SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Impossible Burger, a meat-free burger that's previously only been available in restaurants, will be available to buy in grocery stores for the first time this week. Starting tomorrow, September 20th, you'll be able to buy the plant-based burger in 27 Gelson's Markets stores in Southern California. Impossible Foods says it will bring the burger to more grocery stores — including some on the East Coast — later this month, and it plans to reach every region of the US by the middle of next year.
The launch brings Impossible Foods into even closer competition with Beyond Meat, which already sells its own meat-free burger in grocery stores in addition to restaurants. When it announced its latest burger back in June, Beyond Meat said that it was available to purchase in stores, including Whole Foods, Kroger, Safeway, Publix, Wegmans, Target, and Sprouts. Compared to this list of chains, Impossible Foods is lagging behind in selling its burgers directly to home cooks.
It's a 12 oz slab of fake ground beef, not yet shaped into patties.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @05:10AM
I tried the Beyond Burgers and they are really very good. So after eating another couple I looked at the ingredient list to figure out how these new burgers differ from the old shitty veggie burgers. It's the fat - tons of it. Saturated peanut oil. Tastes like fucking Jesus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @05:11AM (4 children)
Why 12 oz? So the price is closer to 16 oz of lean ground beef? Won't that just not work for anyone wanting 1 pound of "beef"? Or are they targeting people who won't notice the quantity difference but will notice the price? (And won't they wonder why the impossible burgers are so much smaller...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @05:24AM (2 children)
Just like how the 12 oz fiber++ veggie pasta costs more than the 16 oz regular pasta.
But 12 oz of Impossibru meat is $9, 8 oz of Beyond Burger (2 patties) is about $6. So it's about the same as the competitor.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by legont on Friday September 20 2019, @06:58AM (1 child)
Hold on, for $9 one can get a medium quality steak... WTF?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @07:19AM
Yeah, it needs to hit $4/lb to really compete against ground beef, preferably less. $12/lb won't cut it.
Sell a 3-5 lb frozen tube of the stuff if that lowers costs.
They have to start somewhere, and some people could rationalize this purchase vs. something like expensive grass-fed beef. And people who are vegetarian or vegan might go for it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @01:33PM
The same reason that you can't get a half-gallon of ice cream any more (they're 1.5 qts now), most bacon is 12 oz instead of 16 oz, it is hard to find a pound of coffee, yogurt used to be in 8oz cups, then 6oz, now 5.something oz, etc., etc. It is entirely all about dealing with rising prices by making them look the same by reducing the amounts of product in the package.
The interesting thing (no, I'm being facetious because it is obvious why it is the case), the packaging for these reduced amounts is close to the size of the original.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @05:37AM
If one shoots or attacks the paste with any weapon, they can see that it actually bleeds.
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Food_paste [fandom.com]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by c0lo on Friday September 20 2019, @06:13AM (3 children)
If burger joints or restaurant can't sell them enough at a marked up "novelty"or "deli" price, then of course them burgers get into groceries.
How well they'll do there is to be seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @06:40AM (2 children)
Nah, this was always part of the plan and required FDA to sign off on it.
There is a chicken and egg problem where it occupies a small niche and remains expensive due to low volume, and can only expand its appeal by competing with ground beef on $/kg.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday September 20 2019, @02:43PM (1 child)
> There is a chicken and egg problem where it occupies a small niche
Or it is just very expensive to manufacture such highly processed food.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 21 2019, @08:11AM
Which is sort of ironic since the people in my life that complain about processed foods the most are the vegans and, to a lesser extent, vegetarians. Who are the very people this is supposed to appeal to, from what I can tell.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by knarf on Friday September 20 2019, @08:37AM (4 children)
My wife is a 'pescetarian', i.e. she only eats cold-blooded slimy animals which are sufficiently alien from us mammals that eating them does not cause undue feelings of guilt for being instrumental in ending the creature's life for selfish purposes. I'm the one who does the cooking here and generally end up making something meat-free for everyone but every now and then the rest of us will put a burger on the grill where she has some 'substitute' or a piece of fish. A few months ago she came home with two types of 'incredible' burgers so we gave them a try...
No more, please. These things smell of a combination of liver sausage and/or cat food, the fake blood is over the top, the greasy texture is unappealing and the whole thing just shouts 'processed food is unhealthy'.
In other words I do not get the hype around these faux-burgers. I don't understand why they go to such great lengths to make these things look like meat because all that does is create something equivalent to the uncanny valley of burgers as in I don't know how many legs the creature which succumbed to produce this product has but I would not want to meet it in a dark alley type of association.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @09:06AM (1 child)
It's not clear what product(s) you're talking about.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by knarf on Friday September 20 2019, @01:02PM
Those 'incredible' burgers of course, these things have been on sale here in Sweden for quite a while now. One version is called 'Incredible burger', the other goes by the name of 'impossible burger'. Both aim at copying meat smell, colour and texture. Both fall off a cliff down into the the uncanny valley. One of them smells of a freshly opened can of catfood, the other has a more liver-sausage-like smell, can't remember which is which. They 'bleed' profusely, they ooze fat and who knows what else.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Friday September 20 2019, @02:53PM
Apparently some people really like it, though. I've not had one, so I can't tell. Also, it's something like $8 a burger for one at Burger King. That's an expensive sandwich, from a fast food place that's not really known for their quality. Personally, I'd go with a nice black bean burger, like served at Mooyah! or even the veggie patty served at my local Subway which is cheaper for a foot long.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 20 2019, @06:18PM
Sometime pescetarians crave McDonalds, just like the rest of us!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday September 20 2019, @02:47PM (1 child)
The in-laws served up some vegetarian chicken that they said was the impossible foods version of chicken. Apparently, it wasn't Impossible Foods, because they've not put anything out. I'm going to have to ask what kind of veggie chicken it was, because it was some really good vegemeat. I don't care how it compares to "real meat" as I've been vegetarian my whole life. I did try Fish once and have had meat occasionally, due to circumstance, but yeah I choose not to eat animal carcasses.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @04:09PM
https://www.samsclub.com/p/gardein-meatless-seven-grain-crispy-tenders-frozen/prod22411607 [samsclub.com]