Shaolin diet, vegetarianism and stuff

[GeneChing]

Not sure why this is so fascinating to Chinese press, but here's another little pictorial.

'Zen harvest' in Shaolin Temple
(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2016-06-16 10:00:26



Monks from the Shaolin Temple harvest wheat near the temple in Dengfeng city, Henan province, June 15, 2016.[Photo/Chinanews.com]



Monks carry bags of wheat from the farm near the temple, June 15, 2016. The farm spread over 5.3 hectares has become an abundant food source for the temple since it was established last year. The planting of wheat and corn by the monks is considered a part of Buddhist practice. [Photo/Chinanews.com]



Monks hoes the vegetable patch on the farm, June 15, 2016. Various plants, vegetables and fruit trees grow on the farm. [Photo/Chinanews.com]



Monks load bags of corn on to a truck. [Photo/Chinanews.com]



Monks pack wheat into bags. [Photo/Chinanews.com]



A monk hoes the vegetable patch on the farm, June 15, 2016. [Photo/Chinanews.com]



Monks from the Shaolin Temple harvest wheat near the temple in Dengfeng city, Henan province, June 15, 2016. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

[rett2]

Not sure why this is so fascinating to Chinese press, but here's another little pictorial

I believe those images feed into several relevant cultural narratives, for instance the Zen idea of “a day without work is a day without food”, as well as the Zen practice of meditating in work or finding contentment in simple tasks. Also it ties into the Chinese revolutionary idea of the morally cultivating value of agricultural labor. It probably also is a signal of more "authentic" practice, by contrast to urban monks or rich temple monks. Finally, Chinese parents sometimes put their spoiled or delinquent kids in Kung Fu schools to teach them to be better people. Such parents will be happy to see their kids living more spartan lives, like before the explosion of prosperity and loss of old-school values like bearing hardship stoically. Overall this can also pictorially contribute in several ways to the modern movement in China towards reviving traditional culture, a movement that rejects both mid 20th century socialism and the heartless capitalistic excess that is replacing it. Just some possibilities that seem applicable.

[Cataphract]

Yay, T500 has been reprogrammed again to save the world! This time by the Chinese.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...climate-change

[GeneChing]

[GeneChing]

The Ramen Rater - FTW!

Meet The Manufacturer: #2200: Mr. Lee’s Noodles Shaolin Monk Vegetables



I think I was talking about Kung Fu Theater and David Carradine’s career the other day. He played Grasshoppe – a pupil of the Shaolin on that show. Still bugs he; why didn’t they get, oh – I don’t know… A more fitting person to play a Chinese martial arts student? Maybe someone.. Chinese? Anyways, it’s veggie time – let’s get it on!



Detail of the side panels (click to enlarge). Looks to be meat free but check for yourself. to prepare, add boiling water to ridge line (just below lip of the cup) and stir. Cover for 3 minutes. stir and enjoy!



The noodle block.



Bits from the bottom of the cup.





Finished (click to enlarge). The noodles hydrated very well. As with the other varieties, they’re flat and medium breadth rice noodles. The broth is light with a slight sweetness to it. The real star of this one are the vegetables, of which there are a multitude. This probably has more real estate taken up by vegetables than any instant anything I’ve ever had – something I really liked with this one. Good show! 5.0 out of 5.0 stars. EAN bar code 0641243998725.

[GeneChing]

APRIL 25, 2018
The Buddhist Mock-Meats Paradox
BY: CATHY ERWAY ILLUSTRATRIONS: PING ZHU



Are we forgetting about centuries-old Buddhist tradition in the current meat-replacement zeitgeist?

Gazing down at the paper plate, I take a few moments to contemplate the meal in front of me. Is that a piece of wheat gluten masquerading as fried chicken, I wonder, poking at it with a chopstick? A speckled roll of yuba resembling steak? A ball of bean curd made bouncy like cuttlefish? Each year brings new discoveries, as I try to identify the animal of inspiration for each plant-based protein nugget doled out by nuns at the cafeteria. It’s sort of like trying to guess the fruit in a bag of Tropical Starburst.

I am at the Chuang Yen Monastery in New York’s Hudson Valley. Since my grandfather’s ashes were placed in an urn on the mountainside here 10 years ago, my family and I have paid visits, often for Qing Ming, a Chinese holiday of ancestral worship. The vegetarian meal served in the dining hall is a highlight—but if you’ve ever gone to any restaurant with the word “Buddha” in its name, then you’ve had this food, too: mock duck, mock char siu, mock chicken, and mock fish dishes galore. Elaborately prepared wheat gluten (sometimes called seitan), tofu, and other plant-based proteins are the building blocks for an inexhaustible variety of satisfying nonmeats that have been honed at Buddhist monasteries for centuries. The iterations never cease to delight me. Perhaps it’s because of my annual monastery visits that I’ve embraced them so richly. But I wonder, do other omnivores feel this way, too?

