That's the Impossible Burger. The process for making that is reasonably simple and scales well. Part of the trick is that they add heme, made via fermentation of genetically engineered yeast, to produce the "bloody" taste people want in meat. So the only part that requires a bioreactor is no more complicated than a small brewery. The other part of the trick is some clever extrusion technology to get a meat texture.
It's not bad as a burger. Go to a Burger King and get a beef Whopper and and an Impossible Whopper and compare. Even with no condiments they're pretty close.
Now if they can get the excessive salt content down...
> Now if they can get the excessive salt content down...
As I understand it, that's not a necessary part of the process, it's just what fast food places like Burger King do to all their meat. I don't see why something like ground Impossible Burger meat substitute that was sold in a grocery store would need to have the same salt content that the BK version does.
Eh, I hope the person you're responding to clarifies whether they meant the BK burger(s) or store options, but I wanted to chime in.
I was in the store just a day or so ago looking at alternative meats and I _also_ found the sodium content to be a bit high in some (though offhand, I can't remember if it's Impossible specifically). A frustrating aspect of some of these alternatives is that they overload on this stuff to get around taste differences - many of the coconut yogurts have more sugar than their dairy counterparts, for instance.
I generally prefer these options but it's frustrating that they have these caveats. Would be nice if we could learn from the mistakes made in the existing products.
For yogurt at least, the casein yeast will hopefully give rise to yogurt that is much closer to cowmilk yogurt. We’ll probably see a formulation that uses yeast-derived casein in the next 5 years.
It's not bad as a burger. Go to a Burger King and get a beef Whopper and and an Impossible Whopper and compare. Even with no condiments they're pretty close.
Now if they can get the excessive salt content down...