The Beyond Burger tastes like a delicious beef patty, but it's got more beets than beef.
Out of the 18 ingredients listed on Beyond's website, some are familiar, while others are
a little less so. Keep watching to discover what you're really eating when you bite into
a Beyond Burger.
There are 20 grams of protein in a Beyond Burger, the same amount you'll find in a regular
beef patty at Burger King. In the Beyond patty, much of that comes from pea protein. What
is pea protein, you may ask? It's not peas, exactly, but rather an extract of the proteins
in split peas. This makes it a vegetarian and dairy-free alternative to animal protein,
and a popular ingredient for vegan protein shakes and protein bars. Pea protein's nutritional
benefits include nine essential amino acids, although it's not a complete protein source.
Unfortunately, extracting the protein from the plant results in leaving behind some of
the good stuff, like magnesium , folate , and potassium .
The other legume in a Beyond Burger is the mung bean. Despite its funny name, this little
green gem of a bean is a powerhouse of nutrition. It contains lots of fiber, nutrients, and
vitamins, and helps regulate blood sugar. Even in its extracted form, mung bean protein
can help control blood pressure and is linked to increased brain development in infants.
The non-legume protein in the Beyond Burger is brown rice protein. Along with the pea
and mung bean, this makes the Beyond Burger a complete protein source, containing enough
of the nine amino acids that are required for optimum health. Other plant-based sources
of complete protein include the likes of buckwheat and soy. Soy in particular is a common ingredient
in veggie burgers and is found in the Impossible Burger, Beyond's biggest competition. But
the Beyond Burger is unique in that it's a plant-based meat alternative that's completely
soy-free. Although soy has its own health benefits, it's also pretty controversial.
As Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown told CNET ,
"Consumers don't like soy, whether it's because the milk board's doing a really good PR job
or what, I don't know. But consumers don't like soy, and that made everyone's job here
really hard."
Brown rice protein provides a way to increase protein consumption while avoiding the red
and processed meats that researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health have linked
to chronic illness and cancer. It's also easy to digest and suitable for lactose intolerant
people. The brown rice protein also serves to make the Beyond Burger coarser and more
meat-like.
Plant oils might sound more like something you'd put in your hair rather than eat, but
canola oil gives the Beyond Burger a juicy, fatty flavor that mimics that of a meat patty.
This dripping of plant oil simulates the way that a meat burger bleeds beefy juices when
it's pressed down or bitten into. These plant oils also keep the burger moist while it's
being cooked, and help it retain its ground meat-like texture.
Also keeping the Beyond Burger moist is sunflower lecithin . Lecithin is an emulsifying agent
that helps bind together fats and non-fats, and using sunflower lecithin instead of the
more common soy lecithin is another way that Beyond maintains a soy-free and GMO-free product.
In addition to canola oil, the Beyond Burger also contains solid plant fats such as coconut
oil and cocoa butter in its latest iteration. In June 2019, Beyond announced that they'd
created a new "meatier" burger with "mouthwatering marbling" that would not only melt like beef
fat, but further tenderize the meat as it did so. While these solid plant fats add to
the juicy texture and taste, the refined coconut oil and cocoa butter are also used to create
the illusion of small, white flecks of fat dispersed evenly throughout the pink fake
meat protein. This makes the act of cooking the Beyond Burger more similar to flipping
actual beef patties, adding to the overall sensory experience from grocery store to kitchen
to dinner plate.
With the addition of coconut oil and cocoa butter, it's worth noting that the Beyond
Burger isn't free of saturated fats. Its six grams of saturated fats are 30 percent of
the daily recommended intake, which concerns some dieticians. But compared to a regular
beef patty, the Beyond Burger has 25 percent less saturated fat, and all the saturated
fats are still from plants.
"Let's just take the amino acids, the fats, from another source, and recreate those. We're
taking the animal entirely out of the equation."
The Beyond Burger is not carb-free, although its total is low at just three grams. A beef
burger patty, on the other hand, is completely free of carbs. While many meat alternatives
looked for meat-like structure in plant proteins, Beyond took a different approach and chose
to build their product component by component. These components include texture, fat, flavor,
aroma, and appearance. To maintain these different layers of texture and flavors, something is
needed to act as a glue.
That's where methylcellulose comes in. It's a chemical compound that's not naturally occurring,
though it's quite common in a lot of food. It makes up less than 2 percent of the total
weight of a Beyond Burger patty, but it's nevertheless vital in forming that fake meat
into a patty. In addition to the methylcellulose, potato starch is used as a thickening and
binding agent, and that's where those carbs come from. Together, they allow the burger
to hold its shape all the way from production to first bite. One other notable aspect about
both methylcellulose and potato starch is that they're gluten free, meaning the Beyond
Burger itself is also gluten-free.
To try and replicate some of the vitamins and minerals you'd get from a meat patty,
Beyond Burgers have both added calcium and iron. That added iron also serves another
important function, as it makes the burger taste more like meat, or as Beyond puts it,
"[It] wakes up our taste buds with each bite."
Besides the taste factor, why would Beyond go out of its way to add "meat" minerals?
