Ahh, the burger. America's best friend.
Juicy, tender, mouthwatering.
Since time immemorial, it's practically been
our country's third trademark.
But all that meat comes at a cost.
The U.S. processed 32.2 million cattle and
calves in 2017, according to the North
American Meat Institute.
People love meat. I love meat. But
there's also a recognition of the
challenges of meat that's been
harvested from animals, particularly in
factory farming.
Enter Beyond Meat. They produce burgers
that look, cook and taste just like
meat. But they're not what we think of
as meat. They're made entirely out of
plants. And since 2016, they've made
their way into thousands of
supermarkets, drive-throughs,
restaurants, hotels and sports
stadiums.
You give it a thumbs up? Uh-huh. You like it?
Oh, and the company's gotten major
investments from Bill Gates, Leonardo
DiCaprio, former McDonald's CEO Don
Thompson and Tyson Foods.
So why did this new-age burger take on the battle
with beef? And will it win?
At Beyond Meat's R&D lab, food
scientists, chemists and engineers are
perfecting the art of the animal-free
burger.
We like to think of meat not in terms of
its origin, say from a chicken or a
cow, but in terms of its molecular
composition, so the proteins, the
carbohydrates, the lipids, minerals and
vitamins, all of which are available,
except for cholesterol, in the plant
kingdom.
All of the facility's R&D lab
technicians are trained
meat sommeliers.
My job here is to figure out what makes
meat taste and behave like meat at the
molecular level and then go out into
the plant kingdom and identify
materials that behave the same way.
Beyond Meat's burger patties end up with
roughly the same amount of protein as
raw beef, but significantly more sodium
due to the preservation and flavoring
processes. It's also worth noting that
they still have 20 grams of fat, almost
on par with beef. The main ingredients
in Beyond Meat's latest burger are
peas, rice and mung beans for protein,
beets for color and potato starch and
coconut oil for juiciness.
But what about the blood?
Don't worry, it's beet juice.
Ready? Yep.
Beyond Meat is the brainchild of Ethan
Brown, a once-carnivore turned vegan
who grew up around his family's farm in
western Maryland.
I spent a lot of time there, we had
dairy cattle there. And so I was very
close to animals growing up, loved
them, and I was fascinated by them.
Passionate about the environment, Brown
pursued a career in clean energy.
But I began to realize that livestock
had a larger contribution to climate
than many of the things that I was
working on in terms of the emissions.
9 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas
emissions come from agriculture, and of
that, one-third comes from methane
emitted from cow digestion. So in 2009,
Brown began working on a healthier,
more humane burger.
The question, "Why are you trying to
build a piece of meat from plants? Why
not just encourage people to eat plants
directly?" A burger is something people
love, and so we went after that core
part of the American diet.
Veggie burgers are nothing new. They've
been around since 1982.
Previous generations of veggie burgers
generally were pre-formed burger
patties that were already cooked that
you essentially reheated, and they
generally had a sort of
dry or rubberier texture. And I think
that was one of the sort of major steps
in the evolution was realizing that
people who eat plant-based meat or
people who eat veggie burgers, they're
not all super health-conscious all the
time, like, they like the feeling of
biting into a juicy burger. They like
the feeling of biting into a juicy
meatball. So why can't we give that to
them?
Today, Beyond Meat is booming.
and it filed for a $100 million IPO in
November of 2018.
Sources tell CNBC that the plant-based
food company has hired JP Morgan,
Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse to help
lead the public offering.
You can find the company's products
everywhere, from grocery stores like
Whole Foods and Safeway to fast-food
chains like Carl's Jr. and A&W.
The interesting thing about our sales is
we cannot make enough product. So we
are investing very rapidly and very
significantly.
It's so meaty, it's almost kind of
freaky.
And the customers aren't just vegans and
vegetarians, they're also carnivores.
Today the company also offers chicken
strips, sausages, beef crumbles and has
more items in development.
We want to make bacon, we want to make
steak, we want to make the most
intricate and beautiful pieces of meat.
U.S. retail sales of plant-based meats
grew by 24 percent in 2018. Animal
meats grew by just 2 percent.
But Beyond Meat's got some
competition. Its biggest competitor?
Impossible Foods.
Backstage, they said they grilled like meat,
they smell... It smells fantastic, Joe.
Also based in California and also
producing a variety of plant-based
products. Their burgers are
offered in more than 5,000 restaurants
and chains including White Castle,
Applebee's and Momofuku. The company
hasn't yet made it into grocery stores,
but plans to this year.
Another big competitor is lab-grown or
clean meat, which is animal meat grown
in a lab by replicating animal cells in
a petri dish. The lab-grown meat
industry is currently getting backing
from Bill Gates, Richard Branson and
Cargill.
But Brown's biggest competitor?
Really are in the meat industry itself.
So good.
I'm not vegan, but this is actually
really good.
I think we have reached one of two
important tipping points as far as
adoption of plant-based meat and that
is the quality of the product. It's not
100 percent there but it's 99 percent
of the way there, and I think the next
hurdle is going to be price. Price has
reduced drastically over the last few
years, but I think it's still on the higher end.
As for Brown, he's hopeful for the future.
Someday I think plant-based meat will
overtake animal protein as the main
source of meat, but I can't predict when.
I do believe it will happen in my lifetime.
Let's hope so.
Bring on the plant-based bacon.