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Impossible Pork
- cm2012 7y agoVery excited to try this. Impossible burgers are amazing, way better than beyond burgers. And Dunkin donuts Beyond sausage is not very good, so I'd love to try impossible instead.
- 0xff00ffee 7y agoYeah, I agree with you. There's a big difference between impossible and beyond to my palette, the former being way more convincing. I have a feeling these are only going to improve. We've come such a long way from what constituted a "veggie burger" in the early 1990's.
- rst 7y agoSo, someone has to ask... is Impossible Pork kosher?
- z2210558 7y agoI believe they're not, since it is designed to appear like something forbidden: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3907949/jewish/Are-Imitation-Crab-Pork-and-Cheeseburgers-Kosher.htm https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3907949/jewis... edit: reading more closely it seems that you just have to be clear to observers that it's not actually pork.
- rst 7y agoHmmm... your reference seems to indicate it's OK, so long as it's clear to any observers what's really going on. Cheeseburgers with non-dairy mock cheese are an explicit example. (Next two paragraphs quoted: For example, if one wishes to drink almond milk while eating meat, he needs to indicate that it is in fact almond milk, not regular milk, which is forbidden. In the olden days, this was done by popping some whole almonds into the milk. Today, this can be achieved by having the container on the table, making it clear that it is almond milk.6 The same would need to be done in order to serve a veggie burger that resembles meat, topped with real cheese, or to serve a beef burger under a slice of imitation cheese. It’s fine to eat, provided that the package is nearby and visible, or its parve identity is spelled out on the menu, receipt, etc. ...end quote.)
- p1necone 7y ago> For example, if one wishes to drink almond milk while eating meat, he needs to indicate that it is in fact almond milk, not regular milk, which is forbidden. In the olden days, this was done by popping some whole almonds into the milk. Today, this can be achieved by having the container on the table, making it clear that it is almond milk. Who are you indicating it to? Does gods omnipotence not extend to distinguishing different types of milk, or is this so people can police it? (not trying to be snarky - genuinely curious)
- DuskStar 7y agoIf it's purely plant based it would have to be, right? But the real achievement will be Impossible Bacon.
- dvtrn 7y agoBut the real achievement will be Impossible Bacon Just shared the exact same sentiment with a friend; while I'm no committed vegan or vegetarian, if I see an impossible burger on a menu at a burger bar, I'll happily order one. If they manage to make a passable and just as enjoyable impossible bacon strip, oh boy.
- thekyle 7y agoWhat I want is Impossible Steak wrapped in Impossible Bacon for half the cost of the real thing. The company that can give me that will have me as a customer.
- jdoliner 7y agoAlmost certainly since basically all plants are Kosher. It's possible they'll need to have it blessed by a Rabbi, but that's pretty easy to do.
- btilly 7y agoMy guess is yes based on the fact that there already is a kosher product that makes food taste like bacon. http://koshernexus.org/2008/12/kosher-bacon-salt/ http://koshernexus.org/2008/12/kosher-bacon-salt/
- stevenwoo 7y agoIIRC Impossible burgers are kosher (vegan is most of the way there) so assume they would make this kosher as well.
- adrianN 7y agoWhat's an example of a vegan food that is not kosher?
- stevenwoo 7y agoInsects are not kosher so some plant products can contain too many insects to be kosher or require careful washing and inspection to be kosher. Figs contain wasps and need to be inspected and the wasps removed before they can be consumed. Fresh strawberries with stems have a lot of tiny insects on them that need to be washed away before consumption. Products derived from grapes have special rules as well. https://www.kosher.com/learn/about-kosher-laws/kosher-wine-and-grape-products https://www.kosher.com/learn/about-kosher-laws/kosher-wine-a...
- Alex3917 7y agoBased on the picture, it looks like they're marketing this mainly as a filling for pork dumplings. And as all Jews know, pork is already kosher when it comes minced or ground in Chinese food.
- blueberry_47 7y agoIs that a joke? Curious.
- rst 7y agoThere's an oddball NYC tradition of (not strictly observant) Jews going out for Chinese food on Christmas because those were the only restaurants that were open. The Chinese restarauteurs are appreciative, but sometimes mystified...
