Patented meat? Impossible! Yes, Impossible™ Meat! Indeed, even
Impossible™ Whoppers® at Burger King®!
Faux meat is in. A shortage even exists as Impossible™ Burgers are
now being rolled out nationally, tasting even better than the real deal per the
crowds (Vigdor, 2019).
Such news is heartening on several counts. First, it is a huge and long-awaited
breakthrough for animal rights activists and the animals whose heart-wrenching causes they
defend. Secondly, the popularity of faux burgers is precisely what the
founder of Impossible Foods, Inc., intended to do when he set out to design
plant-based meat that not only appealed to vegetarians, but to everyone, even
traditional meat-loving, burger, and hot dog-eating folks. Thirdly, it is
probably also a significant victory for Public Health officials who continue to recommend, in 2019,
using red meat sparingly (like butter) due to contents high in saturated fat
considered harmful for human health (Shao et. al., 2017; Skerrett & Willett, 2010). Fourthly, given the global warming costs
of agriculture’s high energy footprint, in part due to livestock production, top-of-the-charts
plant-based food is welcome (USEPA). Finally, considering all the unprecedented
possibilities of a company called Impossible
Foods Inc., selling trademarked Impossible™
Burgers to the nation’s biggest fast-food chains, this is a gambit on a grand
scale.
However, none of the above is really too surprising when you find
out that Impossible Foods Inc., was founded by Dr. Patrick Brown, an Emeritus
Stanford Professor and Pediatrician. Who would care more for everyone’s health
-- including non-human creatures, whether by design or as a natural corollary?
Impossible Foods, Inc., introduced the company’s Impossible™ Burger
2.0 at CES 2019, where the burger won
both everyone’s tastebuds and the best technology innovation at the Convention.
Just in case you are wondering, Impossible™ Burger 1.0 was wheat protein-based,
whereas Impossible™ Burger 2.0 is now soy protein-based. CES 2019 is the
largest Consumer Electronics Show in the US, held at the beginning of each year in Las Vegas, CA.
Impossible™ Burgers 2.0 are purported to contain just 4 ingredients:
soy-protein, flavors, binders and fat. Impossible
Foods Inc., not only produces faux beef, it is also researching and developing
faux chicken, faux fish and faux porc. Beef just happens to be the most
strategic. Indeed, the company’s goal is
to completely replace the use of
animals as food technology by 2035.
Impossible Foods Inc., plant-based meat is genetically engineered food technology
that is highly patented. The patented faux meat that really replicates the desirable properties of burgers such as the
texture, appearance and sensory aspects of cooking and eating, including
fibrousness, heterogeneity, beefy flavor, and red to brown transition with aromas during
cooking, is recited in the US patent US10172380B2,
titled Ground meat replicas. A US patent
with an uncommon, extraordinarily long and detailed, list of “References cited”
(INID Code 56). The list of cited references includes US patents, foreign
patents (CA, EP, DE, GB, JP, KR, RU, SU and WO) and other publications, consisting of a six-page, single-spaced, two-column list of journal articles,
reports, reviews, chapters, journal article translations, conference
presentations, videos and web pages, in scrambled order. Thus, the 34-page
patent document appears almost one-third references cited.
The Impossible Foods Inc., invention arises in a problematic background of
plant-based meat that neglects to capture the experience of eating and cooking
meat. In other words, a background where existing pre-cooked plant-based meat
omits to replicate such items as mouthfeel and the aromas of cooking meat. Indeed, it is assumed that these are the
reasons why regular meat lovers cannot be won over to the faux meat camp.
The patent recites several formulas for plant-based ground meat
compositions which have the desirable properties of mouthfeel and cooking
aromas of real meat, including the use of flavorings to give the plant-based
meat dough its beefy flavor, while also removing any plant flavor residues. The patent also describes the methods for
producing the ground meat replica compositions. For example, the patent describes in detail how to produce the cooked or raw cucumber or
Honeydew melon slurries, alternatively varying sorts of vegetable juice,
vegetable purée, vegetable extract, fruit juice, fruit purée or fruit extract, at a 0.0001% to 10% concentration of the meat replica, which will be added to a gelled matrix and used to increase meatiness and fattiness of the meat replicas, after being heated to a temperature ranging from 60◦C to 100◦C.
Among the composition ingredients, the patent discloses plant-based proteins selected according to the temperature at which they gel or
denature, precisely so that they can replicate the mouthfeel of meat, or the
particular firming that occurs during cooking, when water is released. One of the
compositions described comprises meat dough (45 to 60% by weight),
carbohydrate-based gel (10 to 25% by weight), fat (10 to 15% by weight), a
flavoring agent (3 to 7% by weight) and a binding agent (2 to 10% by weight).
Optionally the composition may contain a heme-containing protein (e.g.
leghemoglobin from soybean, pea or cowpea) as a coloring agent mimicking real meat “blood”.
In general, the method of making the ground beef replicas comprises
the steps of heating the meat dough, comprising a plant protein, and optionally an
edible fibrous component, flavorings and fat, to a temperature ranging from 150◦F to 250◦F, then combining the dough with a fat, and then with a
carbohydrate-based gel, an optional binding agent and iron salt or complex, comprising
the heme moiety, and flavors, each step comprising many variations in terms of
ingredients.
