Bunnies hop into the veggie-burger business
The fast-food business is fired up over fake meat. The recently introduced Impossible Burger is moo-ving onto diners’ plates faster than its creator can make them. Likewise for Beyond Meat, whose stock soared after a recent product announcement. (Meanwhile, Arby’s returned fire by announcing a meat-based carrot.) And now the newest entrant in the faux-burger wars is Bunny Burger, Inc., maker of the AppleBurger.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx5fG7xl4TP/
The company hopes this new product will fare better than its earlier offering, the Unspecified Protein Substance Taco.
I’d like to make a reservation at the StayAtHomeBunCafe.
That precious Sky, bun bun, has a disapproving and sad look about that unspecified protein substance taco. Love his blue eyes. Just want to hug and kiss him.
Love Sky but not so sure about the food at the cafe. I think I’ll stick with the “burger” and “fries”. Actually looks better than those so called “meat alternatives” out there. If I’m going for something other than a real burger, I’d rather have a veggie/black bean burger than one of those lab concoctions. Anybody else remember movies like Soylent Green or Logan’s Run?
I was curious about the “beyond meat” burger and checked the ingredients. It’s a base of mushed peas / pea protein combined with a lot other unpronounceable stuff you need a chemistry degree to figure out what it is.
I too don’t understand what’s the point of marketing something as “meat” when it’s not. If you’re vegetarian, there’s nothing wrong with eating beans, peas, mushrooms, etc. as protein. If you want to eat meat, just eat meat for heaven’s sake. It’s like eating fruit roll ups and saying you’re eating fruit.
I concur 👍🏼. So you mean when I eat a fruit roll up, I’m not really eating fruit, 😩 but, but, it says fruit! Actually I don’t eat them – LOL
My mom wouldn’t allow that stuff in the house when I was growing up.
Eventually somebody at school let me try “fruit by the foot” to satisfy my curiosity. It tasted like really sweet play-dough. Needless to say, I was no longer jealous of my classmates.
I’ve been noticing more and more lately that whenever I give in to the urge to eat some junk thing that I loved as a kid…it never tastes as good as I remember (looking at you, chocolate-frosted Pop Tarts)…and then I feel extra crappy having eaten it because it wasn’t worth it. I need to start writing “IT’S NOT AS GOOD AS YOU REMEMBER!” at the top of my grocery list. (Because that stuff is never actually on the list.)
Today Wegmans had a cute little farm stand set up right at the front of the produce section with local produce. (They also had a guy on one side of the department grilling zucchini and offering samples, but I didn’t try any, and another stand sampling different types of grapes on the other side.) About to go slice up one of the huge cucumbers I got. Then I need to decide between raspberries, limited edition “sweetest batch” strawberries (we’ll see if they live up to the label…and the price), cherries, grapes, or jumbo blueberries for dessert.
Actually Allein, I believe that the products are vastly inferior to the ones we used to enjoy. Many of my favorite treats are now made so cheaply that they are probably toxic. My dad would read “edible oil product” on a treat, shake his head and say “it used to be butter and cream”. ☹️
Oh, I’m sure it’s a combination of my tastes having changed somewhat and the products not being the same as what they were when I was a kid. I used to love Breyer’s Vanilla Fudge Swirl ice cream but the consistency these days is definitely different than it used to be. (And the packages are smaller, too.)
I’m of the age to remember the high-fructose corn syrup switch and bait. Everything that use to have sugar in it when I was kid is now made with high-fructose corn syrup and it just does not taste the same.
I’m convinced the food industry purposefully starts making a new product with high-quality ingredients and once it’s popular switches to lower quality ingredients, because I start out loving a product and then the taste changes for the worse. But most people don’t seem to notice or care when the change happens or think that it’s just some mental misunderstanding on their part.
When those taste changes happen, I just assume they’ve changed something and stop buying it.
I relatively recently bought a package of Oreos for this first time in gazillion years. They were awful. I threw them out. I just thought my tastes had changed but now that I think about it they even looked different.
Um, as a recently-constituted vegetarian (since October) I can tell you the attraction of burgers that supposedly taste like meat while not being meat – THEY TASTE LIKE MEAT! (I haven’t tried any yet but will). Animals are delicious and vegetables taste like flavored water. I am not tempted to go back to eating animals but I’d be thrilled to eat things that tasted like them.
