Pea/soy protein itself as they’re just isolated proteins isn’t but the full product impossible/beyond is pretty comparable

What defines ultra processed? Are chicken nuggets ultra processed if I simply purée a chicken breast, add salt, shape, bread, and fry? I’ve turned it into something that is completely irrelevant to its original form. Is sausage ultra processed because I added nitrates? Is nitrate free sausage not ultra processed because I used the loophole where I added celery juice for its natural nitrate content instead of adding them directly?

When exactly does it become ultra processed? When a chemist gets involved and gives things proper names that freak you out?

Are you one of the kooky types that freak out when they see “sodium stearoyl lactylate” on the label of their sandwich bread even though it’s safe to eat and objectively makes your bread better and last longer? If so I’m sorry that you insist on eating bread that is not as soft and goes stale in 2 days

You can basically use it any way you would use ground beef, bolognese, meatballs, curry, tacos, whatever

Read on food and cooking by McGee and ratio by ruhlman to start

It’s probably from the yeast extract which is part of the heme

To be clear tho it still doesn’t have all that much salt. It’s more that raw beef just barely has any. Both impossible meat and raw beef pale in comparison to the salt content of the final burger, where the sodium content skyrockets from things like ketchup, pickles, seasoning the patty during cooking, the salt content of the bun, etc

And imo you should still salt/pepper an impossible patty after formation. As mentioned, while the salt content is higher, it’s still not terribly high, and imo it benefits from a bit more. In my experience it’s not like meat and you can salt whenever you want (whereas with beef you generally want to salt patties absolutely last minute to avoid giving the meat a lightly cured texture)

I wanted to very badly but then life happened and now I have a whole other career!

I still cook a lot though and I have a lot of weird powders and additives and machinery for stuff. I have a whole ass refrigerated centrifuge that can spin 3 liters at a time so I can isolate my own pea and soy protein in quantity! It weighs like 350 pounds and it’s from the 80s but fuck it, it’s super cool and I was able to get it for $25 from a lab I interned at. I can’t make soy leghemoglobin at home though at there’s no commercial supplier I’ve found so far so I have to still buy impossible or beyond meat if I want it, bummer

Hopefully there will be more food nerds on lemmy. I am only an amateur food nerd, there are way better ones out there

It’s an excellent foaming agent! Methocel f50 foams will last a lot longer than egg foams too

Just make sure you get the right kind though. Usually if you get “methylcellulose” it’s f50 but there are a lot of different types with different properties. The a4c variety I mentioned for hot ice cream will make foams but won’t work as well and is better for gel applications. But there are a lot of varieties of methocel and many are only subtly different from each other

It was a bad joke

The meat alternatives will only get better as time goes on and market demand grows. A burger or nugget is really not an impossible (lol) to recreate item; most of the meat texture is lost by the processing involved.

A burger is obviously ground and a nugget is usually chicken that’s ground to almost a paste then shaped and breaded. At that point it’s finding something that can approximate the texture of the mushed up meat goo and then finding something that can convincingly flavor it. That’s why impossible was so adamant to get leghemoglobin cleared by the fda, it really is by far the best option. If not that your other options are basically trying to recreate a “meaty flavor” with spice blends and msg which is how the older meat alternatives worked

The much bigger challenge is finding something that can texturally approximate intact muscle (eg wings or steak). As you’ve said there are decent soy wings and there are steak strip things and such but these are generally passable. They taste good and are fine as a meal but they aren’t the same in the way an impossible burger is reallllly close to a burger. Lots of people trying though! Jackfruit, tvp, seitan, pea and soy protein, etc. but none of them come close to the mouth feel and texture of a wing or steak. Someday, maybe. I hope someone figures it out; I haven’t had meat in like 20 years or so but I do miss the texture of steak from time to time and wish I had something that could recreate that

Imo impossible meat is superior to beyond although nutritionally it’s a mixed bag. It introduces a decent amount of carbs (9g per 4oz) and has over 5x the sodium of beef. But it also has a bit of fiber and a either comparable or more vitamin/mineral content than beef. Protein is comparable to 80% ground with 20% less caloric content

Beyond is similar.

They’re both basically vegetable proteins with binders and fats and some flavorings. The big game changer flavoring is leghemoglobin which both use. It’s a protein isolated from soy that is very similar to certain enzymes from bovine muscle. Impossible got the fda to approve it in 2019 and it was challenged; there are some concerns on whether it is safe to eat. I’m not super well read on the issue but from what I’ve perused the issue is one of a lack of long term testing and not of any direct concern.

The textural difference between the two is because beyond uses isolated pea protein, which gives it a texture that’s a bit chunkier and imo more sausage like, and impossible uses soy protein, which imo is more like a cheap burger patty you’d get at McDonald’s.

The fats are typical fats like coconut oil or sunflower oil to recreate the fatty part of beef and this is the current weakness of the products imo. Coconut oil is used because it tends to stay solidified at room temp so when you’re making patties it feels like there are chunks of beef fat. In practice this is weird because they are far too hard and aren’t dispersed enough throughout the product; I believe this is why these fake meats tend to stick to the pan much easier than actual burgers cooked in a skillet.

The binders are big scary words like methylcellulose which is also a source of fiber and can be used as a laxative so people latch onto that and freak out. But it’s only used as a binder to help it hold everything together here so it’s like a tiny amount that just provides a bit of fiber that you probably desperately need if you’re having burgers for dinner. Fun fact: Certain preparations of methylcellulose (a4c) turn into gels when heated so you can use them to make hot ice cream! It’s pretty weird to eat, like a normal ice cream base that solidifies when you put it into boiling water

The other ingredients are stuff like beet juice for coloring

Final fun fact: technically impossible meat is not vegan because animal testing was done during its development.

Thanks for reading my unprompted essay on the composition of modern vegan meat substitutes. This was brought to you by my failed interest in becoming a food scientist. Also you may note I don’t really discuss how they compare to meat and that’s because I don’t eat meat which by law I am required to mention in all posts about food

A Facebook owned app collects as much data as humanly possible? I am shocked at this unforeseen development

Remember this when they try to integrate into the fedeverse. Don’t be one of the people that says “meta will make it popular!” Be one of the people that will recognize that meta will use it as a tool to extract as much information from users as possible, amongst other nefarious things