In East and Southeast Asia, Buddhist or “temple food” traditions have produced meat analogues since ancient times. They’re not really set in stone—save for a few classics, like “mock duck,” wheat gluten that’s been dimpled to resemble a plucked bird’s skin, which can be found in cans and even inspired the name of a famous turn-of-the-century New York City Chinatown gangster.

While mock meat has a place in some temple kitchens, much of the cooking consists of vegetables, rice, and plant-based proteins that have not been purposely twisted to resemble meats. This is especially true in Japan, where Buddhist law prohibited the consumption of four-legged animals throughout the empire for centuries, eventually doing away with the edict in the 19th century. Due to a lack of appetite for meat, Japanese people never tried to imitate it with other substances, says Akiko Katayama, a food consultant and host of the Japan Eats podcast. Similarly, in the heavily vegetarian country of India, you won’t find traditional mock meats for the same reason. “For many Indian vegetarians, I don’t think a meat substitute would even register since meat was never a reference point to begin with,” says Chitra Agrawal, the author of the vegetarian Indian cookbook Vibrant India.

However, in China, the origins of both tofu and wheat gluten are somewhat linked to their use as meat replacements. In Mandarin, mianjin, or wheat gluten, means literally “wheat meat” (George Ohsawa, the founder of the macrobiotic diet, coined the term “seitan” for the same food in 1961). And tofu, a food that dates back to prehistoric times in China, was popularly known as “small mutton” in the 10th century, according to records. Although they need not only to be enjoyed as meat analogs, they have been used as such for centuries. There is mention of seitan textured to emulate goose in the classic Chinese cookery book Recipes From the Sui Garden by the Qing Dynasty Chinese poet Yuan Mei. And the Ming Dynasty novel Journey to the West references wheat gluten several times, including a scene in which demons attempt to serve a monk a meal of human flesh and brains fried to resemble wheat gluten—that is, meat masquerading as mock meats.



Nowadays, you can find plenty of prepared mock meats from producers and restaurants that have spun off these Buddhist traditions. Chris Kim and Rebecca Lopez-Howes have been doing their part to cater them to modern sensibilities with their business, Monk’s Meats, a vegan “butcher shop” in Brooklyn. Kim says that he started tooling around with mock meats in high school, when he became a vegetarian and there weren’t many options for eating out. He and Lopez-Howes launched their business in 2012, when “everything was heritage pork, wrapped in bacon” in the restaurant scene. As a Korean-American, he had tried Buddhist meat analogs but wanted to make something that was more transparent. That meant spelling out what the food is—or what it isn’t. “I get why they call them ‘chickn,’ or ‘chicken’ with missing letters,” he says of the menu items at Buddhist East Asian restaurants. “It’s hard enough to be an Asian restaurant and sell people on food that they aren’t necessarily familiar with.”

The possibilities for mock meats are endless. You can use different types of flours for seitan, for instance, simmer it in endless types of stocks, flavor it with any seasonings, ferment it or not, and prepare it in any way in the world you’ve seen or have not seen before. It’s essentially a blank slate for inventive chefs and plucky home cooks.

“You can do a lot of things and mix it with things to get a slightly different texture, and I find by kneading the mixture in a certain way you can alter the texture slightly,” says Miyoko Schinner, the proprietor of a vegan creamery and the author of a number of vegan cookbooks, including The Homemade Vegan Pantry.

She says it’s all about creating a savory, umami flavor and a chewy, satisfying texture—that is the point of mock meats, not that they clearly resemble any animal.

“Why do people want to eat meat? They want it because of the texture and the flavor, not because it’s a dead animal.”

This attitude has taken on more urgency in recent years, as “Meatless Mondays” and “vegetable-forward” restaurant trends have dominated the popular food vernacular. For reasons of personal health and concern about global carbon emissions, which are much higher for red meats in particular, cookbooks and food personalities have been hailing the virtues of fresh vegetables. And venture capitalists are at war to create cunningly realistic plant-based meat replacements such as the Impossible Burger. Yet amidst this frenzy, there has been a noticable backlash against traditional meat substitutes, with vegan chefs such as Isa Chandra Moskowitz playing down tofu, tempeh, and seitan, and food writers like J. Kenji Lopez-Alt just saying no to faux.

