7 ms·

Impossible Burger: Commitment to consumers and our planet led us to use GM soy

43 points by mrbtc 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
untog 7y ago
Good. Anti-GM crusades are a load of anti-science nonsense, and if you're serious about replacing a percentage of America's meat intake (as Impossible seems to be) then it only makes sense to make the most of GM crops to get you there.
- hedora 7y ago
  They’re doing this so they can irresponsibly dump roundup on the soy plants without killing them. Roundup is a non-specific herbicide, so this will damage the environment near the farms. Also, Roundup is almost certainly a carcinogen, and impossible burgers already have higher levels than competitors. I definitely won’t be buying any more of their product. Edit: Fun reading: https://www.regulations.gov/contentStreamer?documentId=EPA-HQ-OPP-2009-0361-0068&contentType=pdf https://www.regulations.gov/contentStreamer?documentId=EPA-H... The US is updating exposure guidelines for 2019. For soy, they recommend treating 20ppm as acceptable, even though they recommend keeping dietary exposure below 1mg/kg. So... it will be legal for the GM soy that impossible will be using to have 20x more glyphosphate than is considered safe. Assuming their product is mostly soy... well, you can do the math. On the bright side, they’re proposing tighter regulations regarding application and drift into adjacent farms.
  - samcat116 7y ago
    Do you have any evidence they plan on doing this?
    - hedora 7y ago
      As far as I know, this is the only reason to use GM (aka “roundup ready”) soy. The genetic modification only affects herbicide resistance. If they’re using some other (uncommon/obscure) GM soy, they should have said so in the press release!
    - btown 7y ago
      From the article: "94% of the soy grown in the US is genetically engineered to resist herbicide toxicity. This helps control weeds without more toxic weed control agents or over-reliance on tillage, which drives soil carbon loss." And while GM soy itself is harmless (per the links in the article), the Roundup herbicide it enables is far less conclusive as to its health effects: see https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/monsanto-parent-company-bayer-faces-thousands-roundup-cancer-cases-after-n1007246 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/monsanto-parent-company... and https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/how-toxic-is-the-worlds-most-popular-herbicide-roundup-30308 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/how-toxic-is-the-... It's very difficult to fully avoid produce treated by these products, and I doubt that Impossible Burger does anything to concentrate herbicide residue any more than any other processed foods. (EDIT: other links in these comments throw this into question.) And I respect that they've made a pragmatic compromise: their use of GM produce could truly move the needle on livestock consumption, whereas rejecting it could prevent market adoption of their entire category. They're making the best of a horrid situation; if you want to blame someone, blame Monsanto, not them.
  - StrangeDoctor 7y ago
    A lot of GMO soy actually lets them use less additional roundup that would contribute to runoff. Edit: I was talking about run off specifically, not about the end product.
    - rorykoehler 7y ago
      >The levels of glyphosate detected in the Impossible burger by Health Research Institute Laboratories were 11 X higher than the Beyond Meat Burger.
    - hedora 7y ago
      > A lot of GMO soy actually lets them use less additional roundup that would contribute to runoff. How so? (I’m genuinely curious)
  - bb88 7y ago
    > Also, Roundup is almost certainly a carcinogen That point is highly contested. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/spray-pray-is-roundup-carcinogenic-monsanto-farmers-suing https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/spray-pr...
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    Feed stocks for cows are also grown this way and cows eat a lot of food. As an aside, elsewhere someone linked an article showing that the glyphosate in an impossible burger was on the order of 11ppb or 100x lower than is considered safe.
mrbtc 7y ago
Related story: https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/gmo_impossible_burger_positive_for_carcinogenic_glyphosate https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/gmo_impossible_burger_posi... > The levels of glyphosate detected in the Impossible burger by Health Research Institute Laboratories were 11 X higher than the Beyond Meat Burger. The total result (glyphosate and it’s break down AMPA) was 11.3 ppb. Moms Across America also tested the Beyond Meat Burger and the results were 1 ppb. > “We are shocked to find that the Impossible Burger can have up to 11X higher levels of glyphosate residues than the Beyond Meat Burger according to these samples tested. This new product is being marketed as a solution for “healthy” eating, when in fact 11 ppb of glyphosate herbicide consumption can be highly dangerous. Only 0.1 ppb of glyphosate has been shown to alter the gene function of over 4000 genes in the livers, kidneys and cause severe organ damage in rats Question(s): Is the lab result significant or not? Is it fairly common for other veggie products in the US to show similar levels? What is the safe level according to the FDA?
- nradov 7y ago
  The EPA safe level is about 140 mg/day for an average adult. There are proposals in progress to lower that. https://www.ewg.org/research/california-proposes-safe-level-roundup-more-100-times-lower-epa-limit/californias-proposed https://www.ewg.org/research/california-proposes-safe-level-...
  - Pinckney 7y ago
    11.3 ppb would be 1.2ug per burger then, right?
- batbomb 7y ago
