Burger bunfight: can plant-based ‘meat’ cut the mustard?

Plant-based ‘meat’ is the next big thing. But is it sustainable, or even healthy?

Impossible Foods’ Impossible Burger, complete with beetroot-coloured ‘blood’.

“What’s the breed? Tell me about your feed regimen.” These days it can seem nearly every meat consumer has an agriculture degree.

“Which abattoir do you use? Do you practise regenerative farming?” And on it goes.

At farmers markets across Australia­, in specialist shops and at direct-to-public farm gates, people are in serious dialogue about what they plan to eat tonight.

In many cases they are not so much buying meat as interviewing the vendor and, with any luck, the vendor is also the grower.

These people value authentic­ity, purity and traceability. They are also likely to be among those who count global warming and the primary and secondary environmental impacts of animal farming as important subjects.

There exists in Australia, as in most of the developed world, a food-consuming elite for whom the backstory of farmed meats is as important, if not more so, than the actual quality of the product.

Obviously, those prepared to pay a premium for meat with a healthy/ethical provenance believe it’s worth it, gastronomically and morally.

Yet at the same time, all over the world, hundreds of thousands of customers will walk into fast-food outlets and consciously order a burger made of many things but most definitely not meat.

Some will do so for nutritional reasons, some environmental, others for reasons of animal welfare. But for many, be they farmers market aficionado or fast-food regulars, animal agriculture and that of beef in particular is seen as a major contributor to global warming, and the cutting-out-meat option every now and then is a feel-good salve for a very big wound.

Every plausible recent report on climate change has pointed to the link between cattle’s greenhouse gas generation, the need to feed a growing population and the need to feed the cattle, which leads to deforestation and loss of carbon sinks.

Thus the door opened 10 years ago to fake “meat”.

In Australia those fast-foodies may be eating from the giant Hungry­ Jacks chain, local arm of US behemoth Burger King (17,796 outlets internationally last year), where the meat-eschewing “flexitarian” will queue to order a Rebel Whopper with a plant-based patty developed in Australia by v2food, an Australian joint venture between­ the CSIRO’s commercial arm and Hungry Jack’s founder Jack Cowin.

“The Rebel Whopper is a new burger with 0 per cent beef but 100 per cent Whopper taste,” runs the spin. “The Rebel Whopper provides a full-flavoured, plant-based patty alternative to the iconic flame-grilled beef Whopper and is now available in all Australian states and territories.”

Hungry Jacks says a growing number of flexitarians, while not necessarily vegetarian or vegan, “welcome a plant-based option in their diet”.

In other words, it says the non-meat burger option is expanding revenue, not cannibalising existing product sales.

At the supermarket level, down at Coles or Woolworths where most Australians shop for meat, you’ll find a surprising number of plant-based mince, burger, sausage and “chicken” options in the fridge, and the ranges are growing.

According to Woolworths, an increasing number of customers looking to incorporate plant-based alternatives to their weekly diets has driven “double-digit growth” in demand for these products­ in the past year, “and we’re working to create even more ­choices for our customers”.

And that’s just the big boys.

If you subscribe to the “where America goes, we follow” wisdom, the US example on meat substitute products is worth considering.

There, 17,000 places sell the Impossible Burger, brainchild of vegan zealot/genius Pat Brown, the company’s chief executive, while 53,000 outlets sell its high-profile competitor Beyond Burger.

And they’re just the well-known names.

Last year Alpha Foods, for example­, had its plant-based meat products available in more than 5000 stores across the US. And countless other fran­chises are cooking their own versions of a burger that isn’t a burger in the sense most of us understand.

Taken at an international level, the plant-based “meat” market is estimated to account for a value of $US12.1bn ($17.8bn) this year and is projected to grow to $US27.9bn by 2025, according to international business-to-business research unit MarketsandMarkets. The North American plant-based meat market is projected to accoun­t for the largest share of that by 2025.

In its May report, MarketsandMarkets says an increasing number of consumers are demanding plant-based “meat” for medical reasons or as a lifestyle choice.

“As a result the demand for plant-based meat continues to expand­,’’ MarketsandMarkets says. “Additionally, continuous effort­s in research and development by plant-based meat manufacturers, in terms of better aroma, texture, longer shelf life and better nutritious profiles, is projected to escalate the growth of global plant-based meat market in the coming years.”

But what are we eating? And is it a mistake?

Impossible and Beyond’s ­burgers have been described by one US agriculture executive as a “chemistry project of 25 or 30 ingredie­nts you can’t pronounce”. This is a compelling argument against meat substitutes.

A list of everything in a Beyond Burger (available at Coles) includes “water, pea protein isolate, expeller — pressed canola oil, refined­ coconut oil, rice protein, natural flavours, cocoa butter, mung bean protein, methylcellulose, potato starch, apple extract, salt, potassium chloride, vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, sunflower lecithin, pomegranate fruit powder (and) beet juice extract”.

Most meat-imitating mince or burger patties are based on soy or pea protein; Impossible’s includes something special — heme — an essential molecule found naturally in plants and animals, which Impossible­ has worked out how to synthesise using yeast. The company reckons it is its ace card.

Whatever your poison, so to speak, there is a paradox at play: “pure and natural” coexisting among the same group of environmentally aware consumers as a highly processed and potentially genetically modified cocktail of ingredient­s that mimics beef’s flavour and texture.

