I tried out an Impossible Whopper yesterday. Honestly, the most remarkable thing about it is how unremarkable it is. Virtually indistinguishable from the beef counterpart. It's burger king, so it's not like anything you get there is going to be super high quality. But it tasted like a Whopper. I'd guess that if you handed one of these to a hundred people, and told them it was beef, 90 percent of them would have no idea that it wasn't. It tastes like a fast food hamburger.
Not wise, no, but that doesn't mean it isn't going to happen at some point.
The "meat" portion taste slightly different. The rest of the Whopper makes it taste like a Whopper. I wouldn't buy it again because it cost more than a real Whopper.
For the record, I don't think that these "Alt-Meat" products are ever going to challenge the home grill, or even at places like 5 guys and similar places. It's the fast food/cafeteria places where it's going to make the biggest impact. Places where the quality of the burger is already suspect. Nobody is holding up the McDonald's cheeseburger as the paragon of hamburger quality, to begin with, so a switch to a meat alternative is going to be less noticable than it would be at a place that specialized in burgers. Also, I read somewhere that something like 60% of the beef in this country is consumed in ground beef form. Alt-Meat could easily carve out a very sustainable chunk of that market. It's not the death knell of the meat industry that some folks on either side of this debate are warning about. There's room at the table for everyone here, in my opinion
Oh don't get me wrong, they might want to do that, but I don't think there's even a remote chance of that happening.
