Burger
the future of meat?
Story by
THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA
MOUTH@COASTWEEKEND.COM
FACEBOOK.COM/MOUTHOFTHECOLUMBIA
I
t felt a little absurd.
I bit into a veggie burger and
looked inside to see if there was
any pink in the center, as if this
meat-less patty had been cooked
medium-rare. The texture had me
wondering. And, you see, that’s the
hook of the Impossible Burger —
that it “bleeds.”
Now, let’s back up a minute.
I’d been hearing about the Impos-
sible Burger for months. It started
when a server friend in Portland
shared news that a newfangled inno-
vation had landed in her restaurant.
Rolled out at select locations around
town, it was touted as the next big
thing in meatless technology.
And indeed, “technology” is the
right word.
While it begins in the soil, the
Impossible Burger is very much a
product of Silicon Valley. It’s the
flagship of Impossible Foods, a
startup with dreams and expectations
as sprawling as its purely digital
brethren.
Like so many aspiring unicorns,
Impossible Foods deigns to make
the world a better place. But unlike,
say, Snapchat, Impossible has, if not
a clearer path to profitability, then
certainly a more tangible chance at
shifting behavior for the better.
The arguments for selective-
ly reducing or eliminating meat
consumption are, as I see them,
three-fold: ethical, environmental
and health-based.
The ethics are obvious. Factory
COURTESY IMPOSSIBLE FOODS
A fully assembled Impossible Burger
farming is largely atrocious and
obscene. As stand-up comic Kyle
Kinane jokes, he’s “one Netflix
documentary away from becoming
a vegetarian.” I’m right there with
him: eyes wide shut.
But factory farming’s practices
have consequences on human health,
too, as explored by New York Times
columnist (and Yamhill Oregon’s
own) Nicholas Kristof. “Seventy
percent of all antibiotics in the Unit-
ed States go to healthy livestock,
according to a careful study by the
Union of Concerned Scientists,”
Kristof writes, “and that’s one reason
we’re seeing the rise of pathogens
that defy antibiotics.”
(As for personal nutrition, when
compared to beef the Impossible
Burger is kind of a wash; it has simi-
lar amounts of saturated fat.)
On the environmental impacts:
According to The Guardian, “quit-
ting meat can reduce your carbon
footprint significantly more than
quitting driving.” Indeed, it takes a
lot — water, grain, space — to grow
a 2,000 pound beef cow. Along the
way, they fart and poop. A lot. Then
they’re packed and shipped all over
the country (and world).
According to Bloomberg, Amer-
icans will eat a record amount of
meat in 2018 — around 230 pounds
per person, more than 50 of which
will be beef. So if the Impossible
Burger can make a dent in those
trends while reducing environmen-
tal, ethical and health impacts, good
on ’em, as existing veggie burgers
don’t seem to be effecting the trends.
Really, though, I was overcome
by curiosity … is the Impossible
Burger the disruptor it’s touted to
be? Had science finally cracked the
code?
The Impossible Burger’s tech
boils down to the extraction of
“heme,” short for leghemoglobin,
a protein similar to those found in
beef. Heme is extracted from soy
roots and, through fermentation,
supercharged.
Inside an Impossible Burger
there’s also plenty of wheat and po-
tato proteins, plus a load of coconut
oil (which pumps up saturated fats
to levels on par with beef).
But it’s the heme that’s the thing.
According to Wired magazine,
“Impossible Foods thinks the es-
sence of a meat lies in a compound
called heme, which gives ground
beef its color and vaguely metallic
taste — thanks to iron in the heme
molecule. In blood, heme lives in
a protein called hemoglobin; in
muscle, it’s in myoglobin.”
So, in heme you have your
“blood.”
And, just like ground beef,
Impossible Burgers are red before
cooking.
To some, like my longtime
vegan sister (who’s also an animal
rights lawyer), the quest to mimic
meats — making them “bleed” —
is absurd. As she told me, innova-
tions like the Impossible Burger
“are not for longtime vegetarians.
They’re for people in transition to a
veg diet or trying to eat less meat.”
For that to work, the Impossi-
ble Burger has to succeed on two
fronts: price and flavor. And right
now, they’ve got a long way to go
on price. Impossible Burgers cost
more than their beef counterparts.
Sometimes a lot more. But like any
tech, it’s all about scale. (Still, a lot
of the less tech-y veggie burgers are
more expensive than beef, which
Uncooked
Impossi-
ble Burger
patties
just … makes me sad for cows.)
Then there’s flavor. The Impos-
sible Burger is, by far, the most
meat-like substitute I’ve ever tried,
but so much of that has to do with
texture.
That’s where the Impossible
Burger has made the biggest strides.
It’s less grainy, more fleshy, moist,
but short of juicy. Pure flavor-wise,
it was reminiscent of a Morningstar
breakfast patty — albeit with, again,
a far superior texture.
In an effort to isolate the Impos-
sible Burger’s essentials from its
preparations and accoutrements, I
tried it at two different Portland lo-
cations. (Here’s hoping a restaurant
or two in Astoria picks it up soon.)
On my tasting trips I brought
along a load of friends, including
a restaurateur, a longtime server at
one of Portland’s most celebrated
vegetarian restaurants, a vegetarian
and carnivores who were every bit
as curious as I was.
Responses varied from “this is
the best veggie burger I’ve ever
had” to “this tastes like a cheap
kid’s hamburger; I bet my daughter
wouldn’t know the difference.”
They coalesced, however, around
price: they weren’t prepared to
pay a premium. Indeed, scale must
come. Impossible Burgers need to
get cheaper.
Finally, about the “blood.”
When I peered inside my
Impossible Burgers searching for
pink, sadly I found none. While I
know a “medium-rare,” “bleeding”
Impossible Burger is possible, mine
were — as so many regular burgers
are — overcooked.
Some things never change. CW