Man once had to hunt his meat. Sneaking up on the prey, spear in hand, his reward for a successful outing would be juicy hunks of flesh, stripped of pelt and ready for an open flame. But somewhere along the line, he grew accustomed to drive-thru quarter pounders at $3 a pop, and the spear was forgotten. Man’s meat moved from the wilderness to crowded factory farms in the Heartland, where it was bred to be easily harvested and even more easily consumed. That is, if you can ignore things like indigestion and type 2 diabetes.



These days, our meat doesn’t even have to be meat—not if we don’t want it to.

You may have heard the names Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods before. Each has created a burger made in a lab from only plant products to mimic the taste and texture of real beef. You can find Beyond burgers in the meat case at many grocery stores, as well as on the menu at TGI Fridays. Impossible burgers are only available at restaurants, many of which dot the country—White Castle recently began serving Impossible sliders at select locations, as did some baseball stadiums—but are not yet available for you to cook at home. The hype around them is real.

But for many carnivores, these fake meat burgers still exist in a culinary Twilight Zone, along with eating crickets and brewing beer on Mars. Do they taste good? Will they kill us? Are they worth the price?

Most importantly, do they stand up to the greatest of American food traditions: a single beef patty, sizzling on the grill, a perfectly charred exterior and pink flesh in the center, fat dripping onto the coals below, waiting to be flipped onto a fresh roll with mayo and ketchup, tomato, onion, and lettuce?

Yes, Beyond and Impossible burgers may reek of Silicon Valley's tendency to throw money at things it knows nothing about, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of your attention. In fact, they might even win a spot on your grill this summer. So before you make up your mind about something you've never tried, let's bust apart some myths about fake meat.

Myth: Fake meat tastes terrible.

You can’t trick a meat eater. Even a 20-year vegan instinctively knows the mouthfeel and flavor of meat from soy, bean, and grain. But Impossible and Beyond have come damn close, using chemistry to replicate the texture and flavor of ground up cow.

Because Impossible burgers are only available at restaurants, the state in which one lands on your plate ultimately depends on the guy manning the grill. But you’d be forgiven if you assumed this patty once roamed on four legs. Brown on the outside, it breaks away to a juicy pink inside. You'll even see what looks like faux ligaments and tendons, tiny balls of fat, and honest-to-god meatless blood.

For Impossible, it comes down to one magic ingredient: heme, a molecule containing iron found in all living things—plant or animal. "It's in the blood of a cow, it's in chicken, it's in fish,” says David Lee, COO of Impossible Foods. “It's a building block of life."

The Impossible burger doesn't really have a strong flavor; it borrows heavily from whichever toppings or condiments you pair it with. On its own, it's buttery, incredibly salty, and packs enough iron flavor to trick your taste buds into thinking you’re eating a bloody piece of meat.

The Impossible Burger

The Beyond burger, on the other hand, is cooked to serve by you. It doesn’t “bleed” like Impossible. Its texture is more dense, less juicy, its color verging on burnt orange. Its innards are chunkier than the Impossible burger, and it looks less like it’s held together by animal musculature. But it’s still eerily close to beef.



Beyond made its burger by putting ingredients like pea protein, coconut oil, canola oil, and water through a heating and cooling system that Beyond Meat's CEO Ethan Brown compares to a cow’s four stomachs. A cow takes plants and makes muscles that we eat; his lab takes plants and knits them together to look like those muscles. “It's as simple as mixing together fat and protein and then water, and then forming it,” he says.

Beyond is more distinct to the tongue, adding its own layer of flavor instead of just a backdrop of fat and salt. It’s hard to describe, like tangy earth or sweet iron, but it’s definitely less oily and buttery.

Incredibly, both options are good—more beefy than a non-beef product has any right to be. And both sizzle sexily on the grill.

Myth: Chefs scoff at non-beef burgers.

When Impossible launched its burger in 2016, the company's first order of business was wooing chefs. So far, so good. Michael Symon, who serves Impossible burgers at his Cleveland restaurant B-Spot, said “it tasted like a hamburger” to him the first time he tried it. David Chang of Momofuku said back in 2016 that the Impossible burger was “delicious,” and that he’d “tasted the future and it was vegan.” Now, the future is here, and he has the Impossible burger on his menu.

Paul Wahlberg, head chef at Wahlburgers in Boston, tried to make his own veggie burger, roasting portobello mushrooms and pureeing vegetables in the hopes of getting something better than a spongy mousse. The texture was never right. Then, he tried the Impossible Burger.