Now that is a sensible and truthful post. I applaud your attitude and good luck with your new food lifestyle!
Thanks
Vegetables shouldn’t taste like flavored water. At all. Even the meat you rave about tastes awful if you don’t slather it in various spices. That shouldn’t be.
Vegetables and fruit grown in proper soil (i.e one that is mineral rich) taste delicious, and require no heavy dressing to mask their underlying taste.
I realize that plenty of places in North America are food deserts and/or over-farmed soil that has stripped most of its minerals out of it. That is extremely unfortunate.
Please don’t write off vegetable deliciousness. If feasible, try a little growth experiment in a planter. Stuff like herbs and tomatoes are really easy to grow, and don’t require much maintenance.
If you’re more well off, take a vacation to any cheap European country where your dollar goes further. Visit some of their farmers markets. I guarantee you that you’ll notice a difference in taste, and it’s because of the soil.
Ironically, despite North America being the called the “new” world, the soil here is quite “old” and poorly mineralized. Places that are prone to earthquakes and volcanoes have much better quality soil. That’s why you have world-renowned cuisine from Italy and France consisting of really simple, common ingredients but they taste fantastic.
I live in midtown Manhattan so I won’t be growing any vegetables. While I’ve enjoyed food in Italy and France, I don’t remember being bowled over by the vegetables. You probably have a more sensitive palate than I do.
I love vegetables! I think the reason a lot of people don’t like them is because, too often, they are overcooked. All the taste is leeched out of them. Either that or they are paired with sauces or other foods that overwhelm their flavor.
It’s not that much about minerals in soil. It’s about how most veggies in the US aren’t picked when they’re ripe. Instead they’re picked early when they’re easier to ship and then put into refrigerated containers to “ripen” while being shipped. They don’t really ripen and this results in bland veggies.
Find some farmer’s markets in the US. Taste some actually ripe produce. It is so much better than grocery store stuff.
My family has our own farm and orchard and I absolutely love our fresh fruits and veggies. Ripe tomatoes should taste like the fruit they are. Carrots, beans, squash and all that should have taste. They should be rish and hearty.
It’s important to have food that’s nutritious and palatable. The point of things like veggie burgers and such is that you can cook them to a non-greasy crisp so they’re more like eating a chip or something else that’s actually good (and nothing resembling greasy, icky meat!). And yet, you’re still getting protein and building muscle. There’s nothing wrong with eating vegetables if you like them, but to me that’s like eating paper. Vegetables aren’t food to me; they’re what I eat to stop myself from eating food!
I remember both movies – I wept shamelessly the last time Soylent Green was on AMC.
What a gorgeous bunbun! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a blue-eyed bunny. I’d buy anything that little furball was selling. 💕
Okay, Arby’s “Megetables” video is disgusting and hilarious. I’ll stick with the apple “fries” at the BunCafe, with a side of bunny cuddles.
Stunning blue eyes–I didn’t know rabbits could have them.
I eat a lot of faux meat burgers as a vegetarian. They can be quite tasty. The Impossible Burger keeps showing up on restaurant menus but I haven’t yet tried one.
I watch this youtube channel by a doctor…he recently did a video reviewing five meatless burgers (Impossible, Beyond, quinoa, sweet potato, black bean, plus a beef burger) with a blind taste test to see if he could guess which was which.
What a lovely bun vignette! Decorative, appealing food and a furry bunny on a background of red and white checked table cloth.
I think i’ll stick to morningstar black bean burgers, thank you.
My faves! Followed by their Mediterranean Chickpea burger. I’m not even a vegetarian, I just eat them because they’re tasty and quick.
I was a vegetarian for 3 or 4 years and got to love the Morningstar burgers. Now that I’m back to eating meat, I will still buy those chickpea burgers simply because they are so darn yummy.
I read through this thread, and no one mentioned this aspect (Dubravka touched on it): One of the ways to slow down the climate crisis is to drastically reduce the amount of meat being produced (from a resource standpoint, beef is one of the worst offenders). But if you can make meat in the lab or meat tasting substances, it will be easier to wean people off their dependence and cut back on producing tge real thing.
It’s a pipe dream, I know, but I’d rather stand with Greta Thunberg than the climate deniers.
Reducing the amount of meat being eaten is definitely a positive side effect of becoming vegetarian, though, of course, the effect my abstinence has is so minuscule as to be almost theoretical.