- I just ordered six different burgers,
five of them being vegetarian, one of them being beef.
Will I taste a difference?
Which one will I like better?
Are vegetarian burgers actually healthy?
(doorbell dings)
(door clunks)
- Enjoy your burgers.
(door thuds)
(easy going intense bass beats and digital music)
- I'm coming fresh off my 30 day vegan challenge.
I hope you enjoyed watching it last week.
During my 30 day vegan trial,
I actually ate some vegan burgers.
And since they're all the rage,
I decided to put them to the test.
I want to focus on three things here,
looking at all the nutrition facts.
First, calories, Impossible Burger rings in
as the most calorie dense, 710 calories,
when compared to 630 for the Beyond Burger,
650 for a regular burger.
And the lowest being the quinoa at 510 calories.
Next, I want to jump to the sodium content.
I didn't expect this.
But the meatless burgers actually have
really high sodium contents,
more than the actual beef burger!
The beef burger has 780 milligrams of sodium.
But the Beyond patty has 950,
and the Impossible has 1,210!
Even the quinoa has 730.
It's clear that these meatless burgers
are trying to up the flavor by putting more salt in there.
Which can be problematic for those who have
high blood pressure, or heart disease.
That can put a lot of strain on the heart.
And the final macronutrient I want focus on is protein.
I would think the beef burger would have
the highest amount of protein, but that's not true.
Impossible Burger, 47 grams of protein
compared to the beef, 39 grams,
compared to the Beyond Burger, 33 grams.
And then the rest of these, the black bean,
sweet potato and quinoa are in the low 20s.
Why is that important?
Well, first of all you need protein to sustain muscle,
especially for myself, 'cause you know I'm trying
to be a muscular person. (growls)
But also because you need protein to feel satiated,
meaning to feel full.
Having the Impossible Burger have 47 grams of protein
will mean that you'll eat it and probably feel very full.
As opposed to a sweet potato burger,
only 20 grams of protein,
you still may be hungry after eating that one.
I'm ready to try these burgers.
I want to know what they feel like on my tongue,
what they smell like, what they taste like.
And, for you to get my rating.
All right, it's time to blindfold myself with a tie.
Gray what?
Christian who?
I'm ready for my first burger.
- [Staff Member] Give them a little shuffle,
because he saw the stack.
- I didn't see the stack.
Why does everyone denying the fact
that I'm an honest human being.
(plate scrapes)
I'm gonna talk about three things on each of these burgers.
One is the scent, the mouth feel,
as I like to call it the mouthiness, and then taste.
And then I'll give it a, out of five stars, I guess.
I feel like that's reasonable.
(light, amusing music)
(sighs) Oo, that warm brioche bun.
All of them have the same ingredients, by the way.
(breathes in) Scent-wise I already smell vegetables.
It almost smells like a sweet potato,
but I don't want to judge it just yet, all right.
(food crunches)
Oh, no I know which one this is.
This is the bean one for sure.
Is this ever gonna trick anyone
to say that they're eating meat?
(lettuce crunches)
Wow, big piece of lettuce.
Do I have thing in my teeth?
Mouthiness, I would say,
I could mouth and feel the bean, which is kind of weird.
It doesn't taste like a regular burger.
The fact that it has standard ingredients
like lettuce, and tomato and cheese makes it taste better.
But it has a little bit of sweetness to it.
And that taste, right away you get the bean thing
hitting you right in the face,
like you're eating a Chipotle burrito or something.
I'll probably give this two out of five.
Sorry bean burger.
(plate scrapes) Next.
Time to hydrate. (lips smacking)
(amusing acoustic orchestral strings music)
(plate scrapes)
Okay, this one smells decent.
Oh my god, this could be, this could be,
this could be beef.
(sighs) It smells really good.
I really feel like this is beef.
Let's give it a taste.
(food crunches)
(amusing, plucking acoustic orchestral strings music)
See I think this one's trying to be beef really hard.
I'm still getting a little vegetable-y kick.
This is really good.
There's something about it
that I'm not buying that it's meat.
There's just something, there's like a little,
mouthfeel is really good, though, really good.
Tastes like beef.
It falls apart like beef, it could be beef,
but I don't think so.
I'm' gonna go ahead and guess this is
the Impossible Burger.
This one gets three out of five stars from me.
Next!
Cleansing the pallette!
Why am I yelling?
(hiccups)
(skin rustling) All right.
Burger numero tres.
Oh this one's heavy. (chuckles)
Oh yeah!
This feels, this is a beef patty.
If I'm getting tricked on this,
it's a really embarrassing bit.
It smells like a fresh burger.
(food crunches)
Yeah, this is a beef burger.
My protein sensors on my tongue are lighting up.
If it's not, I swear to god it's crazy.
That tastes like beef, it smells like beef,
the consistency is like beef.
