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The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Patrick Brown on plant-meat that bleeds and the science of flavor

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.511.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2016

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Not long ago, I had the chance to eat a burger from a company called Impossible Foods. The burger was delicious. It was juicy, savory, and bloody. Oh, and it was made from plants.Yes, they've created a veggie burger that bleeds. Patrick Brown is the CEO and Founder of Impossible Foods. His company is the Tesla of plant-based meat: they are trying to create a burger that carnivores will prefer to the thing cut from the side of the cow. And they've got some big backers in that effort: Brown has hundreds of millions of dollars from investors including Bill Gates and Google.I sat down with Brown, a biochemist, to talk about the science and business of Impossible Foods. Among other things, we discussed:- Why meat tastes like meat- How to find the flavor of blood in plants - The ways in which the company is mimicking Tesla's strategy for electric cars- The environmental impact of meat, and how plant-based burgers compare- What happens when you break down the individual flavors of your favorite foods- What it means for a food to be "natural"- Why the market for plant-based proteins hasn't developed many premium productsAnd much more. This episode is interesting even if you love your animal protein and will never, ever give it up: we're really talking here about the science of flavor, the business of food, and whether you can combine technology and marketing to change the most entrenched consumer behaviors of all.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:06.4

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0:22.6

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0:25.1

Design up for your trial today.

0:27.8

The following podcast contains explicit language.

0:36.4

So this is a fun episode of the Ezra Clanchilla.

0:38.9

I got to go this year to recode code conference, which is a big technology Silicon Valley

0:46.1

confab.

0:47.3

And there are a lot of fascinating people there, but one of the folks who turned out to be

0:50.5

a real rock star to the crowd and very specifically, given my interest to me, was a

0:56.0

guy named Patrick Brown, who was a biochemist at Stanford.

1:01.9

And has more recently been founded a company called Impossible Foods.

1:06.6

And he has made out of plants a burger that tastes like a burger that bleeds when you cook

1:15.5

it.

1:17.0

Really serious chefs like David Chang who's been on the show, have tried it and said it's

1:20.2

a future of food.

1:21.4

He has actually figured out how to make fake meat that is meat.

1:25.8

It's really extraordinary.

...

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