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Beyond Meat answers Impossible Foods with 'meatier' plant patties
Beyond Meat isn't going to sit by the wayside while Impossible creates juicier versions of its plant-based burgers. The company is rolling out a "meatier" version of the Beyond Burger to grocery stores across the US. The mix of mung bean, pea and rice proteins is supposed to have a more meat-like, "neutral" flavor and texture, complete with marbling (through cocoa butter and coconut oil) that even behaves like fat. You'll also get a more "complete" selection of proteins through the mix of mung bean, pea and rice. And if appearance matters, apple extract changes the color from red to brown during cooking.
Nestle claims its plant-based Awesome Burger is healthier than rivals
Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are about to have some major competition. Nestle's Sweet Earth is prepping the Awesome Burger, another take on plant-based hamburgers. The veggie mix (which includes yellow peas and wheat) should have largely realistic juiciness and taste, but promises to be healthier in some respects than its rivals. It'll have six grams of fiber versus the three you typically find in Beyond and Impossible patties, for example. You can also expect more more protein than a meat burger (28g versus a typical 20g), no saturated fat and lots of iron and Vitamin C.
Meatless 'Beyond Burgers' come to Carl's Jr. restaurants
The competition in lab-made veggie burgers is heating up. Beyond Meat has brought its burgers to more than 1,000 Carl's Jr. locations in the US, marking its Beyond's largest restaurant deal to date. Order a $6.29 Beyond Famous Star and you can eat a vegetarian (sorry vegans, there's American cheese) burg that tastes much like its conventional beef counterparts. You can also pay $2 to add a Beyond patty to other burgers on the menu.
The Impossible Burger is a lab-made meatless treat for carnivores
Every October, two vegetarian friends of mine from Michigan spend a week at my place while they attend New York Comic Con. Because I take my hosting duties very seriously, I always try to find good places for them to eat here in New York. It's not too hard, as you can find vegetarian and vegan restaurants for pretty much every major cuisine here. But one thing that I haven't been able to locate is a good meat substitute. That changed last week when a restaurant here in the city became the first and (so far) only location to offer the Impossible Burger, a lab-developed patty that claims to replicate the taste and texture of real beef using the similar proteins found in plants. I dropped by for lunch to test this assertion -- and to scope it out for my friends, of course.
Google reportedly tried to buy a veggie burger company
Google has explored at least a few fields that have precious little to do with internet searches, but sources for The Information claim that it nearly went in a very unusual direction: the fast food business. The folks in Mountain View reportedly tried to buy Impossible Foods, a startup developing plant-based alternatives to meat and cheese, for between $200 million to $300 million. The young firm's crowning achievement so far is a veggie cheeseburger (you're looking at it above) that should taste like the real deal when it arrives later this year. If the rumor is accurate, Google only balked because Impossible wanted a higher sale price.
Burger built in lab costs $325,000 to produce, 'tastes reasonably good'
Dr. Mark Post of the University of Maastricht has carefully cultivated the most expensive burger you will probably never eat. Using stem cells and the science of tissue engineering, Post and his team have developed a method for creating an edible product called in-Vitro meat, which they hope to present in burger form at a special event in London next month. Despite the burger's artificial origins, Post claims it "tastes reasonably good." The in-Vitro burger was designed as a proof-of-concept to address the problem of a growing global population with a rapidly dwindling food supply. Even so, it's unlikely that lab-grown meat will be as widely available as White Castle anytime soon since creating it is an expensive, time-consuming process -- a single burger costs about $325,000 to produce. Each pricey patty begins its life as cells sourced from the necks of slaughterhouse cows, which are then developed in a growth serum comprised of fetal calf stem cells. After three weeks, those cells divide into a strip of meat, about half an inch long. Combine about 20,000 of those tissue strips and you've got yourself a burger. If that doesn't get your taste buds tingling, we don't know what will.
White Castle offers online ordering but makes you leave couch for pick-up
Do you crave hamburgers but also want to minimize your interaction with fellow human beings? Then your unicorn-riding white knight has arrived, in the form of White Castle's new online ordering service. Thought not quite as handy as Domino's UK-only SMS ordering, the feature is rolling out to all 400 US locations. The website lets you "customize your sack" however you please; it also has a pretty high (or non-existent?) limit on quantities, meaning 1,000,000 Bacon and Cheddar Sliders will set you back $1,190,000. That could be a bug or a feature, depending on how hungry you are. Sadly, no matter how large your order you'll still have to go to the burger joint to pick it up -- delivery is still just a beautiful, beautiful dream. Maybe they can partner with MIT for a print-on-demand service.
More English Training helps you order a cheeseburger
The sequel to English Training: Have Fun Improving Your Skills -- also known as Eigo ga Nigate na Otona no DS Training: Eigo Zuke in Japan -- has a new commercial demonstrating its usefulness. The television spot shows a Japanese woman attempting to order lunch at an American fast food restaurant, only to find her effort stymied by the language barrier. The resulting burger is enough to leave everyone's mouths agape.Set to hit Japanese stores later this week, More English Training is filled to the brim with over 400 "conversation situations" that will help users with everyday tasks like phone calls and customer/clerk dialogue. As the non-game's lighthearted commercial can attest, a little training can go a long way in making sure that your cheeseburger doesn't have any avocado in it.
