16 ms·

I’m vegan, converted about four years ago so I ate meat for decades. I ate impossible burgers for a while after Burger King got them, because there is some nost

I’m vegan, converted about four years ago so I ate meat for decades. I ate impossible burgers for a while after Burger King got them, because there is some nostalgia/novelty in going to a fast food joint. But I’ve realized that this weird food product leaves some kind of odd taste in my stomach, and not just from Burger King. I’m pretty over these fake beef burgers now, and would way rather have a black bean burger or a garden burger. Those taste light and yummy and don’t leave a weird feeling in my stomach.

colordrops 4y ago
I see you are being downvoted, but I know exactly what you mean. When I eat Impossible and especially Beyond burgers, my stomach feels slightly off. A bit of indigestion. I don't get this with typical veggie patties.
- dqv 4y ago
  You might have a touch of legume allergy (if only have a touch is possible). Beyond has pea protein and Impossible has soy protein. What's in your veggie patties?
  - dagmx 4y ago
    Hmm not to say that’s not it (because people vary) but my wife and I both get this feeling with these Beyond/Impossible meats but we otherwise eat a lot of legumes which don’t give us that feeling
    - steve_adams_86 4y ago
      I think they both contain methylcellulose, which is considered benign but not digestible. In my experience it doesn’t cause major discomfort, but a mildly off putting sensation in my GI tract for a few hours. It might be something else, but it seems likely after narrowing things down for a while.
      - TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
        Cellulose? This is the modern equivalent of adding sawdust. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        Fiber is good for you. Adding bulk into something that's supposed to be a mixture is only a problem when it's diluting the rest too much.
        steve_adams_86 4y ago
        If you dig a little deeper you’ll find that methylcellulose has some interesting culinary properties, making it well suited to adding structure and firm texture to soft foods. When mixed with water it transforms into a firm gel after heating, or it can be used to create extremely resilient emulsifications. It’s practically flavourless, so it works well. I’m not convinced it passes through the GI tract with no impact whatsoever, but it appears so far to be relatively benign. It’s nothing like sawdust or a filler, though. It’s also somewhat expensive so it wouldn’t be a good option for filler. My 500g bag was around $25, but if you wanted to use actual sawdust, well I think you could get that for close to nothing.
        TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
        Thank you for your eloquent and well reasoned refutation! Getting early 90s internet vibes, where prople actually typed out their disagreement in an informative way instead of just downvoting.
        steve_adams_86 4y ago
        I take that as a huge compliment! I find myself dreaming of Old Internet quite often these days, so thank you very much. Maybe we can restore the old ways one comment at a time.
- Lammy 4y ago
  For me it's the coconut oil / cocoa butter “marbling” that gives me the Olé Olestra problem https://web.archive.org/web/19990203160042/http://www.zug.com/pranks/olestra/ https://web.archive.org/web/19990203160042/http://www.zug.co...
  - detritus 4y ago
    I can't touch 'vegan cheese' made with coconout oils for this reason - for some reason it leaves me feeling like I have a film of oil down the back of my gullet that I can't shake off for an hour or two afterwards. It's a weird, unlikeable and thoroughly unwanted sensation.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  I’m not positive but I have a feeling it’s the methylcellulose. In my own home experimentation, none of the ingredients seem to cause issues except for that. It seems fairly benign, but it can’t be digested and it isn’t clear to me if we have gut flora which can break it down efficiently. I enjoy throwing together little experiments in a similar vein to beyond meat or impossible burger products, but it feels too much like a lab experiment to eat regularly. My kids like “meat balls” with spaghetti, so I tend to make that and otherwise I’m gravitating back towards whole food-based garden burgers. A weird thing about beyond/impossible is that while they appear moderately healthier than real meat from some perspectives… They are still pretty trashy. I can’t not feel like I’m making a bad choice, even if it’s home made, and at the end of the day I just want to feel good (mentally and physically) about my food.
  - pmarreck 4y ago
    > They are still pretty trashy This is a qualitative/irrational assessment and not a quantitative/rational one, especially considering that fat consumption got a wrongfully-deserved bad rap for decades thanks to unethical lobbying by the sugar industry.
    - oceanghost 4y ago
      What about food is not "qualitative"? :-) Where on the spectrum are you?
    - raspberry1337 4y ago
      It's very rational how many individuals are rejecting these trashy products.
    - steve_adams_86 4y ago
      For years I’ve spent a lot of time (probably more than I should) crawling through research about exactly this, which is precisely why I use the term trashy. Relatively speaking I suppose it’s better than many other options, which is relevant to some people. In the broader scope, this is still junk food. I’d argue (based on the best dietary research the world has produced) that saturated fats do deserve a bad rap, and most refined fats are also worth minimizing in a diet. Are all fats bad? Not at all, we should eat them. We’d die without them. Are saturated fats and refined plant fats worth including in our diet? Arguably no, not at all. Incidental consumption of them is more than enough and intentional consumption becomes problematic quite quickly. I’m not aware of any outcomes-based studies spanning the globe which indicate that a high fat diet serves most people well as far as long term quality and quantity of life. On the other hand, there are several, and more all the time, showing the opposite. The valid “fat is actually okay!” data almost exclusively comes from whole-food based studies. However, those which position saturated fats as safe or healthy are typically of poor designs. One example off the top of my head is one which put vegetarians on an extremely high coconut oil diet and meat eaters on a lean meat diet. The results? Eating meat is better for your cholesterol! Surprise? I couldn’t make this stuff up. In fact, someone likely paid people a lot of money to make it up. The irony is that it uses the truth (saturated fat raises blood lipids) to indicate that this truth is actually false. If saturated fat was bad, wouldn’t the intersection of meat eaters and vegetarians look different? It must be okay. Makes a great headline! I agree that the sugar lobbying is absurd and harmful to society, but you’d be doing yourself a disservice to believe there isn’t a massive and busy lobby behind fats as well. Why wouldn’t there be? Look at how many studies around animal products and fat are funded by associates of the food processing industry. And yet the best studies we have clearly have no commercial agenda behind them, they typically took years or decades of work, yet they’re hastily discounted by all kinds of people.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Beyond/Incredible meat is awful. There's no other description for it. This highly processed fake meat is not healthy. Just eat meat, or don't if you don't want to. There's no need for this fake garbage.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    The idea that processing determines the healthfulness of a foodstuff is fallacious.
