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Impossible Foods has raised $75M for its plant-based burgers
- tkyjonathan 9y agoPretty cool
- concinds 9y ago> Soy I wonder how the community here will respond to this. Most here seemed upset by the male-infertility story from a week or two ago. Turning around to gush over soy would be completely incoherent. "Soy as health food" is diabolically false.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago> "Most here seemed upset by the male-infertility story from a week or two ago." Do you have a link to that story?
- concinds 9y agoActually only 6 days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14855796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14855796
- ZenoArrow 9y agoNo explicit mention of soy, plus "The analysis did not explore reasons for the decline". Furthermore, it's said that plant-derived oestrogen does not act in the same way as human-derived oestrogen. I'll find a link... EDIT: Link... http://www.pcrm.org/health/cancer-resources/ask/ask-the-expert-soy http://www.pcrm.org/health/cancer-resources/ask/ask-the-expe... "Phytoestrogens, being weak estrogens, are like small, private planes with few passengers and no cargo, yet they still occupy the Jetway after landing. When phytoestrogens occupy the cell, normal estrogens cannot. Plant estrogens do not eliminate all of estrogen's effects, but they do minimize them, apparently reducing breast cancer risk and menstrual symptoms. For men and boys, the phytoestrogens in soy do not appear to have any effect on hormone levels and have not been shown to affect sexual development or fertility. Research studies show that men consuming soy have less prostate cancer and better prostate cancer survival."
- concinds 9y agoWhy would it mention soy? The article only brings up what I said it brought up, the fertility decline. Soy protein does blunt testosterone production. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131010091557.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131010091557.h... Soy's effects are well known, at least among (some) doctors. -- edited after the parent's edit: Soy contains phytoestrogens, which are endocrine disruptors. Soy is incredibly estrogenic (http://igrow.org/livestock/beef/hormones-in-beef-myth-vs.-fact/ http://igrow.org/livestock/beef/hormones-in-beef-myth-vs.-fa... Table 1). See the following research if you're interested. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21175082 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21175082 > Phytoestrogens, natural plant compounds abundantly found in soy and soy products, behave as weak estrogen mimics or as antiestrogens. They are considered to be EDCs [endocrine disrupting compounds], and have some beneficial effects on health, including reducing the risk of breast cancer and improving metabolic parameters. However, the supporting evidence that consumption of phytoestrogens is beneficial is indirect and inconsistent. Lifetime exposure to estrogenic substances, especially during critical periods of development, has been associated with formation of malignancies and several anomalies of the reproductive systems. And, the most relevant one: https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/23/11/2584/2913898/Soy-food-and-isoflavone-intake-in-relation-to https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/23/11/2584/2913898/S... "These data suggest that higher intake of soy foods and soy isoflavones is associated with lower sperm concentration."
- ZenoArrow 9y agoDo any of these doctors you refer to also note that beer is a high source of phytoestrogens?
- koverda 9y agoThis seems to be one molecule from the soy plant.
- concinds 9y agoNo, this burger contains both soy leghemoglobin and soy protein isolate. I assume you thought I was referring only to the first one.
- cbhl 9y agoTheir "soy leghemoglobin" doesn't come from soy though. It comes from GMO Algae. Presumably they could reprogram that algae to produce a different hemoglobin-like molecule.
- concinds 9y agoCheck the ingredients list: >Full Ingredient List: >Water, Textured Wheat Protein, Coconut Oil, Potato Protein, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Leghemoglobin (soy), Yeast Extract, Salt, Soy Protein Isolate, Konjac Gum, Xanthan Gum, Thiamin (Vitamin B1), Zinc, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12. >Contains: >Soy, Wheat This contains soy. My comment stands.
- cbhl 9y agoThose labels are because the compounds could trigger a soy allergy, because, y'know, they're chemically identical. Notice that all the "soy" falls in the "2% or less of" bucket. This is not the same as a soy burger. Have you eaten one?
- concinds 9y agoWhen did I say this was a 100% soy burger? > Those labels are because the compounds could trigger a soy allergy ...because it contains soy, which has negative effects on fertility. That was my whole point. So why change the subject?
- acchow 9y agoAt what quantities does soy have negative effects on fertility?