  I can't really image 11 ppb is significant for glyphosate. That's below the historic 20 ppb threshold for lead. I'm not sure where the .1 ppb study comes from, it'd be interesting. Edit: The .1 ppb comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair
- dehrmann 7y ago
  > Only 0.1 ppb of glyphosate has been shown to alter the gene function of over 4000 genes in the livers, kidneys and cause severe organ damage in rats How true is this? That number seems pretty low.
DVassallo 7y ago
The potential downside of GM food is human extinction. In the 80s and 90s the beef industry meddled with nature and started feeding animal meat to cows. The result was a disease that could have killed us all if we had eaten contaminated beef in the previous 10 years. If the genetic conditions that make people susceptible to vCJD were more common or universal, we might not be here today [1]. Grass-fed beef can be assumed safe because it has been eaten by humans for 200,000 years. Animal-fed beef turned out to be very dangerous very quickly. People who think GM food is as safe as food we’ve been eating for hundreds of thousands of years are highly delusional. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_Creutzfeldt–Jakob_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_Creutzfeldt–Jakob_dise...
- ex3ndr 7y ago
  How this relates to GM?
  - DVassallo 7y ago
    You really don’t see the relationship? The potential consequence of eating unnatural food that did not pass the test of time is catastrophic. Do this on a global scale, and the consequences could be global. Trans fats are another example.
    - ehmish 7y ago
      Why do you think natural things are prima facie good ?
      - DVassallo 7y ago
        With “natural” I mean natural for humans to eat them. Those foods can be assumed safe because, by definition, they have been eaten by humans for hundreds of thousands of years. Can you say the same thing for GM food?
        tptacek 7y ago
01100011 7y ago
I'm all for GMO but I'm allergic to soy. I was disappointed when I heard they switched. I developed a soy allergy when my mom decided to follow a fad in the 70s and switch me to soy in lieu of 'evil' cows' milk. One day my dad was watching me and got tired of having a continually sick infant. He switched me back to cows milk and I was fine after that.
fortran77 7y ago
I wish they'd go back to using healthy wheat protein (gluten) in their product, too. They did in early formulations, but eliminated it later on.
- kybishop 7y ago
  As a celiac, I certainly don't. Even for those that aren't celiac, making the claim that gluten is healthy is dubious at best. I'd also imagine there are many more celiacs out there than those with soy allergies.
  - samcat116 7y ago
    This. Gluten allergies or intolerance seem to be on the rise. Probably makes sense to exclude it if they wanna be the future of food.
    - Robotbeat 7y ago
      Why would gluten allergies and intolerance be on the rise?
      - samcat116 7y ago
        This is purely anecdotal, but I (22) know a lot of people in my generation who easily get stomach aches from milk and gluten. I've had some problems myself. Really kinda sucks.
      - kybishop 7y ago
        I believe there are two factors contributing to the perceived rise: 1. The US has lagged behind Europe significantly in their knowledge and diagnosis of celiacs disease/intolerance, so more people are finally being diagnosed. 2. The wheat in the US today is significantly different from the majority of European wheat [1] https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/is-american-wheat-different-than-european-wheat.htm https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/is-american-wheat-differen...
    - 7y ago
mrbonner 7y ago
I really hope that the impossible burger and the likes will be a rising trend upticking US soy consumption. Maybe to a point US farmers don’t have to rely heavily on China export to make a living.
mrbtc 7y ago
OP here. This post quickly made the front page of HN, but after just a few hours, has now disappeared and doesn't appear anywhere when you page through hundreds of top stories. Could this be censorship requested by investors, related to YCombinator? Does this sometimes happen? https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/impossible-foods#section-investors https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/impossible-foods#sec... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-impossible-foods-fundraising-exclusiv/exclusive-impossible-foods-raises-300-million-with-investors-eager-for-bite-of-meatless-burgers-idUSKCN1SJ0YK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-impossible-foods-fundrais...
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Just guessing. 56 comments, 39 points. Not always true, but more comments than points is often an indicator that the spam protection will trigger. Which it sounds like it did here. So got weighted off the front page.
  - mrbtc 7y ago
    Thanks, good to know. Hopefully its just that and a moderator can check in at some point.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- dang 7y ago
  The thread triggered the overheated discussion detector, formerly known as the flamewar detector, which is software that kicks in when a discussion seems to be generating more heat than light. We monitor those software penalties pretty closely, and turn them off in cases where the thread was just happily active. I don't think this discussion meets that bar, though. Diet threads are surprisingly prone to repetitiveness and anger, as are threads about GMOs, and this one alas combines the two. > Could this be censorship requested by investors, related to YCombinator? Does this sometimes happen? No. YC wouldn't ask us to do something that stupid. The trust of this community is approximately 100% of the value that HN has for YC. Neither YC partners nor we on the HN side would ever jeopardize that.