"To me it's unbelievable because when you get the package of the meat and you look at it, you have to take a double take because it looks like ground beef,” he told me. “When you cook it, there's a little bit of texture difference, but it's as close as I've ever tried to having a meat texture."

Now, it’s among the top five most popular items on the menu at his Boston-area locations.

The Beyond Burger

Beyond burgers have yet to resonate with the chef-y set, as the company has focused its efforts on grocery stores. But according to my dad, who gave up red meat 10 years ago for health reasons and is very handy in the kitchen, “They don’t taste nasty.”

“They don’t taste like the Boca Burger stuff," he elaborated. "As a former red meat eater, they do taste kind of red meat-ish.”

Myth: They’re a health food.

Beyond and Impossible will both tell you they’re a healthier option than beef burgers, and on a digestive level, they’re right: You simply do not feel as stuffed after eating these plant-based products. But creating food in a lab comes with a cost: they're still highly processed products. According to Julieanna Hever, a registered dietitian and author of Plant-Based Nutrition (Idiot's Guide) 2nd Edition, that doesn’t make them much healthier than animal-based burgers.

“Unfortunately, these products are not health foods,” she says of Impossible and Beyond. “They offer benefits of being free of hormones and cholesterol and better for the environment and, of course, animals, but because of how rich they are, they should be used sparingly, as treat foods, or products people can use while transitioning to a plant-based diet.”

"These products are not health foods."

Of special concern to her is the amount of coconut oil (not healthy!) used in both as well as high levels of saturated fats, calories, and iron on par with animal-based burgers. Quitting red meat is cited by cardiologists as a heart-healthy diet adjustment, but Hever says eating highly processed plant food too frequently instead of veggies, fruits, whole grains, and nuts “may lead to similar health issues such as we see with animal product-containing diets, such as an increased risk for overweight/obesity and other cardiometabolic concerns.”

On the flip side, the Beyond burger has infiltrated pro sports, with NBA stars J.J. Redick and Kyrie Irving throwing their endorsements its way. So if you’ve got the type of body that can keep up with their taste preferences, then go ahead and indulge.

Myth: This is just a dumb food trend.

Both fake meat companies pride themselves on disrupting the meat industry in a positive way; Beyond calls itself “plant-based meat,” and Impossible is hawking its product as an authentic option for meat eaters. On texture alone, they’ve pulled it off. Taste is trickier, but a halfway decent burger with the right toppings can help you split the difference.



And every time you eat one, you’ll know you’ve done the environment a solid. Livestock production is one of the most harmful contributors to greenhouse gases in the U.S., per EPA data (before 2017, when they stopped reporting that kind of thing). It dirties streams and pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Impossible and Beyond burgers, which both reportedly use a fraction of the natural resources, are sustainable and nearly harmless in comparison—and no animals are harmed in the process.

It explains why socially conscious eaters, animal rights activists, and vegans alike are on board. Beyond counts big Earth nerds Leonardo DiCaprio and Bill Gates among its investors. Even Anthony Bourdain, who was never one to let a trendy food sit pretty, commented on Impossible’s potential, telling Eater in April, “Look, there are a lot of hungry people in the world. I guess if [it] is a means of providing must-needed protein to people who need protein to live, I guess I’m all for it.” (He did also say he was “resistant” to it as a pricey product served at hipster joints.) Before it's all said and done, plant-based patties might be the closest a burger comes to saving the world.

Burgers (from left): Black bean, Beyond, turkey, beef, and Impossible. Kat Wirsing

Burgers aren't a fad—they may literally have been the first "best thing" since sliced bread. And sure, there are a lot of non-beef burger options out there. Turkey is leaner, and generally tastes not-bad when paired with spicy mayo and slices of ripe avocado on a pretzel bun. Bean and quinoa varieties have been known to taste not just overtly healthy but also halfway decent, if they aren’t too crumbly or coarse. Chicken patties...well, they exist.

But none satisfy the craving for beef. And that makes Impossible and Beyond's quest to get there, based on flavor and morality, a worthy one. Besides, there’s nothing more American than a burger—except perhaps science, innovation, and the pursuit of something better.

So fire up the grill and give it a go. You just might become a believer.

This story has been edited for clarity.



Sarah Rense Sarah Rense is the Associate Lifestyle Editor at Esquire, where she covers tech, food, drink, home, and more.

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