    - RupertEisenhart 4y ago
      This source says differently [0], at least for meat. Do you have any evidence or reasoning? [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18444144/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18444144/
      - xapata 4y ago
        Evidence for processing meat doesn't transfer well as evidence for processing beans.
      - tpm 4y ago
        That's mostly related to the curing salts and their reaction with heme iron. Curing salts are not used when processing vegetables; heme iron is not added either (I hope), so this should not apply in this case.
        noduerme 4y ago
        Impossible patties have heme iron added. https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/impossible-burger-vs-beyond-meat https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/impossible-burger-vs-be...
      - RupertEisenhart 4y ago
        For some reason there is no reply button on the other replies. Maybe the evidence for meat doesn't generalise, but the idea that fresh vegetables would retain some sort-lived structures that start to break down once processed seems plausible. I was just pointing out that GPs claim could do with some backup.
- djur 4y ago
  They're higher in fat than traditional veggie patties. That could explain it.
- owaislone 4y ago
  I know exactly what you mean and I get this a lot too. I always thought it was in my head but recently I tried a Drunken Noodle recipe from FreshPrep which used Beyond Meat Burgers and I felt nothing. It was actually delicious. I guess the prep method somehow affects it? https://www.freshprep.ca/orders/11661077/recipes/thai-beyond-meat-drunken-noodles-with-green-beans-thai-basil https://www.freshprep.ca/orders/11661077/recipes/thai-beyond...
chinabot 4y ago
I've not eaten a real burger or sausage since the 80's and I've only had two of these impossible burgers but they tasted quite nice when I had them and no adverse reactions, but at NZ$14 (US$8.50) for two frozen burgers at my local supermarket, they wont be on my menu often.
- orangepurple 4y ago
  The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is hard at work trying to figure out how to make ground up bugs affordable and palatable
  - TylerE 4y ago
    That really needs rebranding. We already eat plenty but of insects… we just call em things like crustaceans, shrimp, and crayfish.
    - dathinab 4y ago
      We also eat plenty of other bugs and insects which just get into the way of processing plants ;=) (crustaceans are a good example as traces of them tend to get included into algal based food, but less pleasant sounding examples are e.g. from time to time small worms being in fruited pressed for juice, sound terrible but isn't really that terrible and impossible to avoid without using pesticides which are worse then that by far)
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      I also had this thought once, but then looked it up, and found that it is completely wrong. It's basically like saying "we already eat plenty of fish... We just call em things like beef, pork, and bird meat". Except that fish are much more closely related to mammals than crustaceans are to insects (same phylum, different class). Here is an example of an animal that is as closely related to a cow as a grasshopper is to a lobster: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salp Edit: Even more, dietary preferences tend to focus on a single species. Plenty of people eat chicken but not turkey, or eat pork but not boar. There are even people who eat lamb but not adult sheep. And no one eats wolf or eagle meat. To then come and say "hey, you already eat one arthropod, why not another" is pretty absurd. I'm not at all against eating insects, I'm just pointing out that the fact we eat shrimp has 0 to do with it.
mathieuh 4y ago
I agree with you, and I think it’s the soya protein. I don’t have any problems with pea protein, but the soya protein makes me feel queasy. I think those meat replacements are good for people who have just become vegan as they give you a sense of familiarity, but after a while you realise that it’s possible to eat a delicious vegan diet that doesn’t consist of mega-processed things trying to be meat.
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  Probably also the pesticides and industrial oils.
  - fswd 4y ago
    Photos and internal documents from a Beyond Meat plant in Pennsylvania show apparent mold, Listeria and other food-safety issues, compounding problems at a factory the company had expected to play a major role in its future https://trib.al/q1SAHYO https://trib.al/q1SAHYO https://twitter.com/business/status/1594742995647070214?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1594743319036563457%7Ctwgr%5E816c517436b12d6f335b9f2dd12701b59bf463dd%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnypost.com%2F2022%2F11%2F21%2Fbeyond-meat-factory-riddled-with-mold-other-dirty-conditions-leaked-documents%2F https://twitter.com/business/status/1594742995647070214?ref_...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - pmarreck 4y ago
      this looks like propaganda
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Would that be the same thing I’d find in tofu? Because tofu doesn’t upset my stomach at all.
  - 4y ago
jjcon 4y ago
Interesting I've experienced this too though interestingly it is way more noticeable for me with beyond than impossible. I get a weird after taste for hours and my stomach feels off. Not bad enough to never eat again but noticeable enough that I tend to avoid beyond in particular now. Some people have suggested it is so close to meat that your stomach just isn't used to it but I'm pescatarian and eat fish fairly regularly so I doubt it is that simple.
- novia 4y ago
  It's the pea protein. The aftertaste is horrible. They've started putting it in vegan ice cream. .. Why?
  - manmal 4y ago
    It’s cheap and people who avoid soy might buy pea instead. Almond protein might work better for ice cream from a taste perspective, but that’s super expensive. We have a great almond & coconut based ice cream in our region but it costs 2x as much as the milk based one.
King-Aaron 4y ago
I'm an omnivore but still like to have the odd non-meat option, and I'm the same. I find the impossible (etc) burgers are just.. weird. I really prefer having a felafel if it's available!
- sammalloy 4y ago
  Not a bad choice. A great falafel reminds me of a veggie shawarma.
  - lucasverra 4y ago
    Everything that is (centuries) old is new again! PS : soaked portobello mushrooms veggie burger is a delicatessen
  - checkyoursudo 4y ago
    > veggie shawarma Highly under-appreciated IMO.
bpye 4y ago
I find that Beyond Meat is 'okay' in a burger when it's got all the other flavours going on, but I was recently playing around with using it in other dishes like meatballs and wasn't nearly as happy with it. It has a weird aftertaste that I can't quite identify, and whilst not awful, isn't terribly pleasant.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  The Beyond meat we've had from the grocery store has too much smoke flavor added in. It's fine if you're making burgers, and maybe chili, but anything else is a non-starter. I think they make sausage and meatballs that don't have this flavor, but whatever generic 'ground meat' we got was suitable only for making food on a grill.