43 points by mrbtc 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Good. Anti-GM crusades are a load of anti-science nonsense, and if you're serious about replacing a percentage of America's meat intake (as Impossible seems to be) then it only makes sense to make the most of GM crops to get you there.

hedora 7y ago
They’re doing this so they can irresponsibly dump roundup on the soy plants without killing them. Roundup is a non-specific herbicide, so this will damage the environment near the farms. Also, Roundup is almost certainly a carcinogen, and impossible burgers already have higher levels than competitors. I definitely won’t be buying any more of their product. Edit: Fun reading: https://www.regulations.gov/contentStreamer?documentId=EPA-HQ-OPP-2009-0361-0068&contentType=pdf https://www.regulations.gov/contentStreamer?documentId=EPA-H... The US is updating exposure guidelines for 2019. For soy, they recommend treating 20ppm as acceptable, even though they recommend keeping dietary exposure below 1mg/kg. So... it will be legal for the GM soy that impossible will be using to have 20x more glyphosphate than is considered safe. Assuming their product is mostly soy... well, you can do the math. On the bright side, they’re proposing tighter regulations regarding application and drift into adjacent farms.
- samcat116 7y ago
  Do you have any evidence they plan on doing this?
  - hedora 7y ago
    As far as I know, this is the only reason to use GM (aka “roundup ready”) soy. The genetic modification only affects herbicide resistance. If they’re using some other (uncommon/obscure) GM soy, they should have said so in the press release!
  - btown 7y ago
    From the article: "94% of the soy grown in the US is genetically engineered to resist herbicide toxicity. This helps control weeds without more toxic weed control agents or over-reliance on tillage, which drives soil carbon loss." And while GM soy itself is harmless (per the links in the article), the Roundup herbicide it enables is far less conclusive as to its health effects: see https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/monsanto-parent-company-bayer-faces-thousands-roundup-cancer-cases-after-n1007246 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/monsanto-parent-company... and https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/how-toxic-is-the-worlds-most-popular-herbicide-roundup-30308 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/how-toxic-is-the-... It's very difficult to fully avoid produce treated by these products, and I doubt that Impossible Burger does anything to concentrate herbicide residue any more than any other processed foods. (EDIT: other links in these comments throw this into question.) And I respect that they've made a pragmatic compromise: their use of GM produce could truly move the needle on livestock consumption, whereas rejecting it could prevent market adoption of their entire category. They're making the best of a horrid situation; if you want to blame someone, blame Monsanto, not them.
- StrangeDoctor 7y ago
  A lot of GMO soy actually lets them use less additional roundup that would contribute to runoff. Edit: I was talking about run off specifically, not about the end product.
  - rorykoehler 7y ago
    >The levels of glyphosate detected in the Impossible burger by Health Research Institute Laboratories were 11 X higher than the Beyond Meat Burger.
  - hedora 7y ago
    > A lot of GMO soy actually lets them use less additional roundup that would contribute to runoff. How so? (I’m genuinely curious)
- bb88 7y ago
  > Also, Roundup is almost certainly a carcinogen That point is highly contested. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/spray-pray-is-roundup-carcinogenic-monsanto-farmers-suing https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/spray-pr...
- aidenn0 7y ago
  Feed stocks for cows are also grown this way and cows eat a lot of food. As an aside, elsewhere someone linked an article showing that the glyphosate in an impossible burger was on the order of 11ppb or 100x lower than is considered safe.

