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A company called Impossible Foods has been working on a veggie burger that looks, smells, feels, and tastes like real meat. When it cooks, it looks like ground beef--sizzles and browns, and it even oozes "blood." How did this impossible food become possible?
The burger is a blend of plant-based proteins and fat and the blood effect is from the molecule heme. Heme is a component of the large molecule hemoglobin in human blood that carries oxygen and makes blood red. It is produced by plants in small quantities. The scientists at Impossible Foods engineered yeast to produce the heme molecule, and it is that heme product that is added to their veggie burgers to give them the realistic look and taste. Flecks of coconut oil are added, which melt during the cooking process causing the burger to ooze fat like a beef burger.
Even meat eaters who tasted the burger said they probably couldn't tell the difference if they didn't know it was a veggie burger!
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/06/21/482322571/silicon-valley-s-bloody-plant-burger-smells-tastes-and-sizzles-like-meat
supplemental resource: http://www.chemistry.wustl.edu/~edudev/LabTutorials/hemoglobin.htm
Why is this type of research important?
How could this new type of "meat" this benefit vegetarians?
Would you eat one of these veggie burgers?
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