Time-honored mock meats, like flavored wheat gluten and bean curd, seem overlooked—shoved into the same hapless space as processed substitutes like margarine or Egg Beaters. Or bemoaned, as the British politician Baroness Ruth Deech recently characterized, as “transgender vegetarianism.”

Maybe trying to gussy the stuff up as a piece of barbecued brisket or roast duck isn’t for everyone. But to enjoy seitan and tofu is to appreciate their versatility. That is their greatest strength. Think of them as character actors: Whether it’s a pitch-perfect impersonation of an iconic figure or a wholly new, weird character that they invented—that only they could have invented—their chameleonic efforts are impressive even if they’re not the most handsome, or delicious, as starring-role types.

So in that sense, aren’t we truly appreciating wheat gluten and soy protein for what they are when we play dress-up with them?

To be sure, soy and gluten both have suffered a scourge of negative press in recent years. But most of the theories—villainizing soy as estrogen-producing and gluten as indigestible—have been debunked as bad science. “People always want to know if the food I prepare has soy or gluten,” says Schinner. “But nobody asks, ‘What’s in that; does that have soy?’ when it comes to the Impossible Burger.”

Although they seem to share similar food principles, I can’t really see Alice Waters tooling around with wheat gluten the way Kim does. And although Schinner can perform alchemy with soy protein, I don’t see Wylie Dufresne attempting it. But why not? One would think that flavoring and manipulating wheat gluten would be as creatively fulfilling to a chef as sugar is to a pastry chef. Or, heck, chicken is to any cook.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Plus recipes!

I ask Schinner if there’s anything to like about the taste of wheat gluten that hasn’t been flavored with anything. “No, but I can guarantee that if you take some chicken and just boil it without any seasoning, it’s not going to taste good, either,” she counters.

Maybe we need to stop looking at these ancient ingredients as meat wannabes and just have fun with them on their own merits—as whatever. And that’s just what I did with them, over a whirlwind week of DIY my-way Buddhist cooking—kneading whole-wheat flour and water into a pliable mass and then rinsing it to extrude all the starches. This produced a stretchy, chewing-gum-like mass that I could surprisingly cut through cleanly and then brown on a pan with oil and ginger (for a dinner of fake beef with broccoli stir-fry over rice) and butter (for a fake Buffalo chicken nugget snack). I had picked up the technique behind basic seitan dough after meeting Kim years ago, when he was just starting Monk’s Meats, and had forgotten all about the pleasure of going straight home after our conversation and making seitan from scratch.

Perhaps the food philosophies of my time made me forget just how easy and fun it is to form wheat gluten into whatever I wanted it to be. And just how good and satisfying it was as a result.

“We just get set in our ways and we think this is what we like,” says Schinner, of the meat-eating diet. “But if that’s what you think, then you really haven’t explored.”


Stir-Fried Seitan and Broccoli With Garlic Sauce

3-4 servings
INGREDIENTS
3 cups whole wheat flour
1½ cups water
2 tablespoons neutral oil (such as vegetable)
1 large head of broccoli
3 garlic cloves, minced
Salt and pepper
1 tablespoon Chinese black bean garlic sauce
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 cup water
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1-2 scallions, chopped
Steamed rice, for serving
Stir-fried beef with broccoli is a comfort food of mine, and when you slice seitan in the way you would a slab of flank steak against the grain, this dish can look deceptively like it. You can stir in chili sauces all you want to make it spicy, or add other vegetables. I like include the stem of the broccoli along with the florets, cutting off their thick skins before slicing them into medallions.