mrbtc 7y ago

Related story: https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/gmo_impossible_burger_positive_for_carcinogenic_glyphosate https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/gmo_impossible_burger_posi... > The levels of glyphosate detected in the Impossible burger by Health Research Institute Laboratories were 11 X higher than the Beyond Meat Burger. The total result (glyphosate and it’s break down AMPA) was 11.3 ppb. Moms Across America also tested the Beyond Meat Burger and the results were 1 ppb. > “We are shocked to find that the Impossible Burger can have up to 11X higher levels of glyphosate residues than the Beyond Meat Burger according to these samples tested. This new product is being marketed as a solution for “healthy” eating, when in fact 11 ppb of glyphosate herbicide consumption can be highly dangerous. Only 0.1 ppb of glyphosate has been shown to alter the gene function of over 4000 genes in the livers, kidneys and cause severe organ damage in rats Question(s): Is the lab result significant or not? Is it fairly common for other veggie products in the US to show similar levels? What is the safe level according to the FDA?

nradov 7y ago
The EPA safe level is about 140 mg/day for an average adult. There are proposals in progress to lower that. https://www.ewg.org/research/california-proposes-safe-level-roundup-more-100-times-lower-epa-limit/californias-proposed https://www.ewg.org/research/california-proposes-safe-level-...
- Pinckney 7y ago
  11.3 ppb would be 1.2ug per burger then, right?
batbomb 7y ago
I can't really image 11 ppb is significant for glyphosate. That's below the historic 20 ppb threshold for lead. I'm not sure where the .1 ppb study comes from, it'd be interesting. Edit: The .1 ppb comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair
dehrmann 7y ago
> Only 0.1 ppb of glyphosate has been shown to alter the gene function of over 4000 genes in the livers, kidneys and cause severe organ damage in rats How true is this? That number seems pretty low.