For example, the plant protein is recited as possibly including "wheat gluten, a
dehydrin protein, an albumen, a globulin or a zein, or mixtures thereof." The fibrous
component may include plant fibers from "carrot, bamboo, pea, potato, broccoli,
sweet potato, corn, whole grains, alfalfa, kale, celery, celery root, parsley,
cabbage, green beans, kidney beans, black beans, red beans, white beans, cauliflower,
nuts, apple skins, oats or psyllium or mixtures thereof." The fat can be
an "algal oil, a fungal oil, corn oil, olive oil, soy oil, peanut oil,
walnut oil, almond oil, sesame oil, cottonseed oil, rapeseed oil, canola
oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, flaxseed oil, palm oil, palm kernel
oil, coconut oil, babassu oil, shea butter [...]; or margarine or other hydrogenated
fats." The flavoring agents can be selected from a group consisting of "a
vegetable extract, fruit extract, an acid, an antioxidant, a carotenoid, a
lactone, and combinations thereof."
Some of the ingredients recited are chemical compounds, no longer recognizable as food. For example, the lactones added at
concentrations of 10-3 to 10-11 of the food product for
the purposes of masking residue plant flavors, are recited as selected from a group consisting of:
tetrahydro-6-methyl2H-pyran-2-one, delta-octalactone, 5-ethyldihydro-2(3H) furanone, butyrolactone, dihydro-5-pentyl-2(3H)-furanone, dihydro-3-methylene-2,5-furandione, 1-pentoyl lactone, tetrahydro-2H-pyran-2-one, 6-heptyltetrahydro-2H-pyran-2-one, γ-octalactone, 5-hydroxymethyldihydrofuran-2-one, 5-ethyl-2(5H)-furanone, 5-acetyldihydro-2(3H)-furanone, trans-3-methyl-4-octanolide 2(5H)-furanone, 3-(1,1- dimethylethyl)-2,5-urandione, 3,4-dihydroxy-5-methyl-dihdrofuran-2-one, 5-ethyl-4-hydroxy-2-methyl-3(2H)-furanone, δ-tetradecalactone, and dihydro-4-hydroxy-2 (3H) furanone.Likewise for ingredients and processes used to replicate "real blood" and color transitions during cooking, recited for the iron complex, and the various heme-containing proteins (or polypeptides), and their possible recombinant production.
The formulations for ground meat replicas, recited in this patent, incorporate
other previously disclosed Impossible Foods Inc., faux animal products, such as cheese replicas,
recited in the patent application US20140127358, titled Methods and compositions for consumables and the PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) publication WO2014110540, titled Non-dairy cheese replica comprising a coacervate;
and various sorts of meat replicas, such as faux ground beef, faux ground chicken, faux ground turkey, faux ground lamb or faux ground pork, recited in the patent application US20140193547, titled Methods and compositions for consumables, and PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) publications WO2014110532, titled Methods and compositions for affecting the flavor and aroma profile of consumables and WO2014110539, titled Methods and compositions for consumables.
The abstract of this invention is included below, together with a Burger King Youtube® video, witnessing the patrons' disbelief.
This document relates to ground meat replicas, and more particularly to plant - based products that mimic ground meat, including the fibrousness, heterogeneity in texture, beefy flavor, and red - to - brown color transition during cooking of ground meat. For example, this document provides meat replicas that include proteins that are selected based upon the temperature at which they gel and/or denature to mimic the behavior and qualities of meat during cooking. [Abstract US10172380B2]
🍔
One question that arises, once you have won all the meat lovers into
the FDA-approved Impossible™ faux meat camp, is whether vegetarians might follow suit. Not
all vegetarians, eschewing meat, seek plant-based imitations or faux meat (Bee, 2019). Vegetarian
cuisine, with the fairly recent participation of France’s most famous,
Michelin-starred chefs, has long embraced the plant-based world -- in its own right -- without needing to satisfy cravings for meat, stepping back to
imitate animal-based technologies (Labro, 2015, 2016; Branciard, 2016; Libération 2018). Why endorse
meat textures, flavors, and mouthfeel, when there is a satisfying world of tantalizing tastes, surprises and endless creativity in the immensely varied world of
vegetables? Why go back, and choose faux meat that tastes like real meat?
At the end of the day, however, the vegetarian segment of the
population is hardly at stake. Some vegetarians may increase newly engineered Impossible™ faux
meat sales, but not all. What is more interesting is that vegetarians might
welcome a new powerful ally, addressing non-vegetarians and meat-yearning vegetarians.
An ally who seeks to radically change the playing field of food technologies,
by eliminating animal-based food technologies completely, offering instead faux meat, indistinguishable from real meat, even better than the real fare.
Branciard, J (2016) La gastronomie veggie fait recettes. Le Monde, 16 septembre, 2016.
Labro, C. (2015) Les grands chefs réinventent la cuisine dans le potager. Le Monde, 25 septembre, 2015
Labro, C. (2016) Le règne de la gastronomie végétale – Le Monde, 16 décembre 2016.
La gastronomie vegan aussi
a ses chefs étoilés. Libération, 1 mars, 2018
Shao, A. et. al (2017) Optimal nutrition and the ever-changing dietary
landscape: A conference report. European Journal of Nutrition. DOI: 10.1007/s00394-017-1460-9
Skerrett, P.J. & W.C. Willett (2010) - Essentials of healthy eating: A guide. National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine. Journal of Midwifery Women's Health DOI: 10.1016/j.jmwh.2010.06.019
USEPA - Sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental Protection Agency.
Vigdor, N. (June 15, 2019) Mission impossible: Maker of plant-based-burger
struggles to meet chain’s demand. NYTimes, June 15, 2019
Wilson, Bee (Jan 27, 2019) The Trouble with fake meat. The Guardian, Jan. 27, 2019)
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