- sethhochberg 4y ago
  My favorite of all of these products are the various Impossible Sausages, probably for exactly the reason that sausage is way more flavor and texture than just the meat or “meat” itself. Seriously love the bratwurst alternatives. The burgers from either brand? I completely agree with you, there’s something just slightly off about them.
- olyjohn 4y ago
  I bought a pound of the "ground beef" to try it out. Pretty sure it was Beyond beef, but I'll be goddamned if it didn't smell and taste like cat food when I opened up the package. It was fucking revolting, and totally ruined the dish I was making. There must be some special way to prepare it to make it taste good. There's no way I'll take this stuff and make burger patties out of it just like I would regular ground beef. I'm not the only one either, do a search for "beyond smells like..." and look at the autocomplete results.
  - uxp100 4y ago
    Cooking it. That’s the way to make it taste fine. I wouldn’t eat it straight out of the package. Raw ground beef is much more pleasant, though bland.
godmode2019 4y ago
I don't watch TV so I didn't know about these products. I ordered a incredible beef pizza thinking it was extra topping or something. Half way through I happened to eat one of the 'beef' bits by itself and realised it tasted terrible and possibly expired. I googled it and turned out they sold me a fake meat while advertising it as "<product_name> beef". Which I felt should be false advertising. The funny thing is I really enjoy falafels and the English brand of vege mushroom paddies. But this fake meat is soulless.
- musiciangames 4y ago
  I agree the naming/labeling thing is tricky. We have a friend who brings round 'vegan cheese' when she visits; living in the EU, I'm surprised this labeling is allowed. Is it OK to label vegetarian things as 'beef'? On the other hand, 'beef substitute' doesn't sound terribly appetising. But we are all familiar with 'peanut butter'; I'm sure someone more knowledgeable can explain what is and is not allowed.
  - drewm1980 4y ago
    I live in the EU. The thing that makes cheese cheese is arguably the mix of fungi and bacteria growing in it. We have some excellent cheeses here that are traditional except for the substitution of nut milk for mammal milk. They are currently specialty items, but that may change. We may have to give up meat and dairy to get through the energy transition, but fortunately the same mold and bacteria responsible for blue cheese grow on plant milk too! The etymology doesn't really matter, but the french word for cheese refer to how milk is ~processed... "Fromage" -> "Formage" -> "putting stuff in forms". If you think "peanut butter" is confusing... it is called "pinda kaas" in dutch... directly translates to "peanut cheese"!
    - mathieuh 4y ago
      Could you recommend any blue vegan cheeses? I'm in the UK so I might have trouble getting them, most of the vegan cheese I have access to is basically the same flavour just in different shapes and forms.
kodah 4y ago
My partner is a vegetarian and she doesn't eat the fake-meat patties, however, she does get these: https://www.morningstarfarms.com/en_US/products/chikn/morningstar-farms-chik-n-nuggets-product.html/ https://www.morningstarfarms.com/en_US/products/chikn/mornin... They're really good with no awful side effects or tastes. I like some vegetarian options, but honestly, most of it either tastes nasty or has poor texture.
- SyzygistSix 4y ago
  I realize they are processed food but I really like Morning Star ~~Farms~~ Laboratories products. No one is going to mistake their products for meat but they are still delicious. And I doubt their business is struggling, or that Beyond Meats's fate has them worried.
- lupire 4y ago
  Protein covered in bread and oil is tasty, but it's not a meat substitute, nutritionally.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  My girlfriend dislikes some meats and seems to want to be a low-meat household, she loves morningstar nuggets of most kinds. Another good one is Quorn. They are a cultured fungus protein and it just makes a much more meaty tasting and feeling product, and you could easily forget it's not chicken. Big problem though is the required level of processing to take a vague protein slurry and turn it into a glued together nugget means it's only really comparable to the absolute lowest quality, bulk batch, school lunch grade nuggets.
  - lock-the-spock 4y ago
    Quorn is a fermented slime mold, the fungi label is a marketing trick. This said, I used to like Quorn before they started stuffing egg (mostly eggwhite) into everything. The real slime mold is great, but where I live it's near impossible to get Quorn products without the egg. They taste as bad as impossible/beyond with their clearly chemical taste. Going beyond this, mosr vegetarians/vegans find over time that it is much cheaper and actually nicer to go simple, not with the replacements. tofu, seitan or simply vegetable dishes without any of these things. E.g. in a well flavoured bolognese/ragout no one can taste a difference between meat, fake meat or simple hard tofu (mouth feel/texture are clearly different though). And anyone should really try making seitan, it's super fun and easy - basically you just wash a bag of flour repeatedly with warm water.
ratsmack 4y ago
I'm not vegan or vegetarian, but I like certain black bean and garden burgers. I don't eat them with a bun though, I cook them and then top with a little cheese.
pavon 4y ago
We haven’t had issues with stomach upset, but I’ve found that cooking impossible burgers leaves an oder lingering in the house for days. It smells good while cooking but over time becomes off putting and I loose my appetite to cook the rest of the pack through the week. Beyond doesn’t have the same issue for me.
mlindner 4y ago
There's a good chance that your gut microbiome forgot about meat which is why you have the problem. It's a well known story I've heard of vegetarians going back to eating meat and then getting sick from the meat for some time. This is also why eating foods you're not used to can often make you sick even if they're fine. Your gut microbiome adapts to your diet, and if you suddenly change what you eat you can get indigestion. From my understanding the beyond/etc "meat" acts like real meat to your body microbiome because it's so similiar.
WhackyIdeas 4y ago
100% in agreement. It’s not even in the fast food places I struggle to find a plain bean burger now… it’s the supermarkets too. The odd peculiar taste of these kinds of new plant based burgers can be pretty foul. For me and my partner, the Burger King veggie burger now tastes similar to dish soap. Bring back the delicious bean burgers and actual normal veggie burgers.
- bombcar 4y ago
  We can still fall back to a fried portabello burger … for now.
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    Those are seriously the best.
  - thrownaway561 4y ago
    i don't know about anyone else, but the second I eat a portabello burger, I'm racing to the bathroom. unless they are washing extensively, whatever those spores are just hit me the wrong way and i'm off to the races. don't get me wrong though, they taste amazing, i just have to be selective of where i'm eating them at.