Meat and Livestock Australia domestic market manager Graeme Yardy is aware of the contra­diction but isn’t compla­c­ent: “If you look at research, it (non-meat “meat”) doesn’t appeal to most people (and) it goes against the trends we are observing around the world towards natural, whole foods. This is heavily processed food.

“I think they (Beyond) have done a pretty good job. They replicate ground beef. I can tell the difference­, but when you’re talking about a burger that might be covered­ in tomato sauce and cheese you can get away with it. But it will be far more difficult to replicate a steak or premium cuts.

“What it has working for it is the huge international demand for protein. Finding ways to supply a protein product that can feed the masses — that’s where the true growth lies,” Yardy says, adding that affordability is the key driver.

“I’ve spent the last month in North America and they all have their own version of the burger,” he says. “New is exciting but we can’t invent new parts of the anima­l. We can highlight existing cuts used in new ways but we can’t create new product.”

A number of Australian alt-meat products have made it to market, including burgers made by v2, a collaboration between Hungry Jacks’ Jack Cowin and the commercial arm of the CSIRO. Nearly all are soy or pea-protein based. The start-up behind ­Hungry Jack’s Rebel Whopper” has landed a whopping $35m ­Series A funding round, thought to be the largest of any meat-free meat start-up worldwide.

Queensland entrepreneur and Fable chief executive Mich­ael Fox, along with his mycologist business partner Jim Fuller and farmer Chris McLoghlin, hope to change perceptions of non-meat “meat” with a shiitake mushroom-based product that launched last month.

Rather than a burger patty or mince replica, Fable claims to have created a product that will replace meat in ragouts, curries, braises and the like that is “minimally processed­”, with shiitake constituting 66 per cent of the product.

There are 14 companies in Australia­ producing plant-based meat alternatives, according to think tank Food Frontier.

One of the country’s best-known authorities on meat is Anthon­y Puharich, of Vic’s Meats, who supplies many of the nation’s top chefs.

He says he has discussed business with the major US players, including­ Beyond, Impossible and Hungry Planet, “only to come to the conclusion these products simply don’t meet our minimum expectations”, he posted recently on his personal Instagram account.

“(They) far from align with most of our key values: quality, provenance, sustainable agriculture and, most importantly, the health and wellbeing of our ­customers. All of these plant-based meat alternatives are highly and heavily processed with up to 21 different/separate ingredients.

“Two of the brands potentially use GMO soy as their base. These products claim they might be better­ for the environment but I even question this because the food miles involved based on the product being shipped frozen from the US must be huge.”

The World Wildlife Fund says the soybean industry — relied on for many of the meat substitute products — is causing widespread deforestation, particularly in the Amazon, which has 24 million to 25 million hectares devoted to the soybean, according to the WWF.

Saving the planet by avoiding beef in favour of meat substitutes has environmental costs of its own.

Puharich says he’s excited about what the future will bring in terms of alternatives to traditionally raised meat, which he says will reduce our dependence on intensive factory farming to meet our unsustainable demand for cheap protein.

“(But) I’m going to stick to what I know, love and enjoy,” he says.

And this is before we discuss the subject of cellular meat: real meat tissue, grown in a laboratory, the as yet uncommercial “manufacture” of meat.

According to a recent report in The New Yorker, 33 companies are working on a single-ingredient cellular approach: using animal cells to grow meat “in vats”.

The holy grail is to commercially grow cellular tissue: a steak for example, or a piece of fish. The environmental impact implications are phenomenal. One such company in the US is Finless Foods.

“Where Impossible stops is where Finless starts,” the company’s Mike Seldes was reported as saying last month.

“They are limited to ground products and will be able to make sushi and fillets.”

If animal protein recipes are a clever bit of handiwork by the chef, this is a whole new level of biology in the kitchen, but it seems a ­matter of when, not if.

If Meat and Livestock Australia is concerned, it’s not saying so.

“Australia’s position in the globa­l market is sustainable red meat for the world,’’ says Yardy. “We’re not going to increase our supplies, we’re going to make sure it’s premium. How we compete­ will be on environmental credibil­ity. That’s our strategy for the inter­national and domestic markets­.”

And finally there’s the “meats ain’t meats” discussion, semantic to some, fundamental to others. Should we call meat-like vegetable proteins “meat” at all?

In the US, where laws vary from state to state, several have passed legislation banning plant-based or cell-cultured products from being labelled as “meat” or a “meat food product”.

Now a bill proposed in congress last month — the Real Marketing Edible Artificials Truthfully Act — suggests that slapping a prominent “imitation” label on plant-based beef would prevent confusion and “ensure that consumers can make informed decisions in choosing between meat products such as beef and imitation meat products”.

It could have serious implications for the likes of now billion-dollar businesses such as Impossible and Beyond.

“This bill is a bald-faced attemp­t to get the government to police food labels to benefit the conventional meat industry, not consumers,” the Good Food Instit­ute, a non-profit lobby group that advocates for plant-based altern­atives to animal products, was reporte­d as saying.

“Rather than let consumers decide­ the winners and losers in a free marketplace, this bill attempts to stigmatise plant-based foods.”

Passions run high on both sides of the debate. The mix of politics, health, nutrition, ecology and money is a recipe we are all likely to taste sooner rather than later.