- Alex3917 7y agohttps://forward.com/culture/437007/why-do-jews-eat-chinese-food-on-christmas/ https://forward.com/culture/437007/why-do-jews-eat-chinese-f...
- ceejayoz 7y agoI had a friend in college who kept kosher, but ate shrimp because "G-d made them tasty for a reason". People make exceptions sometimes.
- lordgrenville 7y agoIt's 100% a joke.
- gnicholas 7y agoThey are going for both kosher and halal certifications. https://www.cnet.com/how-to/impossible-pork-whats-it-made-of-how-does-it-taste-and-is-it-healthier/ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/impossible-pork-whats-it-made-of...
- sunyata 7y agoGross!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- p1necone 7y agoMaybe a vegan sausage patty could be more easily convincing - they usually have lots of binders and spices anyway. Beyond Meat/Impossible Burger were disgusting to me (compared to regular beef), and they were dyed bright red and stayed bright red when they were cooked which is weird and not like meat. My favourite (chain fast food) non meat burger option so far has been the one that McDonalds recently released in New Zealand - it's a deep fried, crumbed mashed potato patty with other vegetables in it too. Doesn't pretend to be meat but is delicious.
- dvtrn 7y agoDunkin Donuts recently debut'd a plant based sausage sandwich (at least in the Great Lakes region, USA), it was ok. Tasted a bit heavy on the salt for me.
- cm2012 7y agoThat was Beyond meat
- dvtrn 7y agoThanks, I couldn't remember which brand it was and just left it kinda vague.
- notacoward 7y agoI tried one of those. Despite having been a Beyond fan for ages, I thought the Dunkin Donuts version tasted terrible. AFAICT preparation makes a big difference, and whoever made that one at DD simply did it wrong.
- toomuchlove 7y agoMaybe they weren't cooked correctly? I've had impossible burger many times, and it always looks light brown like a McDonald's burger when cooked. Tastes like one, too (which I enjoy).
- sdrothrock 7y ago> Doesn't pretend to be meat but is delicious. This is absolutely my favorite kind of vegan food.
- muzani 7y agoWhen you think about it, pork allegedly tastes like human. I wonder how hard it is to get to impossible long pork. The marketing challenges would only be similar to getting halal/kosher eaters to try impossible pork.
- toomuchlove 7y ago"When you think about it, pork allegedly tastes like human." How can my thinking about it affect whether someone alleges it?
- A_Parr 7y agoYou were thinking out loud.
- ProfessorLayton 7y agoA bit more than allegedly. Pozole used to be used to be made with human meat, which was swapped with pork precisely because it "tasted very similar" [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozole#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozole#History
- imtringued 7y ago>When you think about it, pork allegedly tastes like human. I know what you're thinking... Impossible Human could make Soylent Green a vegan movie.
- cyorir 7y agoSo I've been vegetarian for nearly 10 years. I tried an impossible burger for the first time last week. I liked it, but found it to be a bit disturbing because the texture reminded me of eating actual meat. I want to have vegetarian food which is nutritious, has good taste, has good texture, and doesn't remind me of meat. So I don't think I'll stick with the impossible brand, since it fails on that last measure. Edit: To elaborate a bit, I think foods like this may fall in an unfortunate valley where they are too similar to meat to please some vegetarians but insufficiently similar to meat to please some meat eaters. I tried the impossible burger because I had heard some complaints from meat eaters that it was not "meaty" enough for them - meaning it might not be too "meaty" for me.
- sp332 7y agoOk so obvious question here, why eat fake beef if you don't want to be reminded of beef? Edit: this got asked a lot, so I'll all a related question instead. Is it possible for a burger to have "good taste and good texture" but also not remind you of beef?
- throwlaplace 7y agolol but they literally said that they're not going up to eat fake beef. do you mean why did they try it? probably out of curiosity about a new food.
- gwbas1c 7y agoYes: Try a turkey burgers, a chicken burger, a black bean burger, ect... There's so much better variety in veggie burgers, (and they don't cause the run to the bathroom, if you know what I mean.) And, if you ever find yourself in India, try McDonald's vegetarian burgers. Nothing like beef, but still delicious. Think of a "burger" as a style of sandwich. Some of us are so used to "hamburger" that it's hard to imagine the patty being anything else. Honestly, it's worth trying a veggie burger. (A lot of people order them with bacon on top.) As long as you stay away from the "I can't believe it's not meat" style, they're delicious.