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  "delicious" and "bean burger" never have gone together in my experience. To each their own, I understand. Maybe it's because I only had a bean burger at Chili's .
- foxyv 4y ago
  I used to love the Morning Star Chipotle Black Bean burger. Then they changed the recipe and now it tastes horrible. It's lost the fresh, garden flavor and now it may as well be burnt bean paste or mush. At this point I'm moving on to my own patties.
- musicale 4y ago
  > the Burger King veggie burger now tastes similar to dish soap. That's interesting - is it a genetic thing like cilantro?
wakeupcall 4y ago
Not a vegan, but I went to several places that served some veg patties that I really enjoyed. It didn't attempt to taste like meat, but it was just as enjoyable. After this I tried several of these alternatives just to look for different flavors. Beyond meat really smelled weird when cooking, and while somewhat acceptable in taste I can totally share the stomach weirdness. This didn't prevent me to keep trying other stuff. "Impossible meat" I was never able to find yet. But as other have said, the major issue is that all the alternative options cost _more_ than actual beef where I live. This makes it a luxury option.
bravura 4y ago
From David Zilber (formerly of Noma): "Here’s a pesky little chemical called hexanal. If you’ve ever eaten a beyond burger, or any of these plant based products 2.0 (though to be honest, it’s more like they’re on V.46.6.2) and burped 10 or 15 minutes afterwards, and thought to yourself, “Hmmm, wow, ok I definitely just had a meat alternative” you were probably regurgitating this aerosol. Some people think it’s fruity, like green apple, others like mulched grass. At the lab, we had to walk outside to get wafts of it in its pure form, but the minute I opened the cap I knew exactly what this flavour was…. “OLD FRYER OIL, 100%”. It’s metabolized in all manners of organisms through the oxidation of fatty acids, and is… kind of unpleasant?! The point is that while this molecule exists in fava beans, peas, and soy, (the three kings of texturized vegetable protein) when you have a WHOLE FOOD, its there in harmony among all sorts of other volatile compounds, while also being locked away deep inside the beans fibres. It’s the act of processing that concentrated and heightens the presence of off-flavours like these, making the processed foods made from them taste, well, processed. Good with the bad. You can’t concentrate for protein without concentrating other aspects of a plant. There’s always a cost. Now, I will always be a huge proponent for whole foods, made with care, prepared simply. But the realities of grocery store shelves dictate a different truth. People opt for convenience, and sometimes, you’ve got to meet them where they are. My current work at CH has me doggedly hunting down an effect of fermentation I’ve long known intuitively through practice. Certain lactic acid bacteria fermenting their way through legumes don’t just mask, but dismantle this and other problematic molecules. I’m still after the mode of action, but it’s also enough for me to know that age old techniques of fermentation (like soaking ones legumes or grains days in advance of their cooking) can still put to shame the greatest technological “advances” of food science of the past 40 years. Nature is, after all, cleverer than you are. " https://www.facebook.com/david.zilber/posts/pfbid02CkCY53qDdzpUFYmSzc9gfvsTpHHwvw1Y1prDhKT1ErNZuUdYMSifSZGJoEEiYkKbl https://www.facebook.com/david.zilber/posts/pfbid02CkCY53qDd...
- wcoenen 4y ago
  Once you start paying attention, you can find bad tasting details in almost everything. For example, steak can taste metallic. People don't mind or even notice such things because they are used to it.
cactusplant7374 4y ago
It's could be the high amount of fat / saturated fat. This happens to me with a lot of high fat products. When I was consuming a lot of coconut milk / cream with curry dishes it happened too.
vctrnk 4y ago
I'm someone from far away, reading this unfold with curiosity. My country's variety is NotCo, who in all fairness makes damn good patties without any of the downsides told here (the fakeness sensation, the heavy stomach after eating, that strange waft when burping). NotCo uses AI for their processes, combining strange things like chicory, pineapple juice & cabbage to create milk that even froths like the real one; or strawberries, chickpeas, cocoa, beetroot & bamboo to make very passable "meat". They simply taste good, to the point sometimes I prefer to buy them instead of regular burgers. It helps that we have a healthy market of real veggie (ie. no meat-replacement) products to choose too. Though IDK what came out of their affair with Bezos, seems it didn't gain traction in the US? Unlike the rest of the world, they're big in LatAm and expanding. I think Australia is their latest successful gig. This isn't a paid endorsement btw, I just like their stuff. I assume Beyond, Impossible etc use another, more crude/unrefined approach.
- talldan 4y ago
  Haven't heard of it here in Australia yet. Australia has a few brands of its own (Buds and Veef are two popular ones) as well as some of the more global brands, so it's quite a saturated market.
- gs17 4y ago
  Tried to eat a NotBurger last night. I couldn't finish it... because my meat-eating girlfriend took it for herself. Their milk is pretty good too. The patent for the ML approach they use is kind of interesting as well, I honestly expected their "AI" to be a lot dumber: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10915818B1/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US10915818B1/ > Though IDK what came out of their affair with Bezos, seems it didn't gain traction in the US? Unlike the rest of the world, they're big in LatAm and expanding. I think Australia is their latest successful gig. This isn't a paid endorsement btw, I just like their stuff. Here they recently partnered with Kraft to make Not versions of their cheese singles (although some would say they weren't really cheese to begin with) and eventually other products. NotChicken is supposed to also make it here relatively soon, but sadly only as patties.
jandrese 4y ago
One thing both Impossible and Beyond do is add artificial smoke flavoring/aromatics to their product to more closely resemble a flame broiled burger. I find them to be somewhat offputting personally, and it also makes the product useless for anything other than a burger. You can't do a hot dish with the Beyond meat because the smoke flavor will overwhelm everything else in the dish.
rootusrootus 4y ago
Yeah I'm not sure what it is exactly, but I get a weird aftertaste that lingers when I've tried the impossible burgers. Closest thing I can compare it to is the aftertaste I get after eating chicken thighs. I know that's not exactly a useful comparison, but it's what I've got to work with. Definitely not an aftertaste I've ever associated with beef.
scrumbledober 4y ago
I have celiac and often feel the same way about gluten free foods. Please stop trying to feed me gluten free versions of things that rely on gluten to be good. Just give me a rice bowl or tacos on corn tortillas. With Veganism/Vegetarianism it makes even less sense to me. Not eating gluten is not a choice for me, but Vegans and Vegetarians chose this lifestyle because they don't want to eat meat, why make fake things that resemble meat?

