My opinion is at the bottom. Here’s Margaret Renki in the New York Times:
“My 91-year-old father-in-law happily eats plant-based hamburgers. That gives me a little more hope for the environment.
“Here is how my father-in-law now begins every meal at our house: He asks the blessing, unfolds his napkin and prepares to tuck in. Then he pauses, his fork still in the air, and asks, “Is this real meat?”
“No air of suspicion accompanies the question. He’s simply curious. Is what he’s about to put into his mouth the kind of food he’s been eating for nearly all of his 91 years? Or does it merely look (and smell and feel and taste) like something he’s been eating for nearly all of his 91 years?
“That similarity to real meat — its appeal to the senses, the way it mimics the experience of eating familiar foods — is exactly what the fake-meat industry has invested immense resources into achieving. In recent weeks I’ve served my family plant-based spaghetti and meatballs, plant-based tacos, plant-based breakfast sausage, plant-based bratwurst and two brands of plant-based hamburgers, almost always without telling anyone what they were eating until the meal was over.
“It all started when I read “Meat Hooked,” a chapter in “The Fate of Food,” Amanda Little’s wide-ranging examination of how we’ll eat in “a bigger, hotter, smarter world,” as the book’s subtitle puts it. According to Ms. Little, “Livestock production accounts for about 15 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions globally, more than all forms of transportation combined.” And that’s not even taking into account the water resources monopolized by livestock production or the deforestation caused when land is cleared for grazing.
“Worse, the demand for meat keeps growing. Worldwide, it has nearly doubled in the past 30 years and is expected to double again by 2050. Already, the single greatest cause of deforestation in the Amazon is cattle ranching, accounting for 80 percent of newly lost forest. “Razing forests to graze cattle,” writes Tad Friend in a brilliant piece for The New Yorker, “turns a carbon sink into a carbon spigot.”
Obviously, this is not a good thing, no matter your taste preferences, no matter how inconsequential you consider your personal meat-eating impact to be.
“Clearly, any food that can disrupt this planet-threatening trend is a welcome development, but are the new meat substitutes truly feasible replacements for meat? At my house, reports have been varied. The Beyond Burger and the Pure Farmland breakfast sausage were a hit all the way around: All three generations at the table pronounced them delicious. (“This is a good piece of meat,” my father-in-law remarked, unprovoked, before learning his burger’s true provenance.) Beyond’s bratwurst and Pure Farmland’s meatballs earned family scores that ranged from zero to 10. Pure’s “plant-based protein starters” crumbled nicely during browning but remained a disconcerting shade of red. Even so, the casserole I made with it tasted no different from the same casserole made with regular breakfast sausage. Beyond’s “beefy crumbles,” by contrast, were truly enjoyed by no one in my house, although the college junior ate the leftover casserole for lunch at least twice, apparently preferring even unappealing leftovers to cooking something for himself.
“The Impossible Burger cannot be distinguished from a real hamburger by half the people who eat it in a taste test, according to Mr. Friend, but they are not yet sold in grocery stores here, so I took the college junior and a 12-year-old family friend to Burger King for a true taste test. The 12-year-old ordered her burgers the same way she eats all burgers: just bread and “meat.” The college student ordered his with the works. After blindfolding them, I gave each one a bite of both a regular Whopper and an Impossible Whopper. Neither one was fooled. After only one bite, they both correctly identified which burger was which. Then they both ate both burgers. The Impossible Whopper might not taste exactly like a traditional Whopper, it turns out, but it tasted perfectly good to them.”
I’ve tried a couple of these burger patty replacements. One of them wasn’t even trying to really taste meaty. And neither of them did.
I’m guessing they’ll get there in the end with the meatiness. But personally I’m not really bothered. There’s plenty of good, decent, tasty meat-free food out there that doesn’t try to trick you with looking and tasting like meat.
Everyone has their own path to take.
[Cover photo: Con Poulos for The New York Times]