It looks, smells and tastes like beef. But this burger is anything but.

If it looks like meat, smells like meat, tastes like meat, even "bleeds" like meat, it must be meat, right?

Not so fast, says Silicon Valley company Impossible Foods which has spent the last six years doing something not quite impossible but certainly unexpected – making a plant-based burger that replicates the sensory experience of meat such as taste, texture, juiciness and mouth-feel, with plant- based alternatives that use considerably fewer resources. And one that tastes, dare I say it, better than meat.

If you're not convinced, you're not alone. I wasn't until last night when I became one of the first Kiwis to taste the Impossible Burger, which is being served on the twice-daily Air New Zealand flights from LA to Auckland.

Our national carrier is the first airline in the world to partner with Impossible Foods, a Californian start-up whose non-meaty meat is stocked by more than 2500 restaurants across the US, from renowned chef David Chang's Momofuku Nishi restaurant in New York to White Castle and Umami burger outlets.

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SUPPLIED Air New Zealand is giving customers a taste of the future with a new inflight collaboration with Silicon Valley food tech start-up Impossible Foods.

Air New Zealand's Inflight Customer Experience Manager Niki Chave says she first heard about Impossible Foods a year ago and immediately saw the parallels between the two companies.

"Just like Impossible Foods, we pride ourselves on being innovative, so we're interested in working with other companies that do the same," says Chave. "We also align with Impossible Foods when it comes to sustainability and the opportunity to be the first airline in the world to offer this amazing burger was too good not to pursue."

There's usually a burger on the Business Premier menu but Chave believes the Impossible Burger will appeal to all palates.

"Whether you're a vegetarian, flexitarian or a hard-core meat lover, you'll enjoy the delicious taste of the Impossible Burger."

The burger, which is prepared in Air New Zealand's Los Angeles kitchen and assembled at altitude, comes with two plant-based patties, smoked Gouda cheese, caramelised onions and a smear of tomatillo cream. Because fries don't hold up in the air, it's served with a side of beetroot relish and pickle.

It was everything the PR machine promised it would be: thick juicy patties that felt and chewed like meat, that wouldn't be out of place at a back-yard barbie with a beer and a sunny deck. In other words, nothing like the cardboard-like meat substitutes I've tasted over the years.

The Impossible Burger is a big beast and four hours after touching down in Auckland, I still don't feel hungry. A fellow journalist, a former farm boy who's so carnivorous he may well have hooves for feet, made short work of his burger and proclaimed he couldn't believe it wasn't meat.

Impossible Foods' HQ is in Silicon Valley, the holy grail for start-ups, geeks and cutting-edge tech. Last Friday, when the temperature gauge was nudging 26 degrees, a group of Kiwi journalists drove an hour south from San Francisco to find out what all the fuss was about.

There, in a windowless room, Impossible Foods founder and CEO Dr Patrick Brown, explained how making something superior to a cow, rather than something identical to one, is good for consumers, the environment and for feeding a rapidly expanding species on a planet that stays the same size.

SHARON STEPHENSON Air New Zealand is the first in the world to serve the award-winning, plant-based Impossible Burger.

"Our mission is to make the global food system more sustainable by making products that don't compromise on nutrition, taste or sustainability," says Brown, a former Stanford University professor and doctor who has leant his considerable brain to, among other things, AIDS and cancer research.

"I believe animal-based production systems will ultimately be unsustainable in the face of climate change, global population growth and pressure on resources and food security."

It turns out the Impossible Burger uses 95 percent less land, 75 percent less water than beef, and generates 85 to 87 percent fewer greenhouse-gas emissions. And it doesn't contain any hormones, antibiotics, cholesterol or artificial flavours.

Brown and his fellow scientists explained that telling people what to eat was never going to work.

SHARON STEPHENSON Impossible Foods has its non-meaty meat stocked by more than 2500 restaurants across the US.

"People understand all the issues but eating meat is so much more complex – it's about tradition, familiarity, taste, convenience, nutrition, price point and a whole lot of emotional things," says Brown. "We had to make something that gave consumers all those things, but bypassed the cow which, let's be honest, is not terribly efficient at converting plant material into human-available protein and calories and whose emissions are blowing up the planet."

So what's in an Impossible Burger? There's potato protein, which gives it the critical chew factor, wheat which provides the fibre and coconut oil which kicks in the juicy mouth coating. But it's the magic ingredient, heme, which is what makes the burger so cutting edge. Derived from the roots of soy plants, heme is identical to that in animal meat, which is responsible for the burger 'bleeding' the same way as its meaty equivalent.

"A lot of people love to eat meat," says Brown. "What I'm doing is allowing them to eat a lot more of what they love, except in a way that's better for them and the planet."

The Impossible Burger is available in Business Premier on Air New Zealand flights from Los Angeles to Auckland until late October.

The writer travelled to LA courtesy of Air New Zealand.

Would you eat a plant-based meatless burger? Share your thoughts in the comments.