colordrops 4y ago

I see you are being downvoted, but I know exactly what you mean. When I eat Impossible and especially Beyond burgers, my stomach feels slightly off. A bit of indigestion. I don't get this with typical veggie patties.

dqv 4y ago
You might have a touch of legume allergy (if only have a touch is possible). Beyond has pea protein and Impossible has soy protein. What's in your veggie patties?
- dagmx 4y ago
  Hmm not to say that’s not it (because people vary) but my wife and I both get this feeling with these Beyond/Impossible meats but we otherwise eat a lot of legumes which don’t give us that feeling
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    I think they both contain methylcellulose, which is considered benign but not digestible. In my experience it doesn’t cause major discomfort, but a mildly off putting sensation in my GI tract for a few hours. It might be something else, but it seems likely after narrowing things down for a while.
    - TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
      Cellulose? This is the modern equivalent of adding sawdust. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        Fiber is good for you. Adding bulk into something that's supposed to be a mixture is only a problem when it's diluting the rest too much.
      - steve_adams_86 4y ago
        If you dig a little deeper you’ll find that methylcellulose has some interesting culinary properties, making it well suited to adding structure and firm texture to soft foods. When mixed with water it transforms into a firm gel after heating, or it can be used to create extremely resilient emulsifications. It’s practically flavourless, so it works well. I’m not convinced it passes through the GI tract with no impact whatsoever, but it appears so far to be relatively benign. It’s nothing like sawdust or a filler, though. It’s also somewhat expensive so it wouldn’t be a good option for filler. My 500g bag was around $25, but if you wanted to use actual sawdust, well I think you could get that for close to nothing.
        TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
        Thank you for your eloquent and well reasoned refutation! Getting early 90s internet vibes, where prople actually typed out their disagreement in an informative way instead of just downvoting.
        steve_adams_86 4y ago
        I take that as a huge compliment! I find myself dreaming of Old Internet quite often these days, so thank you very much. Maybe we can restore the old ways one comment at a time.
Lammy 4y ago
For me it's the coconut oil / cocoa butter “marbling” that gives me the Olé Olestra problem https://web.archive.org/web/19990203160042/http://www.zug.com/pranks/olestra/ https://web.archive.org/web/19990203160042/http://www.zug.co...
- detritus 4y ago
  I can't touch 'vegan cheese' made with coconout oils for this reason - for some reason it leaves me feeling like I have a film of oil down the back of my gullet that I can't shake off for an hour or two afterwards. It's a weird, unlikeable and thoroughly unwanted sensation.
steve_adams_86 4y ago
I’m not positive but I have a feeling it’s the methylcellulose. In my own home experimentation, none of the ingredients seem to cause issues except for that. It seems fairly benign, but it can’t be digested and it isn’t clear to me if we have gut flora which can break it down efficiently. I enjoy throwing together little experiments in a similar vein to beyond meat or impossible burger products, but it feels too much like a lab experiment to eat regularly. My kids like “meat balls” with spaghetti, so I tend to make that and otherwise I’m gravitating back towards whole food-based garden burgers. A weird thing about beyond/impossible is that while they appear moderately healthier than real meat from some perspectives… They are still pretty trashy. I can’t not feel like I’m making a bad choice, even if it’s home made, and at the end of the day I just want to feel good (mentally and physically) about my food.
- pmarreck 4y ago
  > They are still pretty trashy This is a qualitative/irrational assessment and not a quantitative/rational one, especially considering that fat consumption got a wrongfully-deserved bad rap for decades thanks to unethical lobbying by the sugar industry.
  - oceanghost 4y ago
    What about food is not "qualitative"? :-) Where on the spectrum are you?
  - raspberry1337 4y ago
    It's very rational how many individuals are rejecting these trashy products.
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    For years I’ve spent a lot of time (probably more than I should) crawling through research about exactly this, which is precisely why I use the term trashy. Relatively speaking I suppose it’s better than many other options, which is relevant to some people. In the broader scope, this is still junk food. I’d argue (based on the best dietary research the world has produced) that saturated fats do deserve a bad rap, and most refined fats are also worth minimizing in a diet. Are all fats bad? Not at all, we should eat them. We’d die without them. Are saturated fats and refined plant fats worth including in our diet? Arguably no, not at all. Incidental consumption of them is more than enough and intentional consumption becomes problematic quite quickly. I’m not aware of any outcomes-based studies spanning the globe which indicate that a high fat diet serves most people well as far as long term quality and quantity of life. On the other hand, there are several, and more all the time, showing the opposite. The valid “fat is actually okay!” data almost exclusively comes from whole-food based studies. However, those which position saturated fats as safe or healthy are typically of poor designs. One example off the top of my head is one which put vegetarians on an extremely high coconut oil diet and meat eaters on a lean meat diet. The results? Eating meat is better for your cholesterol! Surprise? I couldn’t make this stuff up. In fact, someone likely paid people a lot of money to make it up. The irony is that it uses the truth (saturated fat raises blood lipids) to indicate that this truth is actually false. If saturated fat was bad, wouldn’t the intersection of meat eaters and vegetarians look different? It must be okay. Makes a great headline! I agree that the sugar lobbying is absurd and harmful to society, but you’d be doing yourself a disservice to believe there isn’t a massive and busy lobby behind fats as well. Why wouldn’t there be? Look at how many studies around animal products and fat are funded by associates of the food processing industry. And yet the best studies we have clearly have no commercial agenda behind them, they typically took years or decades of work, yet they’re hastily discounted by all kinds of people.
SoftTalker 4y ago
Beyond/Incredible meat is awful. There's no other description for it. This highly processed fake meat is not healthy. Just eat meat, or don't if you don't want to. There's no need for this fake garbage.
- tptacek 4y ago
  The idea that processing determines the healthfulness of a foodstuff is fallacious.
  - RupertEisenhart 4y ago
    This source says differently [0], at least for meat. Do you have any evidence or reasoning? [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18444144/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18444144/
    - xapata 4y ago
      Evidence for processing meat doesn't transfer well as evidence for processing beans.
    - tpm 4y ago
      That's mostly related to the curing salts and their reaction with heme iron. Curing salts are not used when processing vegetables; heme iron is not added either (I hope), so this should not apply in this case.
      - noduerme 4y ago
        Impossible patties have heme iron added. https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/impossible-burger-vs-beyond-meat https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/impossible-burger-vs-be...
    - RupertEisenhart 4y ago
      For some reason there is no reply button on the other replies. Maybe the evidence for meat doesn't generalise, but the idea that fresh vegetables would retain some sort-lived structures that start to break down once processed seems plausible. I was just pointing out that GPs claim could do with some backup.
djur 4y ago
They're higher in fat than traditional veggie patties. That could explain it.
owaislone 4y ago
I know exactly what you mean and I get this a lot too. I always thought it was in my head but recently I tried a Drunken Noodle recipe from FreshPrep which used Beyond Meat Burgers and I felt nothing. It was actually delicious. I guess the prep method somehow affects it? https://www.freshprep.ca/orders/11661077/recipes/thai-beyond-meat-drunken-noodles-with-green-beans-thai-basil https://www.freshprep.ca/orders/11661077/recipes/thai-beyond...

