I’ve come across some news articles lately about a new chicken sandwich available at certain Burger King restaurants in Cincinnati, Ohio. The “meat” in the sandwich is manufactured by Impossible Foods.
Correction. It’s not a chicken sandwich.
It’s a fake chicken sandwich. Or something.
Officially, it’s a “Chick’n Sandwich”. The marketing materials label the “meat” as “made from plants”.
The first time I saw the marketing materials, I mistakenly thought it said, “made in plants”. As in, “made in an industrial facility”.
But obviously, the Burger King folks mean “made from plants.”
Meat has been getting a bad rap lately, on account of clogged arteries and environmental damage.
Plants, meanwhile, are currently the favored child of the food family. You know, the one who can never do anything wrong.
Basically, this is a wheat sandwich, with chicken flavoring. Wheat “meat” in a wheat bun.
The ingredients:
Water, Wheat Flour, Soy Protein Concentrate, Soybean Oil, Sunflower Oil; 2% Or Less Of: Potato Starch, Methylcellulose, Salt, Natural Flavors, Cultured Dextrose, Yeast Extract, Wheat Gluten, Dextrose, Yellow Corn Flour, Food Starch Modified, Sugar, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Spices, Leavening (Cream of Tartar, Sodium Bicarbonate), Dried Yeast, Paprika Extract (for color), Mixed Tocopherols (Antioxidant).
Properly labeled, this would be the “Wheat’n Sandwich”. Or maybe the “Wheat’n-Soy’n-Vegetable-Oil Sandwich”.
Although the main ingredient is water. We’ve gotten used to paying a high price for industrially-processed water, here in America. I see where Americans spent $17.2 billion last year on flavored water.
But you can’t chew flavored water. So Burger King and Impossible Foods have now addressed that deficiency with chicken-flavored water that you can actually sink your teeth into.
I think, however, Burger King would not want to use the following marketing message.
Back in 2019, Burger King rolled out the Impossible Foods “Impossible Whopper” burger, which has no burger in it, but something that looks and feels and tastes a lot like burger.
The main ingredients:
- Water
- Soy-protein concentrate
- Coconut oil
- Sunflower oil
- Natural flavors
So once again, mostly chewable water.
Impossible Foods used genetic engineering to make ingredients essential to the taste, texture and color of the Whopper, namely soy leghemoglobin (also known as heme). Heme is responsible for making the patty taste like meat. It’s not exactly a “natural flavor”, but the Food and Drug Administration deemed heme safe to eat in 2018. Until proven otherwise.
As I mentioned, plants have a pretty good reputation. But I think water can go head-to-head with plants, in a popularity contest.
Meat? Not even close.
Except of course, it has to taste like meat.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.