It's not a great burger.
I'll give it like a four out of five, next.
But that was the burger, right?
(wrappers crinkling)
- [Staff Member] No.
- No?!
Are you not gonna tell me?
All right, burgero numero quatro.
Oh my god, this tastes like,
to me it smells like pure vegetable.
God now I'm confused, is it a vegetable burger?
(food crunches)
I don't know what this one is doing.
You know what's funny?
I don't ask for sauce on any of these,
and this one has sauce, so it's confusing.
I have no idea.
What do we have left, Beyond, quinoa.
This might be the Beyond Burger.
It smells kind of like meat.
I think this is a Beyond Burger.
I think the consistency is pretty consistent with meat.
I want to just take a bite of the patty.
It's really close to beef.
It's like beef, but a little bit sweeter.
I'll give it three out of five stars.
All right, (sighs) numero cinco.
(amusing syncopated music)
Solid weight.
It has no real scent.
(food crunches)
Again with the sauce.
Oh my god, what is that?
Is this the Beyond or Impossible burger?
That's good!
Oh my god, this might be the Beyond Burger.
It's definitely not meat.
(laughs) If it's meat I'm so embarrassed.
I messed up one of the other ones.
This is either Impossible or Beyond.
Or is this quinoa, god.
The taste is weird, it's a weird taste.
(food crunches)
I don't like this taste, I give it two stars.
I don't know what that is.
We're gonna mark the fifth one
as a question mark for now, next?
- [Staff Member] Didn't you just say
it was really good?
- Like really good in tricking you with the mouth feel.
Saved the best for last.
Oh, this one's got some weight to it.
Okay, this is definitely one of the vegetarian ones.
God, I'm getting a little nauseous.
This is a quinoa burger.
I just got like a huge hit of quinoa.
Or no!
Sorry, sweet potato.
(food crunches)
(amusing, syncopated acoustic orchestral strings)
Mouth feel, really bad.
It tastes like you're eating a sweet burger, it's not good.
One star.
(plate scrapes) Blech!
Okay, here's my list. (pen clinks)
Let's see how I did here.
Burger number one was a black bean burger.
I gave it two stars, and I said it was black beans.
Which is correct!
The second one was a quinoa patty, I said beef?
I really said it was beef?
No I didn't.
I gave it three stars, wow the quinoa patty's
coming in here and surprising me.
Third was the beef patty, I knew that.
I gave it four stars.
Four was they Beyond Burger and I got the Beyond Burger.
What's up?!
Five was Impossible and I said, questionable,
Beyond, Impossible, or quinoa.
I couldn't get that one.
And then the sweet potato I said it was sweet potato
and I gave it one star.
I did really good, I got five out of six.
Come on, that's impressive!
You guys got to give me some love
for getting five out of six.
I think the biggest shocker out of all of this is,
I said quinoa patty was questionably beef.
I gave it three stars, and I thought it was
an Impossible Burger.
I'm surprised the Impossible Burger kind of let me down.
Let's talk nutrition and health
when it comes to these meatless burgers.
First, and it's the thing that surprised me the most,
on the burgers that tasted very close to meat,
they actually had macros that were quite similar,
if not worse than the actual beef burger.
For example, the Impossible Burger has more
saturated fat, more calories, more sodium
than a traditional beef burger.
I can't really go ahead and call these health foods,
because they're still indulgences.
We should treat them the same way as we do regular burgers.
That you should have them only occasionally,
only as a treat.
Because if we fall into the category of thinking
these are health foods,
people are gonna start eating them as part of
their regular diets, and that's not healthy.
I noticed a pattern.
The closer they taste to meat,
the more likely they are to be unhealthy
in terms of their macros.
When I say unhealthy, I mean high amounts
of saturated fats, high in calories, high in sodium.
Because if you look at the sweet potato,
the quinoa, the black bean,
those are generally lower in sodium, lower in fats
in comparison to the Impossible and Beyond Burger
which tastes very, very similar to the actual beef burger.
I think the biggest positive of this meatless burgers
is that we can decrease overall meat consumption.
That's a good thing, not only for your health,
but for the environment, as well.
I'm a big fan of meatless Mondays.
No one's saying you have to go vegan
in order to be healthy.
You can decrease your meat consumption,
have a plant-focused diet and still be incredibly healthy
if not healthier, than if you were following
a traditional vegan diet.
I actually said that in my vegan video.
This is becoming a mega business.
And I'm gonna keep a close eye on this,
just to make sure that we still head in the right direction
and we don't start throwing a bunch of preservatives,
and processed ingredients into these meatless burgers.
'Cause if something is to change,
I want to be the first to let you guys know.
Click here for my 30 day vegan challenge video,
so you can see how I suffered, where I improved,
and what I learned about myself.
As always, stay happy and healthy.
(easy flowing bass beats and synthesizer music)