chinabot 4y ago

I've not eaten a real burger or sausage since the 80's and I've only had two of these impossible burgers but they tasted quite nice when I had them and no adverse reactions, but at NZ$14 (US$8.50) for two frozen burgers at my local supermarket, they wont be on my menu often.

orangepurple 4y ago
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is hard at work trying to figure out how to make ground up bugs affordable and palatable
- TylerE 4y ago
  That really needs rebranding. We already eat plenty but of insects… we just call em things like crustaceans, shrimp, and crayfish.
  - dathinab 4y ago
    We also eat plenty of other bugs and insects which just get into the way of processing plants ;=) (crustaceans are a good example as traces of them tend to get included into algal based food, but less pleasant sounding examples are e.g. from time to time small worms being in fruited pressed for juice, sound terrible but isn't really that terrible and impossible to avoid without using pesticides which are worse then that by far)
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    I also had this thought once, but then looked it up, and found that it is completely wrong. It's basically like saying "we already eat plenty of fish... We just call em things like beef, pork, and bird meat". Except that fish are much more closely related to mammals than crustaceans are to insects (same phylum, different class). Here is an example of an animal that is as closely related to a cow as a grasshopper is to a lobster: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salp Edit: Even more, dietary preferences tend to focus on a single species. Plenty of people eat chicken but not turkey, or eat pork but not boar. There are even people who eat lamb but not adult sheep. And no one eats wolf or eagle meat. To then come and say "hey, you already eat one arthropod, why not another" is pretty absurd. I'm not at all against eating insects, I'm just pointing out that the fact we eat shrimp has 0 to do with it.

mathieuh 4y ago

I agree with you, and I think it’s the soya protein. I don’t have any problems with pea protein, but the soya protein makes me feel queasy. I think those meat replacements are good for people who have just become vegan as they give you a sense of familiarity, but after a while you realise that it’s possible to eat a delicious vegan diet that doesn’t consist of mega-processed things trying to be meat.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago
Probably also the pesticides and industrial oils.
- fswd 4y ago
  Photos and internal documents from a Beyond Meat plant in Pennsylvania show apparent mold, Listeria and other food-safety issues, compounding problems at a factory the company had expected to play a major role in its future https://trib.al/q1SAHYO https://trib.al/q1SAHYO https://twitter.com/business/status/1594742995647070214?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1594743319036563457%7Ctwgr%5E816c517436b12d6f335b9f2dd12701b59bf463dd%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnypost.com%2F2022%2F11%2F21%2Fbeyond-meat-factory-riddled-with-mold-other-dirty-conditions-leaked-documents%2F https://twitter.com/business/status/1594742995647070214?ref_...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - pmarreck 4y ago
    this looks like propaganda
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
Would that be the same thing I’d find in tofu? Because tofu doesn’t upset my stomach at all.
- 4y ago

jjcon 4y ago

Interesting I've experienced this too though interestingly it is way more noticeable for me with beyond than impossible. I get a weird after taste for hours and my stomach feels off. Not bad enough to never eat again but noticeable enough that I tend to avoid beyond in particular now. Some people have suggested it is so close to meat that your stomach just isn't used to it but I'm pescatarian and eat fish fairly regularly so I doubt it is that simple.

novia 4y ago
It's the pea protein. The aftertaste is horrible. They've started putting it in vegan ice cream. .. Why?
- manmal 4y ago
  It’s cheap and people who avoid soy might buy pea instead. Almond protein might work better for ice cream from a taste perspective, but that’s super expensive. We have a great almond & coconut based ice cream in our region but it costs 2x as much as the milk based one.

King-Aaron 4y ago

I'm an omnivore but still like to have the odd non-meat option, and I'm the same. I find the impossible (etc) burgers are just.. weird. I really prefer having a felafel if it's available!

sammalloy 4y ago
Not a bad choice. A great falafel reminds me of a veggie shawarma.
- lucasverra 4y ago
  Everything that is (centuries) old is new again! PS : soaked portobello mushrooms veggie burger is a delicatessen
- checkyoursudo 4y ago
  > veggie shawarma Highly under-appreciated IMO.

bpye 4y ago

I find that Beyond Meat is 'okay' in a burger when it's got all the other flavours going on, but I was recently playing around with using it in other dishes like meatballs and wasn't nearly as happy with it. It has a weird aftertaste that I can't quite identify, and whilst not awful, isn't terribly pleasant.

