The Impossible Burger is a wake-up call to the meat industry
washingtonpost.com
Missouri Farm Bureau members were likely startled by the recent “ Commentary” in their email queues. The farm bureau’s Eric Bohl reported on his visit to a St. Louis-area Burger King, where the fast-food giant is testing a version of the Whopper made entirely from plants. “If I didn’t know what I was eating, I would have no idea it was not beef,” Bohl wrote.
Given the farm bureau’s role in last year’s Missouri law banning use of the word “meat” to market plant-based products, Bohl’s praise was unexpected. An explanation soon followed.
“Raising cattle is a way of life in rural Missouri,” the food critic allowed. “So why write an article taste-testing a plant-based ‘burger’? As a wake-up call to our industry.”
But not every alarm heralds a bright new day. Cattlemen are waking to the very real possibility that they have nowhere to go but down. America may have reached Peak Meat.
I say this as a rock-ribbed, 100-percent, Fred Flintstone carnivore. What the madeleine did for Marcel Proust, so the aroma of grilling meat unlocks a lifetime of memories for me. By contrast, I’ve detested the idea of veggie burgers ever since my family was cursed with a carton of frozen soy patties in those ghastly times known as the 1970s.
Like Bohl, though, I was impressed by the burger my son and I shared the other day at a Red Robin restaurant in suburban Kansas City. We ordered identically tricked-out sandwiches, one with a plant-based patty from the same company that supplies Burger King — Impossible Foods — and the other with traditional ground beef. Tasting them side-by-side, we could discern an ever-so-slight difference. But they were equals in terms of yumminess and burgerismo.
I waddled away thinking this is a tipping point. Today’s meat alternatives aren’t aimed at the relatively small market of dedicated vegans and vegetarians. They’re targeted to the likes of me: people who will only give weight to the environmental impacts of large-scale animal farming if given meaty-tasting, meaty-smelling, meaty-looking alternatives.
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