Fast food juggernaut Burger King, with its world-renowned Whopper brand, has seemingly done the impossible. After teaming up with Impossible Foods-the biotech startup known for its all-vegetarian burger-Burger King has introduced the "Impossible Whopper". A 100 percent plant-based culinary wonder, a miracle even, coming in the form of an all-veggie burger tasting exactly like the original "100% Beef With No Fillers" favorite.
"I had to double check after my first bite to make sure they didn't give me meat, it was that good!" tweeted Aprylete Russell, using the hashtag #vegetarian. Writing for the local Riverfront Times, Danny Wicentowski commented that the Impossible Whopper costs a dollar more than usual but that the "essential 'Whopperness' is there, and it hits the spot."
But how does Impossible Foods manage to pull off the beefy taste of a real beef burger in their all-veggie burger patties? The answer is simple: heme. In animal and human blood, heme is a key part of the molecule hemoglobin, which carries oxygen around the body with the crucial help of iron atoms. But Impossible Foods hasn't literally mixed blood in their burger patties, they instead source a protein called "leghemoglobin" from the root nodules of soybeans. This hemoglobin-like molecule also contains iron atoms, lending a familiarly bloody taste.
Most importantly, Impossible Foods has also figured out how to source leghemoglobin efficiently. It isn't very practical to take leghemoglobin from individual plants, so instead researchers took the gene that encodes leghemoglobin from soybeans and inserted it into yeast, which can produce it much faster, and saves much more energy than a soybean farm.
For now, the Impossible Whopper can only be found in 59 restaurants in the St. Louis area, but the fact that the company has made additions to their factory to accommodate the demand from Burger King, it seems clear that it's anticipating a much larger distribution.
"The Whopper version of the Impossible burger was created to match the form factor of the original Whopper, requiring Impossible Foods to add a new manufacturing line in our Oakland factory to produce the Impossible Whoppers," Appelgren said in a statement. "The Impossible Whoppers are shipped ready to be flame broiled on Burger King's equipment in the exact way the burgers from cows are."
Albeit, this new, greener burger is a right step in the energy and resource conservation movement, some researchers have pointed out the fact that these burgers are only as green as the process it takes to make them. On the bright side, however, people now have a choice and taste is no longer the deciding factor.
