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Redefining the Definition of Meat
For the second year in a row I had the pleasure of talking with Pat Brown, CEO and founder of Impossible Foods (I.F.). Impossible Foods started roughly seven years ago and makes meat using plants. The principle ingredient that Impossible Foods uses to do what they do — “Heme.” In simple terms, “heme is what makes meat taste like meat.” Heme is found in both animals andplants and Impossible Foods is able to make as much of it as they want through a fermentation process using soy roots.
Prior to starting the company, Pat was a professor of biochemistry at Stanford University School of Medicine. Pat said he would only leave Stanford if he could work on a super challenging problem that he believed would make the world better. After analyzing several different societal problems, Pat decided to create a sustainable food that would be better for the environment and would no longer require slaughtering animals.
According to Impossible Foods, “animal farming occupies about half of all vegetated land (at the expense of forests and grasslands that store carbon), uses about one third of all freshwater, contributes about one seventh of global greenhouse gases and generates nutrient pollution (which creates enormous ‘dead zones’ in coastal ecosystems). In the US, beef provides just 3% of our calories but generates half of agricultural greenhouse gases and uses nearly half…
