Impossible Burger? How?
Looks like a regular burger, right? Kinda juicy; bleeds a little. It even smells like a burger (if you could smell it). If you bit into it you would even taste the familiar crunchiness of a classic burger.
But, it’s not a burger. Not even close. Introducing: The Impossible Burger.
Impossible Foods, like the other dozen biotech companies in the valley, is looking to feed our population in 2050 in a sustainable, scalable and safe way. With the impossible burger. But they have a different approach to meat alternatives (compared to other companies culturing cells): heme.
Our bodies crave heme. In fact, there is lots of heme in your blood right now. We need to survive. Actually, every living thing needs it to survive.
Well, what is it?
Heme is an iron-rich molecule. You may have heard of hemoglobin, it’s the protein in your red blood cells carrying oxygen around your body. It’s feeding all the cells in your body and it’s the reason you’re breathing, reading this and thinking about the tasty burger pictured above.
Heme happens to also be a large part of muscle tissue, especially in beef. And it’s impossible food’s secret ingredient to their impossible burger.
Heme helps mimic and enhance the taste of burgers
Heme has been part of your life since day one. Humans are psychologically connected to it. It additionally plays a BIG role in shaping the taste of burgers normally. Heme proteins in the blood make it red and juicy. When you bite into a big mac the taste you’re tasting is mostly thanks to heme.
Since heme drives the taste of a burger, what impossible foods did was master the texture of a burger by using plant-based ingredients to imitate the texture.
How the impossible burger is made
The impossible burger is made up of generally simple plants: wheat and potato protein + flavour (amino acids, sugar, vitamin, heme) + fats (coconut). Most ingredients are pretty easy and inexpensive to acquire. The only challenge is the heme because it’s found in the roots of soy plants which are expensive to get to, unscalable and bad for the soil. But they’re using genetically modified yeast to make heme instead, which i’ll talk about later.
But once you have all the ingredients, they’re combined and boom: a really good burger.
And it’s a good burger because it has the heme which gives it its meatlike mouthfeel and taste. But it also has the texture of a regular burger.
Good texture + Good taste = Good Burger.
Unlike other companies that are using an in-vitro meat approach to grow clean meat, impossible foods is using plants and heme to create a sustainable meat alternative. Companies are using cellular agriculture to grow muscle stem cells into a full burger; right now this has many challenges including lack of flavour and price. But impossible is harnessing a well-textured burger, with strong flavour and an acceptable price point using cellular agriculture to create heme-producing yeast.
How to create heme using GMOs
GMO is kinda a controversial term. But let me assure you that GMOs are safe and crazy important. They have been essential to solving some of humanity’s biggest problems, and have driven many medical applications (like insulin). But they’re also going to save the way we make food with GMO yeast.
Genetically modifying yeast involves taking DNA that isn’t its own and inserting it into the yeast. For heme, we will need to take a soy root DNA sample and insert it into the yeast.
The soy-root gene is inserted into the plasmid of the yeast. With the new set of genes, the yeast is able to synthesize heme the same way soy roots do (because it contains the DNA to do so).
And just like in the production of alcohol, the yeast can be used to ferment sugars into different products. With the soy-based genetically modified yeast we’ll be able to turn sugar and nutrients into heme. This is done in bio-reactor tanks.
Genetically engineering tech is already being looked into for applications of dairy alternatives. Using the same process above, you insert any gene to the yeast and you can make any type of protein or molecule you want. Alcohol? Casein? Whey? Insulin? Heme? No problem.
For a more in-depth description of genetically engineering yeast check out my article here.
Heme burgers are going to change the way we define meat
Impossible foods are one of a few emerging tech companies destine to fix our broken food system.
They’re working towards genetically engineering yeast to produce heme. Heme is like a superpower ingredient. It has the ability to turn wheat and potato into a burger the bleeds, is juicy, has a good texture and sizzles.
This is the first step to revolutionizing how humans eat. There are companies working on eggs, milk, meat, etc. And undoubtedly your burger in 2025 will probably be made from wheat, coconut, potato and heme.
Clap this article if you enjoyed it and you’re excited for the future of meat!!
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