PANDEMIC PROOF: Impossible CEO says it can make a meat “unlike anything that you’ve had before”
A recent Nielsen report found that plant-based meat alternative purchases went up 279.8% the week after Americans were instructed to stay home due to the coronavirus pandemic.
ANDREW MARINO: Impossible Foods, a company that develops plant-based meat products, says its mission is to someday replace the incumbent meat industry entirely, stating that, from a mission standpoint, a sale only has value if it comes at the expense of the sale of an animal-derived product. But what if plant-based meat wasn’t just a substitute for an already-existing marketplace, and instead, it started to make meat that has never existed? On Vergecast podcast, Impossible Foods CEO Patrick Brown talks to Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel about how this impossible meat could be a possibility in the future, even if it doesn’t make sense for the company right now…
According to Brown,”In the course of learning about the flavor chemistry and textures and meat and so forth, we know quite a lot about the difference between pork and beef and other meats from animals — so to speak, where you set the knobs with respect to the flavor chemistry and we can navigate that whole space. We can create things that would be unmistakably meat, flavor and texture, but unlike anything that you’ve had before in that category.
Because after all, the choices of meat that are available in the world today are basically a historical artifact of the species that people were able to domesticate 10,000 years ago. And they weren’t chosen because they were the most delicious animals on earth. They were chosen because they were capable of being domesticated. And that’s what you get. So, yes, there is a lot of possibility for creating, let’s say, flavors that would deliver as meat but are unlike anything on the market”…
Plant-based meat products are bigger than ever, with the fast-food industry, grocery stores, and upscale restaurants coming on board. A recent Nielsen report found that plant-based meat alternative purchases went up 279.8 percent last week after Americans were instructed to stay home during the novel coronavirus pandemic. SOURCE…
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