In California, Impossible Foods launched the Impossible Burger in selected West Coast restaurants. Not yet available in stores, the Impossible Burger is a result of five years of development to make a plant-based burger that looks, handles, smells, cooks and tastes like ground beef from cows. Impossible Foods recreated the sensory experience of meat by using carefully selected proteins, amino acids, fats and vitamins from plants.
Impossible Foods discovered that one molecule, heme, serves as the “magic ingredient” that gives meat its unique flavor and aroma. An essential building block of life occurring naturally in every animal and plant, heme can be produced in large quantities from plants by using yeast from Belgian beer brewing.
The Impossible Burger has a much smaller environmental footprint than meat from animals – about a quarter of the water, 5% of the land and contributes 13% of the greenhouse-gas emissions compared to a burger from cows.