gnicholas 4y ago
The Beyond meat we've had from the grocery store has too much smoke flavor added in. It's fine if you're making burgers, and maybe chili, but anything else is a non-starter. I think they make sausage and meatballs that don't have this flavor, but whatever generic 'ground meat' we got was suitable only for making food on a grill.
sethhochberg 4y ago
My favorite of all of these products are the various Impossible Sausages, probably for exactly the reason that sausage is way more flavor and texture than just the meat or “meat” itself. Seriously love the bratwurst alternatives. The burgers from either brand? I completely agree with you, there’s something just slightly off about them.
olyjohn 4y ago
I bought a pound of the "ground beef" to try it out. Pretty sure it was Beyond beef, but I'll be goddamned if it didn't smell and taste like cat food when I opened up the package. It was fucking revolting, and totally ruined the dish I was making. There must be some special way to prepare it to make it taste good. There's no way I'll take this stuff and make burger patties out of it just like I would regular ground beef. I'm not the only one either, do a search for "beyond smells like..." and look at the autocomplete results.
- uxp100 4y ago
  Cooking it. That’s the way to make it taste fine. I wouldn’t eat it straight out of the package. Raw ground beef is much more pleasant, though bland.

godmode2019 4y ago

I don't watch TV so I didn't know about these products. I ordered a incredible beef pizza thinking it was extra topping or something. Half way through I happened to eat one of the 'beef' bits by itself and realised it tasted terrible and possibly expired. I googled it and turned out they sold me a fake meat while advertising it as "<product_name> beef". Which I felt should be false advertising. The funny thing is I really enjoy falafels and the English brand of vege mushroom paddies. But this fake meat is soulless.

musiciangames 4y ago
I agree the naming/labeling thing is tricky. We have a friend who brings round 'vegan cheese' when she visits; living in the EU, I'm surprised this labeling is allowed. Is it OK to label vegetarian things as 'beef'? On the other hand, 'beef substitute' doesn't sound terribly appetising. But we are all familiar with 'peanut butter'; I'm sure someone more knowledgeable can explain what is and is not allowed.
- drewm1980 4y ago
  I live in the EU. The thing that makes cheese cheese is arguably the mix of fungi and bacteria growing in it. We have some excellent cheeses here that are traditional except for the substitution of nut milk for mammal milk. They are currently specialty items, but that may change. We may have to give up meat and dairy to get through the energy transition, but fortunately the same mold and bacteria responsible for blue cheese grow on plant milk too! The etymology doesn't really matter, but the french word for cheese refer to how milk is ~processed... "Fromage" -> "Formage" -> "putting stuff in forms". If you think "peanut butter" is confusing... it is called "pinda kaas" in dutch... directly translates to "peanut cheese"!
  - mathieuh 4y ago
    Could you recommend any blue vegan cheeses? I'm in the UK so I might have trouble getting them, most of the vegan cheese I have access to is basically the same flavour just in different shapes and forms.

kodah 4y ago

My partner is a vegetarian and she doesn't eat the fake-meat patties, however, she does get these: https://www.morningstarfarms.com/en_US/products/chikn/morningstar-farms-chik-n-nuggets-product.html/ https://www.morningstarfarms.com/en_US/products/chikn/mornin... They're really good with no awful side effects or tastes. I like some vegetarian options, but honestly, most of it either tastes nasty or has poor texture.

SyzygistSix 4y ago
I realize they are processed food but I really like Morning Star ~~Farms~~ Laboratories products. No one is going to mistake their products for meat but they are still delicious. And I doubt their business is struggling, or that Beyond Meats's fate has them worried.
lupire 4y ago
Protein covered in bread and oil is tasty, but it's not a meat substitute, nutritionally.
mrguyorama 4y ago
My girlfriend dislikes some meats and seems to want to be a low-meat household, she loves morningstar nuggets of most kinds. Another good one is Quorn. They are a cultured fungus protein and it just makes a much more meaty tasting and feeling product, and you could easily forget it's not chicken. Big problem though is the required level of processing to take a vague protein slurry and turn it into a glued together nugget means it's only really comparable to the absolute lowest quality, bulk batch, school lunch grade nuggets.
- lock-the-spock 4y ago
  Quorn is a fermented slime mold, the fungi label is a marketing trick. This said, I used to like Quorn before they started stuffing egg (mostly eggwhite) into everything. The real slime mold is great, but where I live it's near impossible to get Quorn products without the egg. They taste as bad as impossible/beyond with their clearly chemical taste. Going beyond this, mosr vegetarians/vegans find over time that it is much cheaper and actually nicer to go simple, not with the replacements. tofu, seitan or simply vegetable dishes without any of these things. E.g. in a well flavoured bolognese/ragout no one can taste a difference between meat, fake meat or simple hard tofu (mouth feel/texture are clearly different though). And anyone should really try making seitan, it's super fun and easy - basically you just wash a bag of flour repeatedly with warm water.

ratsmack 4y ago

I'm not vegan or vegetarian, but I like certain black bean and garden burgers. I don't eat them with a bun though, I cook them and then top with a little cheese.

pavon 4y ago

We haven’t had issues with stomach upset, but I’ve found that cooking impossible burgers leaves an oder lingering in the house for days. It smells good while cooking but over time becomes off putting and I loose my appetite to cook the rest of the pack through the week. Beyond doesn’t have the same issue for me.

mlindner 4y ago

There's a good chance that your gut microbiome forgot about meat which is why you have the problem. It's a well known story I've heard of vegetarians going back to eating meat and then getting sick from the meat for some time. This is also why eating foods you're not used to can often make you sick even if they're fine. Your gut microbiome adapts to your diet, and if you suddenly change what you eat you can get indigestion. From my understanding the beyond/etc "meat" acts like real meat to your body microbiome because it's so similiar.

WhackyIdeas 4y ago

100% in agreement. It’s not even in the fast food places I struggle to find a plain bean burger now… it’s the supermarkets too. The odd peculiar taste of these kinds of new plant based burgers can be pretty foul. For me and my partner, the Burger King veggie burger now tastes similar to dish soap. Bring back the delicious bean burgers and actual normal veggie burgers.

bombcar 4y ago
We can still fall back to a fried portabello burger … for now.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  Those are seriously the best.
- thrownaway561 4y ago
  i don't know about anyone else, but the second I eat a portabello burger, I'm racing to the bathroom. unless they are washing extensively, whatever those spores are just hit me the wrong way and i'm off to the races. don't get me wrong though, they taste amazing, i just have to be selective of where i'm eating them at.
unethical_ban 4y ago
"delicious" and "bean burger" never have gone together in my experience. To each their own, I understand. Maybe it's because I only had a bean burger at Chili's .
foxyv 4y ago
I used to love the Morning Star Chipotle Black Bean burger. Then they changed the recipe and now it tastes horrible. It's lost the fresh, garden flavor and now it may as well be burnt bean paste or mush. At this point I'm moving on to my own patties.
musicale 4y ago
> the Burger King veggie burger now tastes similar to dish soap. That's interesting - is it a genetic thing like cilantro?

