Re-imagining beef burger in face of veganism

By-Parth Bhave

Re-imagining beef burger in face of veganism; image source-Google

The Impossible Burger

If one is asked to create a beef burger out of vegetarian ingredients, it would not be surprising if he is baffled by the audacity of the person to ask such a frivolous question. An obvious response would be nothing more than impossible. But not even the logical implausibility of creating meat from vegetables stop Patrick O. Brown from creating the impossible itself – a vegan burger that tastes and smells exactly like beef.

Patrick O. Brown is the founder of Impossible foods. A biochemist by profession, he wanted to make a positive impact on human society by eradicating animal farming for the meat which is accountable to surmountable greenhouse gas emissions and pollution.

Is Livestock that bad?

Agriculture in total accounts for 92% of the freshwater footprint of humanity out of which almost one third of it is related to animal products. To put the things in perspective, one pound of beef requires 1,800 gallons of water which is equivalent to more than 100 10-minute showers. Overlooking the plausible deniability, that is indeed a lot of water. To add to it, livestock agriculture amounts to 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions most of which comes from cattle. If we settle down to thoroughly investigate facts, setting aside the moral implications associated with harvesting animals for meat, it is very well evident that livestock agriculture is detrimental to our planet.

Patrick Brown’s desire eliminates these obvious culprits led him to create the Impossible Burger.

How did they begin creating the impossible burger?

Brown began by dissecting the very elements of meat. He put meat under the microscope and by using sophisticated tools like High-Performance Liquid Chromatography, he isolated individual components that makeup meat and studied them further. Several years of research by Brown and his team led him towards Heme as being the major component in meat responsible for its colour, taste, and smell. Heme is an iron-containing molecule which forms a non-protein part of major biological molecules like haemoglobin and myoglobin. Color of heme being red evidently translates into a viable justification for the color of meat being red, as myoglobin forms a major component of meat system. It is heme which is super-abundant in meat, gives meat burger their rich flavor. Myoglobin also undergoes oxidative browning reactions responsible for causing the meat to change color on cooking. However, heme is an essential molecular building block of all life forms including plants. One implication of this premise means that heme could be extracted from plants and used to make a vegetarian burger that tasted like meat.

Nitrogen fixing plants and legumes are particularly rich in heme. However, heme in plants is a component of a protein called leghaemoglobin in contrast to heme being a component of myoglobin in meat. Brown and his team decided to go ahead and use soy leghaemoglobin which is identical to myoglobin in meat. But to be able to produce Impossible burger with lowest achievable environmental impact, they decided to use genetically engineered yeast to make heme. They isolated the gene for soy leghaemoglobin from root nodules of soy plants and using genetic modification techniques added it to a yeast strain. This yeast strain would now grow by fermentation and in the process would make leghaemoglobin. Brown’s team would then isolate this from yeast and use it to make their vegan burger patty.

But meat is not complete with just heme. Fatty acids in meat are also responsible for their aroma and flavour. Saturated fats in meat undergo an array of chemical reactions when subjected to heat, releasing meat’s most sought-after flavours. Brown’s team used an ingenious vegan fat source as a substitute for beef fat –coconut oil. Coconut oil which is high in saturated fat mimics saturated fat in beef. Coconut oil like beef fat is also solid until heated. Another predominant component of meat imparting significant texture properties is protein, for which Brown’s team used textured wheat protein. Textured vegetable protein is often formed by denaturing defatted thermoplastic proteins into a fibrous, insoluble, porous network which elegantly mimics meat texture. Potato protein was used to help achieve a beautifully seared crust on cooking.

And thus, Brown was successful in creating a true marvel of food technology – ‘plant-based meat’ which is far more complex and sophisticated than any previous attempts at the creation of vegetarian meat analogues.

Does it really taste like meat?

Impossible burger made its debut in New York City’s Momouku Nishi. Since then it has been featured in many top-end Michelin Star restaurants and many Burger joints. Like beef patty, Impossible burger patty also bleeds when heated
on a pan and releases juices like a traditional beef patty with no visual distinction from the former. Olfactory appeal of the patty is also indistinguishable from beef meat when cooked. The verdict however is mixed. Some people haven’t been able to distinguish beef burger from Impossible Burger while others have firm opinions that do not necessarily taste like cow’s meat, but the universal consensus has been established that it tastes really good and has been one of best vegetarian meat substitute ever.
Is impossible Burger better than beef?

The nutritionally Impossible burger is similar to classic beef burger. However, beef also contains cholesterol which Impossible burger has none. To add to this, Impossible burger is also free from antibiotics and hormones which is often an unavoidable consequence of today’s livestock agricultural practices. The plant substitute also works well with different cooking techniques like tartare which utilizes raw meat. Raw meat is often considered more flavourful due to its extra chewiness. But this culinary technique possesses a lot of food safety issues due to possible pathogenic contamination. The impossible burger can also circumvent this issue by eliminating the possibility of any meat-based microbial illness.

In association to the possible prejudice towards the safety of consuming genetically modified yeast derived leghaemoglobin, Impossible Foods have dedicated an entire research team to assess any possible hazards associated with it. Humans have long been consuming heme and all epidemiological data as of now has contributed to Soy leghaemoglobin receiving ‘generally regarded as safe (GRAS)’ status by FDA. Impossible foods also adhere to strict regulations laid out by FDA and have helped scientific community assess its safety by providing extensive test data and maintaining transparency.

Above all, the Impossible burger also uses 99 percent less land, 85 percent less water and emits 89 percent fewer greenhouse gases than traditional beef production. This atones for a huge difference on an environmental front. Whether it can fool hardcore meat eaters is still up to debate, but one has to undeniably agree that Impossible burger is indeed a sustainable solution for saving our planet from the dangers of meat industry.