- PretzelPirate 9y agoAccording to the study, it seems that consuming regular really only impacted men who were overweight or obese. I'd be interested in understanding if this really had something to do with the men being overweight and something they were previously eating was causing their sperm count to be abnormally high for their level of health. From https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/23/11/2584/2913898/Soy-food-and-isoflavone-intake-in-relation-to#56144213 https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/23/11/2584/2913898/S...: This association was stronger at the higher end of the sperm concentration distribution suggesting that soy food intake may have stronger associations among men with normal or high sperm concentrations than among men with low sperm concentration. Also, soy food intake was more strongly inversely related to sperm concentration among overweight and obese men. Intake of soy foods or isoflavones was unrelated to the remaining semen analysis parameters examined.
- dang 9y agoOf course HN is 'completely incoherent'. So is any real sample of millions of people.
- twelvechairs 9y agoTofu/soy burgers have been around for >20 years already. How is this significantly different? [Edit: way to be downvoted instantly for asking a serious critical question. Remember when hn prided itself on a higher level of discussion than reddit?]
- ZenoArrow 9y agoTo give you some idea of what's different: http://youtu.be/ebNeUihciDI http://youtu.be/ebNeUihciDI
- twelvechairs 9y agoThanks for the response. I would think that 'thier aim is to produce burgers that taste exactly like ground beef' or similar could fit in the article.
- acchow 9y agoIt tastes much better than tofu/soy burgers of the last 20 years.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y agoOK, I'll help explain why I downvoted you. It probably would have taken you less time to google "impossible foods burger" than to write your question. More importantly, by starting of your question the way you did, you seem to be implying, intentionally or not, some level of smugness that "don't these guys know soy burgers have been around for 20 years." Here is the Impossible Foods FAQ: https://www.impossiblefoods.com/faq/ https://www.impossiblefoods.com/faq/
- twelvechairs 9y agoI read the article. It didnt say. I even googled leghemoglobin and found that its in all soy/tofu, so that didnt seem a differentiator. I expect other people here will have the same question Honestly yes if you cant be clear what your business does where others have failed IMO at the very least your marketing team is failing
- jy1 9y agoTried it, tastes. OK. A bit like meat, smells a bit like a barn.
- L_Rahman 9y agoI remember reading the original impressions of the Impossible Foods ground meat and thinking it was just media buzz. I promise you it is not. At Momofuku's Ssam Bar in the East Village of NYC, you can order an off menu item called Spicy Pork Sausage and Rice Cakes. It's not really off the menu - the item has simply been around so long and is so well known to regulars that they left it off to make room for new dishes. I've had it more times than I count. At lunch time however, they serve Spicy "Impossible Sausage" and Rice Cakes. The first time I ordered it, I was ready to complain about one of my favorite things ruined by a hyped product. But then I took my first bite, and it somehow tasted better than the pork sausage version. I've been back many times since and the Impossible Foods version of the dish is often tastier than the pork version. Let that sink in for a moment. Impossible Foods was able to replace high quality pork sausage served in a beloved dish at one of New York's buzziest restaurants and make the dish better. The vast majority of ground meat in the American food chain is of lower quality. If Impossible Foods can replace that ground meat at scale, the ramifications are enormous. They will reduce by a huge margin the number of animal lives and quantity of CO2 necessary to feed us.
- acchow 9y agoI tried the Impossible Meats burger - it was nowhere near as tasty as a beef burger. I think it could be improved drastically by just adding a little MSG tho.
- dmoy 9y agoTime to bust out that jar of msg then, or just eat it with seaweed instead of lettuce or something.
- KekDemaga 9y agoI'm thinking a black and blu burger. Most of the flavor comes from the Cajun spice and the blue cheese so all it has to do is get the mouth feel right. It's the burger Turing test.
- mmanfrin 9y ago
- felixchan 9y agoImpossible Burgers contain heme iron, which is disastrous to the body. https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-safety-of-heme-vs-non-heme-iron/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-safety-of-heme-vs-non-h...
- nemild 9y agoAm I right in thinking that all forms of meat contain heme iron? And in what dosage is this "disastrous" to the body?
- felixchan 9y agoMaybe "disastrous" is the wrong word. "An increase in heme iron intake of 1mg/day appeared to be significantly associated with a 27% increase in risk of CHD" according to one study.
- saagarjha 9y agoForgive me if I don't quite find your source credible, since it appears to have been written by a volunteer, and since it doesn't actually give concrete evidence on maximum recommended dose.
- felixchan 9y agoThe source is just screenshots of academic studies.
