Chef Mark Ferrante listens to Skyliners’ suggestions. The “Mr. Caplow Burger,” the new item on the lunch menu, came out of a discussion in the Dining Services Committee. Chef Mark was aware of this new product and had already included it in a vegetarian chili. He was receptive to my suggestion that the burger be included in the menu and I’m hopeful that Skyliners will flock to this wonderful alternative to real meat. In addition we can spread the word on a way to save the planet from greenhouse gas methane released by cows.
The Caplow Burger is made by the Impossible Foods Corp. The meat substitute is sold for $12.00/pound and is available at Whole Foods on Roosevelt Ave; it’s not available at the store on Madison and Broadway. At the upscale café at the Chihuly Garden and Glass at the Pacific Center the burger goes for $22.00. Some White Castles sell a mini-Impossible burger.
The real name for the “Mr. Caplow Burger” is the IMPOSSIBLE BURGER. It came from research on determining the origin of the unique flavor of cooked beef. Of course it was a caveperson who discovered that meat taste is enhanced by cooking, but it took decades of research by food scientists to confirm that this results from the heat-destruction of meat’s blood hemoglobin. From this discovery, Silicon Valley researchers, bankrolled by Bill Gates, figured out how to create a vegetarian burger that tastes like meat. The hard part, finding a vegetarian source for hemoglobin, came from longstanding knowledge that legumes contain trace amounts of this oxygen-carrying molecule. Despite the fact that soybeans, lentils, peas and lentils don’t look like meat, they contain a trace amount of hemoglobin. Bacterial living within the roots of legumes have the remarkable ability to convert nitrogen in the air to ammonia, which provides fertilizer to the accompanying plant. The role of hemoglobin here is not to circulate within the plant, but to act as a sponge to bind up oxygen that would otherwise poison the nitrogen fixation machine. Using sophisticated molecular biology the gene for legume hemoglobin was moved into yeast which could be coaxed into producing massive amounts of this protein. The hemoglobin is combined with pea and potato proteins to make the burger. This not a “Frankenfood”; it contains real foods combined in a new way. Careful immunological studies have confirmed that there are no allergens in the product.
Impossible Foods is promising an Impossible Steak in the near future. Until then, I urge you to try the Mr. Caplow Burger to explore the tastes of the future.