I'll echo the sentiment. The local Safeway sells Impossible Bratwursts.
They are honestly delicious. We grilled them on a fry-pan. The flavor and texture are almost perfectly there. It's just a bit spongy, and the depth of the umami/savory flavor isn't quite as deep. But if I hadn't known they weren't meat, I'd have been fooled. Throw a few of them on a grill or beer-boil them, put some mustard down over top, little kraut, I'd never know they weren't meat.
If the burger patties are anywhere near as good as the brats, then I think they'll sell a billion of them. For hearth-health and calorie density alone, I'd order them nearly every time.
The umami was the only differentiating factor and even there it was like a small difference. I eat meat, tried the burger because if can cut out a little meat why not? The impossible burger was exceptional enough a replacement that if its on the menu, I'll order it.
Weird, I tried it and wanted to like it simply because it was higher in fat and lower carb than your traditional veggie burger - but it was very obvious I was eating fake meat. It was ok, I'd eat it again. But I would not replace real beef with it any time soon.
But I am keto. So I am not eating it with a bun and tons of sugary sauces to cover up the meat flavor. You can really tell the quality of a burger (meat or not) when you eat it wrapped in lettuce.
I'd prefer just more humane animal farming vs. fake meat. It may be more expensive - but if we incentivized humane farming of animals as much as we subsidized corn and/or wheat it might not be that bad (or just got rid of subsidies altogether).
I also think the environmental cost of plant farming is vastly underrated.
But you do realize that the environmental cost of animal farming is guaranteed to be >10x the cost of plant farming, correct? Each step up the food chain wastes roughly 90% of the energy, meaning that you need to grow more than 10 kcal of plants to raise 1 kcal of animal. So feeding animals is 10x as expensive as growing plants, in addition to the costs incurred by actually raising the livestock.
That's not exactly true. I do a lot of work for agricultural companies. One such company is a huge supplier of animal feed. Their products are the by-products of sugar production. Raffinate, Betaine, Molasses, Beet Pulp Pellets, etc... These products are very shelf stable and cheap. But they are not the main crop. Sugar Beets are not grown for these by-products.
In addition, grazing animals require no such feed. Grass fed beef is a thing, and it's price is on par or even quite a bit cheaper than fake meat.
However, even if the animals require no food to be purchased by the farmer, there is still an environmental cost in the land being used, plus the opportunity cost of other uses of that land.
Not all land used for grazing can be used to grow plants, true, but in the cases it can be, you're using that land at a 10% kcal efficiency, so to speak.
Most cattle feed isn't digestible by humans, so it doesn't matter. Replacing grass with more human-edible crops would probably introduce new problems of similar scale.
You might ask, can we just process the grass into something humans can eat? Well, that's what cattle are for.
Better to leave natural habitat on that land rather than clear-cutting forest for grazing land, as happens so much these days and in the past. Better food production efficiency means less forest razed which is a significant win.
I had the v2 impossible burger a few weeks ago. It felt close to regular meat, had a similar mouth feel, but the flavor was a bit off so I only ate two bites. I'm looking forward to trying their next version.
They are honestly delicious. We grilled them on a fry-pan. The flavor and texture are almost perfectly there. It's just a bit spongy, and the depth of the umami/savory flavor isn't quite as deep. But if I hadn't known they weren't meat, I'd have been fooled. Throw a few of them on a grill or beer-boil them, put some mustard down over top, little kraut, I'd never know they weren't meat.
If the burger patties are anywhere near as good as the brats, then I think they'll sell a billion of them. For hearth-health and calorie density alone, I'd order them nearly every time.
Living in the future has a few perks!