- saagarjha 9y agoYes, and I took at look at them. Some of the studies (especially the blood cookies or whatever ones) actually mentioned that heme iron actually helped anemic children. Many of the others could not come to a conclusion.
- felixchan 9y agoWell, in that case, heme iron may not be so bad. I'm not here to debate that. But the source has ground -- until someone gives me a better source.
- bllguo 9y agoHaven't tried it but certainly a noble cause, I hope they succeed. > “I love VCs and particularly the ones that invested in us,” Brown had said. “But it’s truly astonishing how little diligence they do in terms of the actual science that underlies some tech companies.” Recent headlines on Theranos, Juicero, uBeam really drive this point home
- jessriedel 9y agoTalking to VC firm who was considering an investment in a quantum computing company, I was also blown away by how little science they attempted to understand. It doesn't make any sense to me. My best explanation is that they think it's simply impossible to become well-informed at a reasonable price, and instead just rely on aligning the interests of the founders with their own.
- nicpottier 9y agoI tried a Beyond Burger, which I believe is the main other horse in this "veggie burger" race and I was pretty impressed. It doesn't have the "plant blood" that seems to be Impossible's secret sauce, but on a bun, with ketchup, lettuce and tomato I thought it was pretty great. Great enough that I'd order it instead of a normal burger if it was widely available.
- HillaryBriss 9y agohow did the cost compare to meat?
- paulcole 9y agoEnvironmental, ethical, or dollar cost?
- throwaway7645 9y agoDollar cost. I'd love to switch away from beef burgers for a health and ethical reason, but can't justify a $15 burger when most burgers at a nice restaurant are $10 where I live.
- HillaryBriss 9y agothanks. yes. that's what i was wondering about.
- itsthewrongway 9y agoAt Whole Foods you can get two beyond burger patties for about $8
- HillaryBriss 9y agojust the simple dollar cost
- ronack 9y ago
- sputknick 9y agoI'm paleo, and wanted to try it to see how it tastes. Closer than I expected to a real burger. Not great, but this would be an excellent replacement for factory farmed animals. Not as tasty, or as good for the environment as pasture raised cows.
- acchow 9y ago> Not as good for the environment as pasture raised cows. Even at scale?
- saalweachter 9y agoEh, depends what you mean by "scale". When you start talking environmentally sustainable meat production, you're talking about utilizing land and calories that would not be well utilized otherwise. Pastureland that is too rocky or arid for grain or vegetable production, grazed at a level that is sustainable for that land. Food waste and mast you can feed to pigs or goats but not people. Scale is "a whole lot of meat" but "not much as Americans eat now".
- nathancahill 9y agoAny time you see "good for the environment" and "cows" in the same sentence, stop reading.
- aphextron 9y agoWhat is it with first-world vegans/vegetarians wanting to eat these extremely processed imitation meat frozen foods? There is an entire tradition of vegetarian cuisine around the world from Rasta Ital, to Hindu Sattvic, Afghani, and Thai which you could learn with just a tiny bit of effort.
- misterbwong 9y agoIs this rhetorical or are you actually wondering why someone would want meatless substitutes for foods that they (used to) enjoy?
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- marcbernstein 9y agoThere's room for both. The vast majority of my meals are from Indian, Mexican, Thai, etc. recipes but occasionally I get the craving for a good burger. I've had some pretty good and a lot of not so good veggie patties, and although I'd only envision myself eating one of these every few months, I'm still excited to see what they came up with. Edit: To note that I've only been a vegetarian for about 8 years (or around a 20-25% of my life), so definitely get the occasional craving for foods I used to enjoy in the past.
- corysama 9y agoI think the goal is more to transition omnivores away from meat. There is a consensus that the meat industry in unsustainable as is. But, there is also a strong belief that trying to convince the world they don't want meat via rational arguments is futile. Thus, we need work-arounds via either plants that mimic meat or changing the meat industry over to vat-brewed meat.
- hug 9y ago
- nostromo 9y agoI'm happy to see that fat and protein are the main ingredients. http://impossiblefoods.com/images/faq/nutrition-facts.png http://impossiblefoods.com/images/faq/nutrition-facts.png A lot of veggie imitation meats are low on fat and protein and extremely high on processed carbs.
- resf 9y agoWow, do nutrition labels in USA generally not show figures per 100g?
- mmanfrin 9y agoNo, and it's really obnoxious, because there are thresholds where content doesn't have to be listed. For example, a package of tic-tacs will say that it has 0g sugar per serving (a 'serving' being one tic-tac), but the whole (small) package will have something like 20g of sugar.
