The controversy surrounding fake meat hamburgers rages on. Beef industry representatives and hard-core carnivores on one side, anti-farming activists and vegans on the other. The American public somewhere in the middle.
One of the main questions is, what exactly is in the fake meat burgers?
Enter University of California/Davis professor Frank Mitloehner, who claims the ingredients of both the Impossible Burger and the Beyond Meat Burger are quite similar to those found in dog food.
Appearing on the radio show, AgriTalk, Mitloehner said: “When you look at Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat, you will find that they have 21 or 22 highly-processed ingredients. In fact, so processed that you are hard pressed in identifying the difference between those items, versus let's say, pet food,” according to an article in Dairy Herd Management, an industry news magazine.
A couple of years ago Mitloehner said he ate dinner at a National Academy of Sciences event with Patrick Brown, the founder of Impossible Foods. At the time, Mitloehner said Brown confessed to eating dog food and called the ingredients wholesome.
“I thought he was joking,” Mitloehner said, “until I did a little research and compared his burger versus Beyond Burger versus dog (food). And guess what? I would not be able to tell the difference. Which is just testament to me that they are actually making something that from a nutritional basis might not be very different from dog food. Then adding the flavors and the taste and the smell and, viola, there is your plant-based alternative to the real thing,” said the Dairy Herd Management article.