DVassallo 7y ago

The potential downside of GM food is human extinction. In the 80s and 90s the beef industry meddled with nature and started feeding animal meat to cows. The result was a disease that could have killed us all if we had eaten contaminated beef in the previous 10 years. If the genetic conditions that make people susceptible to vCJD were more common or universal, we might not be here today [1]. Grass-fed beef can be assumed safe because it has been eaten by humans for 200,000 years. Animal-fed beef turned out to be very dangerous very quickly. People who think GM food is as safe as food we’ve been eating for hundreds of thousands of years are highly delusional. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_Creutzfeldt–Jakob_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_Creutzfeldt–Jakob_dise...

ex3ndr 7y ago
How this relates to GM?
- DVassallo 7y ago
  You really don’t see the relationship? The potential consequence of eating unnatural food that did not pass the test of time is catastrophic. Do this on a global scale, and the consequences could be global. Trans fats are another example.
  - ehmish 7y ago
    Why do you think natural things are prima facie good ?
    - DVassallo 7y ago
      With “natural” I mean natural for humans to eat them. Those foods can be assumed safe because, by definition, they have been eaten by humans for hundreds of thousands of years. Can you say the same thing for GM food?
      - tptacek 7y ago

01100011 7y ago

I'm all for GMO but I'm allergic to soy. I was disappointed when I heard they switched. I developed a soy allergy when my mom decided to follow a fad in the 70s and switch me to soy in lieu of 'evil' cows' milk. One day my dad was watching me and got tired of having a continually sick infant. He switched me back to cows milk and I was fine after that.

fortran77 7y ago

I wish they'd go back to using healthy wheat protein (gluten) in their product, too. They did in early formulations, but eliminated it later on.

kybishop 7y ago
As a celiac, I certainly don't. Even for those that aren't celiac, making the claim that gluten is healthy is dubious at best. I'd also imagine there are many more celiacs out there than those with soy allergies.
- samcat116 7y ago
  This. Gluten allergies or intolerance seem to be on the rise. Probably makes sense to exclude it if they wanna be the future of food.
  - Robotbeat 7y ago
    Why would gluten allergies and intolerance be on the rise?
    - samcat116 7y ago
      This is purely anecdotal, but I (22) know a lot of people in my generation who easily get stomach aches from milk and gluten. I've had some problems myself. Really kinda sucks.
    - kybishop 7y ago
      I believe there are two factors contributing to the perceived rise: 1. The US has lagged behind Europe significantly in their knowledge and diagnosis of celiacs disease/intolerance, so more people are finally being diagnosed. 2. The wheat in the US today is significantly different from the majority of European wheat [1] https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/is-american-wheat-different-than-european-wheat.htm https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/is-american-wheat-differen...
  - 7y ago

mrbonner 7y ago

I really hope that the impossible burger and the likes will be a rising trend upticking US soy consumption. Maybe to a point US farmers don’t have to rely heavily on China export to make a living.

mrbtc 7y ago

OP here. This post quickly made the front page of HN, but after just a few hours, has now disappeared and doesn't appear anywhere when you page through hundreds of top stories. Could this be censorship requested by investors, related to YCombinator? Does this sometimes happen? https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/impossible-foods#section-investors https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/impossible-foods#sec... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-impossible-foods-fundraising-exclusiv/exclusive-impossible-foods-raises-300-million-with-investors-eager-for-bite-of-meatless-burgers-idUSKCN1SJ0YK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-impossible-foods-fundrais...

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Just guessing. 56 comments, 39 points. Not always true, but more comments than points is often an indicator that the spam protection will trigger. Which it sounds like it did here. So got weighted off the front page.
- mrbtc 7y ago
  Thanks, good to know. Hopefully its just that and a moderator can check in at some point.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
dang 7y ago
The thread triggered the overheated discussion detector, formerly known as the flamewar detector, which is software that kicks in when a discussion seems to be generating more heat than light. We monitor those software penalties pretty closely, and turn them off in cases where the thread was just happily active. I don't think this discussion meets that bar, though. Diet threads are surprisingly prone to repetitiveness and anger, as are threads about GMOs, and this one alas combines the two. > Could this be censorship requested by investors, related to YCombinator? Does this sometimes happen? No. YC wouldn't ask us to do something that stupid. The trust of this community is approximately 100% of the value that HN has for YC. Neither YC partners nor we on the HN side would ever jeopardize that.