- 3pt14159 9y agoThis is one thing I actually think America does right. I'm the type of person to eat a single tic-tac, but even if I acknowledge that there are failures, it's far easier for me to get a rough sense as to how bad eating something is if it lists it's actual content. Ideally there would be both, but having to do 0.85 * 260 just to get the calorie count for this is just annoying. I do think the design of the labels is completely ridiculous, though. Sugar, trans fats, and caloric count should be made much more prominent and put in red so that uninformed people understand that these are the primary causes of sickness in America.
- kazinator 9y ago> put in red so that uninformed people understand that these are the primary causes of sickness in America. The hypothesis here being what? Lack of red highlighting in informative tables is the cause for uninformedness? :)
- 9y ago
- brohoolio 9y agoI've tried it. It's good. At $16 a pound I'd much rather get some high quality meat or fish. If it comes down in price to something reasonable I might add it to our rotation.
- seanp2k2 9y agoWhat kind of high-quality fish are you getting for $16/lb? In the Bay Area at least, high-quality salmon is about twice that.
- ClassyJacket 9y ago16USD per pound, which is 44AUD or 35USD per KG, thankyou Wolfram, is high, but considering the environmental and ethical advantages it's almost miraculous. That's just about dead on 5x what I pay for chicken breast now, so it's not at all crazy to imagine splurging on this once in a while for a meal with a vegan friend, and that the price will come down to a mass-market, regular purchase level in the not-so-distant future. Much like how a Tesla Model 3 isn't as cheap as a Corolla, but still not completely out of the question for alot of people like a Model S is. Even if it settles at double the price of meat I could see myself buying it regularly. Given how unethically meat is produced now, I don't mind accepting some price increase.
- brohoolio 9y agoI guess I'm used to my friends picking out more affordable options. I might spend extra occasionally because my wife is a vegetarian but I can't see any of my friends selecting it at this price, even at $8 a pound.
- throwaway2016a 9y agoI am extremely eager to see lab grown meat more so than I am eager to see better meat substitutes become mainstream. However, being a meat eater, since the news of this product came out however many months and years it was, I have been wanting to try it. Which is more than I can say for other meat substitutes.
- spraak 9y agoIt's hard for me to understand the excitement for lab meat. Can you explain your interest?
- puranjay 9y agoMeat minus the guilt. A more moral meat, if you will. I can get behind the idea. I can't morally justify eating one animal, loving another.
- sdrothrock 9y agoReproducibility of particularly good strains of meat.
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y agoBetter control over the quality and consistency of the end product? I enjoy a wagyu steak a lot more than a tough cheap cut or minced up eyelids and connective tissue.
- sneak 9y agoIt is less resource intensive to produce. Hand-tuned assembly code burger vs transpiled javascript for the hot path (I eat cheeseburgers very often, as do many, many others in the countries I frequent). You can feed more people with the same amount of resources. 80,000 humans a day die from lack of food. Everything we can do to meaningfully improve food production efficiency is a big win for the species.
- simplify 9y agoI thought we technically make enough food for everyone on earth? It's the distribution that's the hard part.
- asciimo 9y agoI love this video of Adam Savage trying the Impossible Burger at Jardinière. Gets into the details of how they prepare it compared to their standard burger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF9bf9uKQQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF9bf9uKQQk
- asah 9y agoI'm a fan and as a 3-time food+tech entrepreneur, imho they're going to be very successful. I'm an omnivore, love burgers. I also love veg burgers, but they're not burgers -- they're something else, the way salmon burgers and fried chicken sandos are great but don't count when you want a "beef burger." The Impossible Burger was the first burger I tried (Jardiniere in SF) that my brain said, "yes, this is a burger". In fact, it was close enough that... it was boring. I could eat it every day and if beef burgers were taken away from me, I wouldn't notice or reminisce. The next step is to make the raw IB meat available in grocery, so I can experiment myself - load up the umami, mix in spices, stuff it with cheese, try it with different levels of done-ness, etc.
- ugh123 9y agoHas any thought been given to the long-term economic consequences of something like this replacing animal products in the market? The price of commodity corn shot up when production of corn-based ethanol became popular as well as other uses of corn. I'm not sure if the agricultural industry would be ready to support a large shift towards this very easily.
