In May 2020, Difficult Foods and Beyond Meat saw a spike in demand as the COVID-19 pandemic slowed production of the beef and pork industries. Most famous for their hamburger options, these products become part of a food classification known as “meat analogue”– plant-based items created to imitate meat– which describes why a need was produced when actual meat was in shorter supply. But it likewise begs the question: are Difficult and Beyond Burgers truly meant, or suitable, for vegetarians?
This issue came to light recently when I was dining with a longtime vegetarian friend, Ali Ryan. She snapped a photo of the menu of the bar where we were eating to contribute to her growing catalog of dining establishments that have actually just recently changed their more standard vegetable burger options with an Impossible or Beyond burger.
” For somebody who has actually been a vegetarian either their entire life or most of their life, there is simply no desire for the taste of meat. If anything, there is a hostility,” says Ryan. “Changing a true vegetable burger– something hearty and tasty to a vegetarian dressed up and served in a bun– with an imitation beef burger is effectively eliminating an option for a vegetarian, and adding one for a meat eater captivating the concept of meatless Mondays.”
As a lifelong omnivore who had actually recently tasted a Difficult hamburger, I might see her point. Naturally, no tidy consensus was to be discovered, not all vegetarians being alike in preferences or factors for ending up being one, however those queried had strong opinions, and numerous interesting issues were raised.
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I talked to about 10 vegans and vegetarians with a wide range of timelines in their plant-based journeys, questioning whether there was a neat split on the Impossible problem between those who had been accustomed to consuming meat for some substantial part of their life, and those that were long-lasting vegetarians. No such clear lines were drawn, nevertheless, with responses varying from “never attempted them,” to “I dislike them– not my jam at all,” to “Impossible is next fucking level.”
While tastes weren’t entirely divide amongst long-lasting versus current vegetarians, something I observed was that those who had currently green-lighted Boca hamburgers– another soy-based meat analogue– were most likely to find Impossibl
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