Stanford biochemist Patrick Brown's company, Impossible Foods, has created an environmentally friendly beef burger alternative at a fraction of the cost of previous substitutes. The burger patties are entirely meatless but look and taste like meat. The ingredient that makes these burgers possible is called 'heme'. This substance can be extracted from the proteing leghemoglobin found in leguminous plants. Leghemoglobin is similar to hemoglobin found in blood. So, heme is similar to to substances found in the meat of animals and it is what helps to create flavors like those found in actual meat. It took awhile to get the recipe perfected by adding various different plant ingredients. The current product looks like a hamburger but the texture is more like turkey than beef. The product only costs $20 to make which makes it much cheaper than test-tube burgers. The company hopes to develop the product further to make it more 'beefy' so that meat lovers won't be able to tell much of a difference from a real mean burger.