There are many potential health benefits to plant-based diets, but they come with concerns
about the possibility of iron or calcium deficiencies. So some dieticians might recommend supplements
to make up the difference, although whether or not these concerns are well-founded is
still up for debate in the medical community. Some doctors believe that the possibility
of deficiencies is incredibly low, and that the bigger problem is actually the adverse
side effects of these supplements. For example, Dr. John McDougall, a physician and nutrition
expert, has noted,
"More than a half-century of creative marketing by the meat, dairy, egg, and fish industries
has produced fears surrounding nonexistent deficiencies."
In other words, while it's nice that the Beyond Burger provides 8 percent of your daily calcium
and 25 percent of your daily iron, you probably don't need it.
The Beyond Burger contains added salt, which can make it a problem for people on low-sodium
diets. While the sodium in a typical beef patty is 75 milligrams, that figure in a Beyond
Burger is 390 milligrams. Salt enhances the flavor of the Beyond Burger, and it's not
uncommon for many vegan and vegetarian products to have unexpectedly high salt content.
The Beyond Burger also contains potassium chloride, which is a common salt substitute
that's sometimes used to lower the amount of sodium in food. It's generally considered
safe for the average adult population, and as long as its use follows safety guidelines,
it's a safe way to replace larger amounts of sodium chloride. But for people with kidney
problems, consuming excess potassium chloride can be dangerous, as the body is unable to
eliminate excessive potassium. For the most part though, while the Beyond Burger is high
in sodium, it's still below the American Heart Association's recommendation of less than
1,500 milligrams per day, and the potassium chloride amount is safe as well.
After creating the proteins and fats that make up the bulk of the Beyond Burger, the
next step is to focus on the taste. This is where the "natural flavors" come in. These
are what give the Beyond Burger its signature meaty taste and umami . According to a Beyond
representative who spoke with Mashed, there are some 1,000 molecules that make up what
we recognize as the flavor of a beef burger patty. Fortunately for a vegan meat company
such as Beyond, the same flavor molecules also exist in plants. For example, one of
those flavor molecules in beef is also found in parsley. According to the Beyond representative,
"But that doesn't mean you can chop up parsley, and voilà ! It tastes like medium rare steak."
Obviously, it's a much more scientific and complicated process than that. What Beyond
does is go through these 1,000 flavor molecules, isolate what they are, and then search for
the same ones in plants. Then they slowly build them up, flavor by flavor, and molecule
by molecule. If all goes according to plan, eventually they come up with a combination
that mimics the taste of beef. The Beyond Burger combination is quite specific, and
very secretive. Flavor-making, whether it's for the Beyond Burger or any other culinary
concoction, is a very competitive industry, and the recipes tend to be a well-guarded
point of pride.
We don't just eat with our mouths, we also eat with our eyes, and that's no exception
for the Beyond Burger. It's almost indistinguishable from ground beef in the grocery stores, and
in fact, it's usually sold alongside the ground meats instead of with the other vegan meat-substitutes.
But there's one problem: a raw burger patty and a cooked burger patty look nothing alike.
While one is a soft, pink mush, the other is a brown, caramelized disc that can hold
its shape. How can a product that's not actually meat replicate the way meat looks both before
and after it's cooked?
The secret is apples. If you've ever sliced apples, you've seen how quickly they turn
brown when exposed to air. By adding apple extract to its recipe, Beyond was able to
make its proteins brown in the pan just like ground beef. This not only makes the finished
product look more like beef, it also makes the cooking process feel a lot more like cooking
with beef. It's worth noting, though, that the Beyond Burger's success in replicating
meat is a bit of a double-edged sword. This has led many vegetarians and vegans to opine
that the Beyond Burger is too similar to meat in its taste, texture, and appearance, but
this only makes it more popular with meat eaters.
"It's crazy because it really looks like real meat."
"It does. It totally looks like real meat."
While Beyond's biggest competitor, the Impossible Burger, uses a patented product called leghemoglobin
to give its burgers a meaty taste and bright pink color, the Beyond Burger looks to other
cosmetic solutions. By extracting the color from beets and pomegranate , Beyond is able
to create a dye to turn dull, grey-ish brown plant proteins into a more appetizing meat-like
pink. The company also uses other colors, including green and brown, for a more natural-looking
pink.
This type of food makeup might make some uneasy, but the reality is that a lot of foods on
the market today have been spruced up for the grocery store limelight. The reality is
that humans are visual creatures, which makes us easy to manipulate when it comes to food
purchasing and consumption. But are these color additives harmful? NYU Food Studies
professor Marion Nestle has written on her blog Food Politics about the issue of artificial
coloring in plant-based meats. She admits that while uncolored gray burgers would be
a hard sell, she's still not a fan of the fake colors, no matter how supposedly natural
they may be. As she put it,
"One of my personal food rules is never to eat anything artificial. These products are
off my dietary radar."
Overall, Beyond argues that its product is created with optimal health in mind, though
some critics believe that it's too processed, with too much salt, coloring, and artificial
ingredients. But it at least offers clear ecological benefits. Compared to actual meat,
the Beyond Burger is undoubtedly healthier for the planet, and it's pretty tasty as well.
"A new way of making beef, literally cutting out the bull."
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