The Vegan Way

Meatless burger patty. Photo Credit: Impossible Foods If you’re living in Los Angeles, there is no doubt that you've noticed the surging popularity of plant-based foods in the dining landscape. Not only are restaurants blooming with new vegan menu options, but plant-based food products are increasingly emerging in the food industry. Notable newcomers include veggie burgers and dairy-free products including milk, yogurt, and even cheese! We are now welcoming the age of the plant butchers: a group of creative and enterprising culinary geniuses and food scientists who are passionate about developing healthier and more sustainable forms of meat by exploring the world of plant proteins. A new generation of cheesemakers is also on the rise, experimenting with bacteria to develop plant-based ‘dairy’ products. Let's explore how these passionate individuals come up with such creative food innovations. A Plant-Based Burger that Bleeds Patrick Brown, a biochemistry professor from Stanford University, has spent the the last five years trying to investigate at a molecular level why beef tastes, smells, and cooks the way it does. He's the CEO of Impossible Foods, a California-based company, that has successfully innovated new methods and ingredients to naturally recreate the sights, sounds, aromas, textures and flavors of a meat burger — their creation is called the “Impossible Burger” — which uses 95% less land, 74% less water, and creates 87% less greenhouse gas emissions (Elliott). A key feature of the Impossible Burger is heme, a molecule that is found in high concentrations in beef. Heme is an iron-containing molecule in blood that carries oxygen. It’s heme that makes our blood red and makes meat look pink and taste slightly metallic (Hoshaw). However, harvesting sufficient amounts of heme for a commercially available burger was challenging and required innovative scientific techniques. Luckily, there is a plant-based version of heme called leghemoglobin, which is a nitrogen/oxygen carrier hemoprotein found in the nitrogen-fixing root nodules of leguminous plants such as soybeans. When nitrogen-fixing bacteria called rhizobia colonize the roots of legumes as part of a symbiotic interaction between plant and bacterium, the legumes will begin synthesizing leghemoglobin. Leghemoglobin, which has a high affinity for oxygen, is able to buffer the concentration of free oxygen in the cytoplasm of the infected plant cells to ensure proper function of the oxygen-sensitive nitrogenase, the enzyme responsible for fixing atmospheric nitrogen. However, extracting leghemoglobin from mass production of soybeans would be expensive, time consuming, and would release large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere from unearthing the plants. A more efficient strategy is to use yeast! Genetic modification of the common yeast, S. cerevisiae, is a powerful way to produce desired molecules such as leghemoglobin. Using genetic engineering and molecular biology techniques, the Impossible team took the gene in soybean which encodes for the heme protein and transferred it into yeast, which enabled the production of vast quantities of the blood-like compound. To replicate how beef feels in the mouth, the Impossible Burger contains a combination of protein from wheat and potatoes, and coconut oil. The wheat and potato proteins result in a firm exterior when the meat is seared, while coconut oil is essential for the juiciness. Among all plant oils, coconut oil has a higher melting point, meaning that it melts above temperatures of 37 degrees Celsius; so the burger becomes juicy when the patty hits the frying pan and has a good mouthfeel, similar to lard when you eat it. While Impossible Burger is headquartered in Redwood City, California, it has recently partnered with fast food chain Umami Burger to offer the meat-free option at 14 locations in California. Impossible burgers are also found locally at the Crossroads restaurant! Listen to our recent tasting of the impossible burger with UCLA Science & Food’s Amy Rowat and Evan Kleiman of KCRW’s Good Food found at this link: https://soundcloud.com/kcrws-good-food/01-gf-071517-impossible-burger