Have you ever wondered why meat tastes the way it does?

Impossible Foods is a company that makes plant-based meat and dairy products without the use of animals. The founder and CEO of this company is Patrick Brown, a biologist and physician at Stanford University. It has been reported that Google wanted to buy the company and offered from $200 to $300 million, but was denied. Backed by Bill Gates, Impossible Foods has been researching on how to make a vegan burger taste like meat for five years.

Its most recent and famous product, the Impossible Burger, is a burger with a patty that tastes like real meat, but consists of only plants. Brown stated in a CNBC interview that he wanted the burger to “appeal to the hardcore meat lover”, and that he wanted “to have a product that would deliver all the pleasures that people get from eating meat without any of the baggage; no cholesterol, antibiotics, hormones, [or] E. coli.” If you were wondering whether the burger is gluten-free, it is not because the burger contains wheat protein. The CEO states that the secret ingredient that gives the burger its meaty taste is heme, a basic ingredient in plants and also abundant in meat. Other ingredients in the patty are wheat, coconut oil, and potatoes. After five years of research and millions of dollars of funding, the first burger was served in July 2016. If you were to compare the Impossible Burger to a burger made with the meat of a cow, it uses 74% less water, 95% less land, and creates 97% less greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, Impossible Foods has already started researching how to make fish, pork, dairy products, and other meat substitutes out of plants.

Currently, there are four locations at which you can buy and eat the Impossible Burger. There are two in San Francisco, one in New York, and one in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, that means Impossible Foods cannot serve the Impossible Burger anywhere else except for the U.S. The restaurant that serves the Impossible Burger in LA is called Crossroads Kitchen. At Crossroads, the burger is $14 and comes with truffle fries. Since it has a smaller impact on the environment and yet still maintains the qualities of an old-fashioned burger, the Impossible Burger seems to outclass the original burger.

One of these days, go down to Crossroads Kitchen and see the Impossible Burger for yourself.

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