- AntonyGarand 9y agoIt actually requires a lot less lands to make a plant-based burger than a beef-based one, as you're skipping a whole ladder in the chain. I believe the ratio is between 6 and 8 times less land for beef, although you should definetly research this number if you're interested. This makes plant-based burger and vegetarian/vegan foods a lot more eco-friendly and requires less land to produce, which is a problem most developped countries are facing
- PerfectElement 9y agoIf something like this replaces animal products, the demand for grains would drastically fall. Is this the economic consequence you are worried about?
- EGreg 9y agoBut will it be Kosher? :)
- ericdykstra 9y agoGoing to stay away from this, myself. For the same reason I eat oranges instead of drinking Sunny Delight and eat sausage rather than eat sausage-flavored potato chips. Flavor is our evolved way of our bodies telling us what our body wants to eat. "Impossible burgers" are just a simulation of food.
- maxerickson 9y agoSausage isn't really very natural. There is a fun analogy with Sunny Delight, with the use of cheap inputs and lots of flavoring.
- ceejayoz 9y ago> Flavor is our evolved way of our bodies telling us what our body wants to eat. We don't really live the way we evolved to live, though. I can get the high calorie foods hunter gatherers sought out to see them through lean times delivered to me at my house while I sit around in my underwear.
- yotmeha 9y agoThe last three paragraphs of this article are a bit awkward.
- mceoin 9y agoTried it, liked it. Best vegetarian burger of my life.
- lamby 9y agoSam Harris did a good interview with this outfit: https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/meat-without-murder https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/meat-without-murder
- jochakovsky 9y agoTried an Impossible Burger for the first time the other day. In a burger with lots of condiments and toppings, it was OK, but not something I'd order again. When I took a bite of it by itself, it tasted like cat food. Since there are so many positive reviews, I wonder if it just wasn't prepared correctly? The restaurant had only started serving it a few days earlier.
- prostoalex 9y agoI tried one at Umami Burger and left with the same general impression as you. It was bland by itself, saved by copious melted cheese Umami Burger serves it with, and did not have any of the nice pink associated with medium-rare. I guess it's comparable to a fast food burger, but does not seem like anything I'd want to repeat. The sugars and vegetable oils listed on the ingredients list make me wonder if the whole thing is even healthy.
- shanev 9y agoDoes anyone know what the omega 6:3 ratio of this fake meat is?
- joshdance 9y agoI am excited to try the Impossible Foods burger. Waiting for it to come to Utah.
- epalmer 9y agoNutrition panel is in the FAQ https://www.impossiblefoods.com/faq/ https://www.impossiblefoods.com/faq/
- awkwarddaturtle 9y agoIs it just me or do posts about "vegetarian/vegan" foods, Tesla, or any flavor of the day seem to produce so many suspicious comments? It looks every other comment is trying to "sell" us something rather than being regular honest commenting. Reminds me of evangelicals or jehovah's witnesses trying to sell me their religion. Maybe knowing how social media works now has got me cynical. I'll never become vegetarian and I'll stay an omnivore til I die. It's great that they were able to raise money and hopefully they'll open up options for the vegetarians crowd. But please stop with the Impossible Foods is going to save the world stuff. Tesla going to save the world. Impossible Foods is going to save the world. Jesus is going to save the world. Goodness.
- b_ttercup 9y agoProbably just you. This product is indeed capable of changing the world for the better if scaled up. "Saving it" is hyperbole. But it's not about making a nice meal for vegetarians, it's about sustainable meat consumption for a growing population.
- awkwarddaturtle 9y ago>This product is indeed capable of changing the world for the better if scaled up. "Saving it" is hyperbole. But "changing the world" isn't hyperbole? > But it's not about making a nice meal for vegetarians, it's about sustainable meat consumption for a growing population. What? Meat eaters aren't going to choose fake meat no more than vegetarians are going to choose fake vegetables/fruits. People are still going to hunt, still going to keep livestock and still going to consume meat. We are omnivores after all. Also, meat production is HIGHLY sustainable already. We waste tons of meat because we have such an excess of it.
- b_ttercup 9y agoMeat eaters will eat fake meat if economics incentive them too. You don't need to completely switch over to impact the world. Growing meat is a substantial waste of energy and nutrients. Unless you think we will never struggle to produce enough food, it's hard to reconcile how you can think we won't run into issues with meat.
- joestr 9y agoI guarantee the meat industry will go to incredible lengths to make this company fail.
- moretai 9y agoThen we should go to great lengths to prevent that.