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If you think it is impossible to have artificial plant-based meat that tastes like real meat, please check out Impossible Food Inc. The news is that now you can buy an Impossible Whopper from Burger King (in US) that contains only plant-based patties from this company. The earlier trial run in St Louis shows that the vegetarian meat is popular among customers. Two questions need to be answered: how is the vegetarian meat made, and why did the company do this?
The company was founded by a Stanford professor in biochemistry, Patrick Brown. In his career, he has studied technologies to monitor gene expression and helped clarify the ways by which viruses infect cells. But later, he and his colleagues became fascinated by a simple question: what makes meat taste like meat? The team studied different properties of meat that make people love it: its sizzle, smell, taste, and nutrition. Then they searched for ingredients that would create those properties from the plant world. One of the breakthroughs was soy leghemoglobin, a protein found in soy that carries heme, an iron-containing molecule. The scientists have identified heme is what makes meat taste like meat. Therefore, the company has used this soy protein, made from genetically engineered yeast, to combine with other ingredients to make vegetarian meat. The protein also makes the vegetarian meat “bleed” like real meat due to its color.
Why did they go through all the trouble to do this? For one thing, many people want to eat less meat, for either moral, health or other reasons. Second, there is also an argument that eating plant protein is more sustainable due to the reduction of the environmental impact of animal farming.
Purpose
Make best use of sophisticated technologies (such as genetic engineering)
Idea
Apply the technologies to a large market need (such as the need for vegetarian meat).
Further Possibilities
1. Develop vegetarian chicken soup
2. Online customization of the flavor of vegetarian meat
3. Emphasize that vegetarian meat has no hormones and anti-biotics
4. Beer companies could start to use yeast to produce vegetarian meat
5. Use vegetarian meat in Mars colonies, which may not be good for farming
Questions
1. What exactly is the environmental impact of vegetarian meat?
2. What might be all the ways to make meat alternatives?
3. Can we make alternative shrimps that cause no allergy?