- 7y ago
- cgy1 7y agoPork is very important for the Chinese market.
- luxuryballs 7y agoMy wife is allergic to pork so I can somewhat appreciate this... otherwise I don’t get it, if you want to eat plants just eat plants. But hey if they are making money well, I get that! Though I always wondered if the animal rights type of vegetarians eat this stuff, I would suppose they consider it a grotesque display or a mockery to dress up plant matter as animal murder.
- carlosdp 7y agoImpossible's goal isn't to make food for vegetarians, it's to try to replace meat for meat-eaters by making the facsimile very close, the ultimate goal being about the environmental effects. Something like 70% of water usage in US is for cattle production.
- WillPostForFood 7y ago70% of water goes to cattle, another 70% goes to walnut trees, another 70% goes to water golf courses, and the last 70% goes to the next trendy anti-cause. Anyway, not even close to true. https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/surface-water-use-united-states?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/scie...
- imtringued 7y agoThis reminds me of everyone having a favorite pet project that could be funded by cutting the military budget. It's a nice shared fantasy because everyone can dream that their pet project gets funded but if it actually happened then lots of those dreams would have to pop because there simply isn't enough money for more than one giga project.
- aledalgrande 7y agoGreat fact checking!
- zokula 7y agoLies promoted by the vegan Nazi industry.
- diziet 7y agoWith the majority (>50%) of the calories in these meat replacements coming from Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, Canola Oil and possibly other... not so great high fat ingredients, I worry about these products from a health perspective.
- Forge36 7y agoWhat's wrong with fat? It's my understanding sugars are worse
- lvturner 7y agoIt's my understanding that it's sugar combined with fat that's the real problem. I think it boils down to - everything in moderation, including moderation.
- gxon 7y agoI've never heard anything like this. Are you suggesting there's evidence that sugar and fat have some kind of synergistic effect when eaten together?
- lvturner 7y agoYes. Although the only study I can find right now links a high sugar and high fat diet to depression rather than weight gain: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28724468 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28724468
- bduerst 7y agoAs a rule of thumb, sugars trip the insulin absorption endocrine pathways (weight gain) in the body more readily than the other macros. Fats are energy-rich, so combining sugars with fats means you're tripping the weight gain mechanisms with extra chemical energy present. It's also why honey glazed bacon tastes amazing.
- collyw 7y agoThat seemed to be the conclusion of this BBC Horizon documentary. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01qmgrx https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01qmgrx
- ericdykstra 7y agoCan we stop trying to replace every last natural source of calories with some combination of soy, corn, perfume, salt, sugar, and vegetable oil?
- tootie 7y agoWhy?
- gwbas1c 7y agoBecause processed food is bad for you, and "I can't believe it's not meat" is some of the most processed food on the market.
- sosborn 7y agoA lot of processed food is bad for you, but that doesn't mean that processed food is inherently bad for you.
- gwbas1c 7y agoThere was an article in HN news sometime last year covering the results of a well controlled experiment. In summary: All processed food is bad for you. Not "bad" like cigarettes, but bad in the sense that if your diet primarily consists of processed food, you will gain more weight, and gain it rather quickly. "I can't believe it's not meat" products are heavily processed and shouldn't be the majority of your diet. Stick with real meat and/or high protein vegetables, depending on your preferences or dietary needs.
- DVassallo 7y agoBecause they're not natural foods. And natural here does not mean not artificial. Natural food is the food we've been designed to eat.
- saagarjha 7y ago
- cj 7y agoI went vegan 6 months ago. I tried a Beyond Burger for the first time last night (and again tonight). I wasn’t expecting this, but: it looks like a burger, it cooks like a burger, it smells like a burger, and it tastes like a burger (including texture). That said, I will likely never buy it again, and have no interest in trying new products from Impossible Foods. My main problem with it is the lack of clarity around how healthy engineered foods like the Beyond Burger really is. Sure, it doesn’t have the cholesterol of real meat, but is a heavily processed alternative really any better?
