Impossible Foods — read: it's impossible this food is good — announced this week that they were expanding their meatless offerings from "beef" and "sausage" to include "chicken" nuggets. My, how comfortable we have become to be making "meat" out of leaves when there's no shortage of readily available and delicious farm animals ready to grace our dinner tables.
Impossible Foods' imposter nuggets are made with "textured soy protein and sunflower oil to replicate the bite and fatty mouthfeel of nuggets," according to Bloomberg's report on the new food (a word used generously here) in a description that is anything but appetizing.
The new plant-based nugs will be sold to restaurants first, and eventually available to consumers directly via retail outlets.
Coming soon ?? https://t.co/o1QSduwgpK
— Impossible Foods (@ImpossibleFoods) July 16, 2021
This new foray into meatless meat comes as part of Impossible Foods' goal to eliminate all animal-based meat — which would be literally all the real meat out there — in 15 years.
It's part of Impossible Foods' push to save the planet, or something, by foisting questionable foods on us. According to them, "adjusting your diet can be better than getting solar panels, driving an electric car, or avoiding plastic straws." Because, so says Impossible, the best way to "reduce your carbon footprint, limit global warming, halt the collapse of biodiversity, save wildlife and ensure enough clean water for all of us is to ditch meat from animals."
If you're inexplicably wondering how to broach the topic of eliminating real meat with your loved ones, never fear. Impossible Foods provides a "Birds and the Trees" guide to help you talk about abolishing meaty meals with older family members since "they grew up at a different time, they didn’t have the same information, and they can be more set in their ways." How delightfully condescending.
This might get awkward – and that’s totally ok! It’s time to talk about #TheBirdsAndTheTrees. https://t.co/qcFOsWXY3T pic.twitter.com/jjIapfcIBK
— Impossible Foods (@ImpossibleFoods) June 28, 2021
Apart from being seriously unappealing, Impossible's faux meats might be worse for you than just having a salad to get your plant nutrients in non-"meat" form.
Chef Andrew Gruel — the founder and CEO of Slapfish Restaurant Group — knows tasty food. He told Townhall that "these plant-based items are highly processed" and "full of sodium and chemicals." (Again, not appetizing.) "If you’re not eating meat for health purposes, might as well eat the real thing," Gruel added. "If it’s ethics, have at it, but understand they aren’t healthier."
It's not surprising that, in order to make plants taste like nugs, Impossible Foods would need to rely heavily on chemistry, but these things keep getting less appetizing.
Gruel's right about the health hazards. Harvard ranked Impossible Foods' "burgers" against a few other options and found that their fake beef patties have more saturated fat, carbohydrates, and sodium than an 85 percent lean ground beef patty, which has more protein than an Impossible "burger."
That said, it's a toss-up whether Impossible Nuggets are a better or worse decision than the "bread steak" fad Matt valiantly covered earlier in July.