wakeupcall 4y ago

Not a vegan, but I went to several places that served some veg patties that I really enjoyed. It didn't attempt to taste like meat, but it was just as enjoyable. After this I tried several of these alternatives just to look for different flavors. Beyond meat really smelled weird when cooking, and while somewhat acceptable in taste I can totally share the stomach weirdness. This didn't prevent me to keep trying other stuff. "Impossible meat" I was never able to find yet. But as other have said, the major issue is that all the alternative options cost _more_ than actual beef where I live. This makes it a luxury option.

bravura 4y ago

From David Zilber (formerly of Noma): "Here’s a pesky little chemical called hexanal. If you’ve ever eaten a beyond burger, or any of these plant based products 2.0 (though to be honest, it’s more like they’re on V.46.6.2) and burped 10 or 15 minutes afterwards, and thought to yourself, “Hmmm, wow, ok I definitely just had a meat alternative” you were probably regurgitating this aerosol. Some people think it’s fruity, like green apple, others like mulched grass. At the lab, we had to walk outside to get wafts of it in its pure form, but the minute I opened the cap I knew exactly what this flavour was…. “OLD FRYER OIL, 100%”. It’s metabolized in all manners of organisms through the oxidation of fatty acids, and is… kind of unpleasant?! The point is that while this molecule exists in fava beans, peas, and soy, (the three kings of texturized vegetable protein) when you have a WHOLE FOOD, its there in harmony among all sorts of other volatile compounds, while also being locked away deep inside the beans fibres. It’s the act of processing that concentrated and heightens the presence of off-flavours like these, making the processed foods made from them taste, well, processed. Good with the bad. You can’t concentrate for protein without concentrating other aspects of a plant. There’s always a cost. Now, I will always be a huge proponent for whole foods, made with care, prepared simply. But the realities of grocery store shelves dictate a different truth. People opt for convenience, and sometimes, you’ve got to meet them where they are. My current work at CH has me doggedly hunting down an effect of fermentation I’ve long known intuitively through practice. Certain lactic acid bacteria fermenting their way through legumes don’t just mask, but dismantle this and other problematic molecules. I’m still after the mode of action, but it’s also enough for me to know that age old techniques of fermentation (like soaking ones legumes or grains days in advance of their cooking) can still put to shame the greatest technological “advances” of food science of the past 40 years. Nature is, after all, cleverer than you are. " https://www.facebook.com/david.zilber/posts/pfbid02CkCY53qDdzpUFYmSzc9gfvsTpHHwvw1Y1prDhKT1ErNZuUdYMSifSZGJoEEiYkKbl https://www.facebook.com/david.zilber/posts/pfbid02CkCY53qDd...

wcoenen 4y ago
Once you start paying attention, you can find bad tasting details in almost everything. For example, steak can taste metallic. People don't mind or even notice such things because they are used to it.

cactusplant7374 4y ago

It's could be the high amount of fat / saturated fat. This happens to me with a lot of high fat products. When I was consuming a lot of coconut milk / cream with curry dishes it happened too.

vctrnk 4y ago

I'm someone from far away, reading this unfold with curiosity. My country's variety is NotCo, who in all fairness makes damn good patties without any of the downsides told here (the fakeness sensation, the heavy stomach after eating, that strange waft when burping). NotCo uses AI for their processes, combining strange things like chicory, pineapple juice & cabbage to create milk that even froths like the real one; or strawberries, chickpeas, cocoa, beetroot & bamboo to make very passable "meat". They simply taste good, to the point sometimes I prefer to buy them instead of regular burgers. It helps that we have a healthy market of real veggie (ie. no meat-replacement) products to choose too. Though IDK what came out of their affair with Bezos, seems it didn't gain traction in the US? Unlike the rest of the world, they're big in LatAm and expanding. I think Australia is their latest successful gig. This isn't a paid endorsement btw, I just like their stuff. I assume Beyond, Impossible etc use another, more crude/unrefined approach.

talldan 4y ago
Haven't heard of it here in Australia yet. Australia has a few brands of its own (Buds and Veef are two popular ones) as well as some of the more global brands, so it's quite a saturated market.
gs17 4y ago
Tried to eat a NotBurger last night. I couldn't finish it... because my meat-eating girlfriend took it for herself. Their milk is pretty good too. The patent for the ML approach they use is kind of interesting as well, I honestly expected their "AI" to be a lot dumber: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10915818B1/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US10915818B1/ > Though IDK what came out of their affair with Bezos, seems it didn't gain traction in the US? Unlike the rest of the world, they're big in LatAm and expanding. I think Australia is their latest successful gig. This isn't a paid endorsement btw, I just like their stuff. Here they recently partnered with Kraft to make Not versions of their cheese singles (although some would say they weren't really cheese to begin with) and eventually other products. NotChicken is supposed to also make it here relatively soon, but sadly only as patties.

jandrese 4y ago

One thing both Impossible and Beyond do is add artificial smoke flavoring/aromatics to their product to more closely resemble a flame broiled burger. I find them to be somewhat offputting personally, and it also makes the product useless for anything other than a burger. You can't do a hot dish with the Beyond meat because the smoke flavor will overwhelm everything else in the dish.

rootusrootus 4y ago

Yeah I'm not sure what it is exactly, but I get a weird aftertaste that lingers when I've tried the impossible burgers. Closest thing I can compare it to is the aftertaste I get after eating chicken thighs. I know that's not exactly a useful comparison, but it's what I've got to work with. Definitely not an aftertaste I've ever associated with beef.

scrumbledober 4y ago

I have celiac and often feel the same way about gluten free foods. Please stop trying to feed me gluten free versions of things that rely on gluten to be good. Just give me a rice bowl or tacos on corn tortillas. With Veganism/Vegetarianism it makes even less sense to me. Not eating gluten is not a choice for me, but Vegans and Vegetarians chose this lifestyle because they don't want to eat meat, why make fake things that resemble meat?