- crooked-v 7y ago> My main problem with it is the lack of clarity around how healthy engineered foods like the Beyond Burger really is. That's what the nutrition facts label is for. "Being processed" doesn't magically make food worse than non-processed food. For the Beyond Burger in particular, it's directly comparable to ground beef: roughly similar fat content (depends on the lean/fat blend you get for the beef), more sodium but no cholesterol, similar protein levels, and a bit more miscellaneous stuff like potassium, iron, and phosphorous.
- imtringued 7y ago> "Being processed" doesn't magically make food worse than non-processed food. No but being processed at a factory means that it can be treated in a way that makes non-processed food or home-processed superior. By definition, processed food bought from the supermarket is not fresh and has already lost nutrition and it will stay in a supermarket for weeks. No matter how many preservatives you add it's old food. Processing often increases the surface area which makes it easier for bacteria to spread and the food to oxidize. Meanwhile the most significant "processing" you do at home happens a few hours or minutes before eating. Nobody is arguing that left overs are superior to eating food on the same day it's cooked. The heuristic that factory processed food is worse still holds. In theory you could make healthy processed food but there is no economic incentive for that so it is the exception, not the rule.
- andrewla 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- savoytruffle 7y agoI've had the Beyond Sausage at Dunkin Donuts. It was acceptable, but actually more spiced than you normally ever get from a sausage patty — probably to cover up for other deficiencies.
- gHosts 7y agoWake me up when the prices at the supermarket are comparable with actual pork...
- MiroF 7y agoWake me up when the government eliminates meat & dairy subsidies (or at least subsidizes the alternatives at equal rates) Dairy farmers make 70% of their earnings off of subsidy
- mark_l_watson 7y agoI really like Beyond Meat hot Italian sausage, think the Beyond Meat burgers served with all the trimmings are good, and the Impossible Burgers at Burgher King are OK. I welcome Impossible Pork, looking forward to trying it. I am one of those weird people who doesn’t like to eat inhumanly raised animal products, but I just don’t care what other people choose to eat.
- cookingrobot 7y agoWhy do you care if meat is inhumanly raised, and not care what other people do?
- spanxx 7y agoBecause he respects others people's decisions and don't want to force his/her ideas in them.
- dao- 7y agoThat's not what he said though. He said he didn't care. That's different from respecting a decision. You can respect and still vehemently disagree.
- spanxx 7y agoI think that "not caring about other people actions" should be the standard way of thinking if you think their actions doesn't cause harm to other humans. That's what I get from that text.
- collyw 7y agoI am sure almost every action could indirectly be related to human suffering of some sort. Using a phone for example and there is a good chance that it will have cobalt mined by children in Congo.
- 7y ago
- neeeeees 7y agoI’ve always found Impossible’s “versioning” scheme amusing. One of my favourite burger joints recently shifted from offering Impossible v2 to v3 for their patty, as v3 supposedly resembled meat more closely. However, I thought that v2 tasted much better while avoiding the “uncanny valley” of meat substitutes... I wish they would keep them all available rather than phasing out older versions.
- drewmol 7y agoOlder versions are possible. if an impossible upgrade is released, all prior versions become inevitable
- galkk 7y agoI'm curious what will happen when we will be able to grow "just" meat (like organs), without cows/pigs/chicken (I believe that we will be able to achieve this). Will the people who refuse to eat meat now due to ethical concerns, still refuse to eat it.
- SammyNameTaken 7y agoPersonally I find meat unappealing and lab grown stuff would still be the same, it’s the same reason why I don’t agree with vegan alternatives that look, feel and taste like meat so much so that it mimics blood. Disgusting
- Chris2048 7y agoMost butchered meat has the blood removed.
- alangpierce 7y agoCultured meat is supposedly getting pretty close, maybe the next few years, though maybe longer. https://www.memphismeats.com/ https://www.memphismeats.com/ is one company doing it. I'm vegetarian and I would definitely eat it, and most of my vegetarian friends would as well (assuming they figure out how to produce it without fetal bovine serum, which isn't vegetarian). But certainly everyone is different. I imagine some people will still have ethical qualms, and I know a number of vegetarians who don't like the impossible burger because they don't like the taste and texture of meat, so presumably they wouldn't like lab-grown meat either.
- flocial 7y agoIt would technically be a plant of sorts. Or maybe it would make vegetables the new "meat" in terms of ethical concerns. Do vegans distinguish between something like carrots (where you basically kill the entire plant) and apples (where the fruits are harvested but the tree remains in tact)?
