The Science Behind the Impossible Burger

by Arnav Harve

Edited by Sammy Guerrero

The hamburger has taken the world by storm, populating hundreds of restaurants from upscale eateries to fast foods, and it is one of the most popular new foods to hit the market. It is the plant-based burger, and companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have touted it as the future of sustainable food (Impossible Foods) and protein (Beyond Meat). It is a well-known fact that livestock farming contributes immensely to the climate change crisis and other environmental problems; nearly fifteen percent of all greenhouse gases are produced from cattle, and over 11,000 gallons of water are required to sustain them (FAO). To solve this problem, scientists have been hard at work creating a meat alternative that actually tastes like meat and can therefore appeal to meat-eaters instead of just vegetarians and vegans.

Scientists at Impossible Foods believe that the essence of meat at its core can be boiled down to a chemical compound called heme. A variant of heme called soy leghemoglobin is found naturally in soy roots, and Impossible Foods has utilized this to give its burgers a distinctive meat taste and its signature ability to “bleed” (Troitino). However, because the process of obtaining such a large amount of soy roots to generate enough heme is near inconceivable, Impossible Foods has inserted the genes that code the soy heme protein into yeast, which, due to its fast growth rate, will produce heme at a staggering speed. Scientists can then remove the heme from the yeast and use it in their burgers (Simon).

Beyond Meat, on the other hand, creates its burgers in a different way; instead of using genetically altered soy and yeast, they use pea protein to give their burger its signature meaty taste. Furthermore, the burger is completely non-GMO (Capritto). Both companies also utilize a process called gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. In this process, a machine is used to separate and identify the different components of a substance. Beyond Meat, in particular, uses a device called an electronic nose that mimics the olfactory receptors of the nose to detect the aroma of a beef burger. Through both of these processes, the companies can analyze the odor, texture, and components of a typical beef burger, and match it with vegan ingredients (Raphael).

There are, of course, benefits and drawbacks to these plant-based burgers. A study done on Beyond Meat, which was commissioned by the company, demonstrated that the process of creating a Beyond Burger generates ninety percent less greenhouse gases than a beef burger and takes nearly half as much energy to produce (Heller, Keoleian). Te process is quicker than creating a beef burger and will ease the conscience of anyone who worries about animal cruelty. However, plant-based burgers are not the perfect solution. For one, they are not necessarily healthier for you than a meat burger, especially in fast food restaurants; Burger King’s Impossible Whopper is made up of 660 calories, 40 grams of fat, and 58 grams of carbs, basically the same nutritional value as a regular Whopper (Walan- sky). Plant-based burgers that imitate meat are also heavily processed, which means that many ingredients like soy can lose key nutrients while being processed (Lucas).

In the midst of the plant-based burger fad, other startups are developing new ways to create fake meat. Another emerging industry is lab-grown meat, in which cells are collected from an animal like a chicken and grown in a mixture of nutrients to create the muscle and tissue of, for example, a chicken breast (Haspel). However, this method is very expensive; faux tuna, as an example, can cost upwards of nine thousand dollars a pound. (Frankl-Duval) Time will tell if meat alternatives like the Impossible Burger will become as ubiquitous as normal meat, but this fascinating area of food science is certainly important in a day and age where meat-burgers are becoming increasingly inefficient to produce.