- Smaug123 7y agoYou're asking about the difference between "vegan" and "fruitarian", for what it's worth.
- elktea 7y agoAre there laws around imitation foods that would prevent this from being called "Pork" in any countries?
- thunfischbrot 7y agoIn European countries that would most likely be the case, if the decision regarding milk replacements is an indicator: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2017-06/cp170063en.pdf https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201... Soy 'milk' is called soy 'drink' in many cases now.
- throwGuardian 7y agoThere is a desperate need for a truly healthy meat alternative, without the inflated sodium/preservatives and fat. Why are beyond/impossible not investing in a healthier alternative
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> Why are beyond/impossible not investing in a healthier alternative Healthy vegan meat substitutes are a crowded space. Impossible and Beyond went for flavour and price with mass distribution, a novel market segment.
- throwGuardian 7y agoI have to disagree - till the products actually made it to the shelves, where nutritional analysis revealed how unhealthy beyond/impossible truly were, they conveniently left out these bits in their messaging. It wasn't an accident that their marketing paired "tasty" and "vegan", which to any casual observer screams "healthy & tasty"
- m0zg 7y agoContains soy, so thanks, but no, thanks.
- lordnacho 7y agoI wonder if you could make Impossible Crackling. One of the Danish classics is something called flæskesteg, which gets really good if you have the skin done right so that it's crispy.
- ivanhoe 7y agoThe environmental problems don't come from cattle or pork or palm trees themselves, they're caused by massive industrial levels of production that modern civilization needs. To truly substitute pork this industry will have to become as massive as the pork meat industry is now. And that means, among other things, a huge increase in already high demand for coconut and palm tree oil - which will certainly reflect in 3rd world countries jumping the wagon and clearing even more rain forests, and even more rare species will be endangered. So we just replace one problem with another.
- wojcikstefan 7y agoI like to think in the framework of "you're never really solving any problem, you're just replacing a bad problem with a slightly less bad problem". My speculation is that Impossible Pork (or any other such product) would be just that – a slightly better problem to have compared to the current pork meat industry. Yes, sourcing ingredients for plant-based meat alternatives still takes resources and, given enough scale, that demand will have negative environmental impacts... But growing plants is still an order of magnitude better than farming animals.
- akiselev 7y agoLiterally an order of magnitude. The maximum trophic efficiency between two steps in the food chain is 10% so for a pound of meet you need at least 10 pounds of plant feed. In order to supply the world with meat, we're already growing far more than enough. The problem is the distribution of crop species since humans can't eat just corn and alfa-alfa. Processed meat substitutes might be able to redirect those existing animal feed crops towards feeding us directly and making good use of less fertile land.
- TremendousJudge 7y agoYou don't feed palm oil to pork though
- 867-5309 7y ago
- kstenerud 7y agoConsidering the damage that ultra-processed foods have already caused to humanity, and considering how new this kind of thing is, I'll stick with real meat and other whole foods until I've seen a decade-long study showing that these alternatives are safe.
- bbmario 7y agoCertainly safer for the animals.
- blunte 7y agoAnd probably less likely to include pathogens that come from animals. I think all people need an occasional look at where their food comes from. The amount of animal shit (rodents and the slaughtered animals themselves) in commercially sourced meat has increased in the last decade. If you stood a person in front of a meat grinder and said, "Here, now we throw in the appropriate legally-allowed amount of poop into the mix", fewer people would be in line to buy the end product. Or if they were allowed to go visit the factory chicken farms and see the sick, diseased chickens that end up on their dinner plates, I think they would be unable to eat it. Do people not realize that the recent laws aimed at preventing information gathering from factory farms is designed to prevent them from learning what they are really eating?
- gwbas1c 7y agoIf that kind of thing worries you, then stick with plant-based whole foods and wild fish. Plenty of humans have had low, or no, animal products in their diet "forever." You don't need a fancy new food from Silicon Valley to avoid meat.
- pvaldes 7y agoRemove plant-based foods from the list. There is a "120%" guarantee of previous contact with animal poo and animal urine in your vegetables.
- 7y ago
- dfxm12 7y agoI get the appeal of making something familiar to consumers, but will we ever see an Impossible product with a flavor that they claim tastes different from and better than any existing pork or beef product?