In a large bowl, mix the flour with 1 1/2 cups of the water and mix until the mixture comes together to form a ball. Let sit for 5-10 minutes to allow the water to absorb. Turn the ball onto a surface dusted with more whole wheat flour and knead for 8-10 minutes, until the mixture is smooth, flouring the surface as needed. Let the dough sit for 30 minutes to allow the gluten to develop.
Place the dough in a large bowl and cover with water. Squeeze and rinse the dough under running water to remove the starches. Once the water runs clear and the dough no longer emits white starches when you squeeze it underwater (about 10 minutes), rinse thoroughly. This is now seitan.
Press the seitan into a flattened rectangular shape, like a piece of flank or skirt steak. Pat with towels to remove any water. Slice into thin slivers.
Cut the broccoli crown into evenly sized florets. If there is stem left, trim an inch or so off the base, then remove the thick skins, turning the stem a few times to cut it off all around. Slice the trimmed stem into discs about ¼” thick. Combine the black bean sauce, soy sauce, cornstarch, and 1 cup water in a bowl and stir well to combine.
Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large fry pan or wok over high heat. Once the oil is very hot (if a droplet of water sizzles when it hits it), add just enough seitan pieces so that they don’t overlap (you may need to work in batches). Season with a generous pinch of salt and pepper. Don’t stir for 30 seconds, then stir to release and flip the pieces over, being careful to separate any that are sticking together. Cook the seitan, stirring occasionally, until each side is lightly browned, about 2-3 minutes. Transfer to a bowl.
In the same pan or wok, add the remaining tablespoon of oil and once hot, add the broccoli florets. Season with a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 2 minutes, then stir the minced garlic (so as not to burn). Continue cooking for another minute or until the pieces are almost crisp-tender. Return the seitan to the pan and stir to combine. Make sure the heat is on high, and give the cornstarch mixture another stir before pouring it into the pan. Stir to combine, and continue stirring as the sauce bubbles and thickens. Taste for seasoning, adding soy sauce or salt and pepper as desired. You can also add a splash of water to thin out the sauce. Remove from heat and transfer to a serving bowl. Drizzle with the sesame oil and top with the chopped scallions for garnish. Serve immediately, with steamed rice.

Fried Seitan With Buffalo Sauce

4 servings
INGREDIENTS
3 cups whole wheat flour
1½ cups water
½ cup neutral oil (such as vegetable)
¼ cup butter
¼ cup Red Hot sauce, or a similar vinegar-based pepper sauce salt and pepper
Blue cheese dressing and celery and carrot sticks for serving (optional)
It’s a lot easier to fry some nuggets of seitan than chicken wings, and drenching them afterward in a classic Buffalo sauce transforms them into flavor bombs. Unlike with wings, you can decide what shape they are, so I made these small enough to get golden-brown on both sides in just a shallow pool of oil. And, of course, no bones.

In a large bowl, mix the flour with 1 1/2 cups of the water and mix until the mixture comes together to form a ball. Let sit for 5-10 minutes to allow the water to absorb. Turn the ball onto a surface dusted with more whole wheat flour and knead for 8-10 minutes, until the mixture is smooth, flouring the surface as needed. Let the dough sit for 30 minutes to allow the gluten to develop.
Place the dough in a large bowl and cover with water. Squeeze and rinse the dough under running water to remove the starches. Once the water runs clear and the dough no longer emits white starches when you squeeze it underwater (about 10 minutes), rinse thoroughly. This is now seitan.
Roll the seitan into an oblong shape and pat down with towels to dry. Slice into roughly 1/2” rounds, about the size of small chicken nuggets.
Heat the oil in a pan or wok over high heat. Once the oil is very hot (when a droplet of water sizzles in it), add a batch of seitan slivers so that each one has full contact with the oil in the pan. Do not overcrowd. Let brown for about 2 minutes on one side, then flip with tongs to brown the opposite sides, another 2 minutes. Remove with tongs and set aside, sprinkling with salt to finish. Continue with the remaining batches of the seitan slices, heating up more oil if necessary.
In a small saucepan, melt the butter and remove from heat. Toss the sauce with the fried seitan pieces in a large bowl and coat thoroughly. Serve immediately with the optional blue cheese dressing and celery and carrot sticks.

CATHY ERWAY
Cathy Erway is the author of the cookbook The Food of Taiwan and the memoir The Art of Eating In. She is the host of the Heritage Radio Network podcast Eat Your Words and the new podcast from Blue Apron and Gimlet Creative, Why We Eat What We Eat. She blogs at Not Eating Out in New York.

[GeneChing]

I've tried an impossible burger. It was pretty convincing, especially that raw bloody quality if you like your burgers rare (which I did). But they are too freakin expensive for me to enjoy.

The magic ingredient in Silicon Valley's favorite 'bleeding' veggie burger is under fire
Erin Brodwin
Jun. 8, 2018, 1:16 PM 66,093


The Impossible Burger. Impossible Foods

The Impossible Burger is a plant-based patty made by Silicon Valley startup Impossible Foods with backing from Bill Gates.
The burger is available across the US, most recently in White Castle burger chains.

Environmentalists and journalists are taking issue with the burger's safety because of a key ingredient called heme, which is made using GMOs.
But the scientific research suggests that the burger is perfectly safe.

Today's veggie burgers can be described with a handful of delicious-sounding adjectives, but "meaty" isn't one of them.

At least it wasn't — until Silicon Valley startup Impossible Foods began creating a meat-free burger that tastes disturbingly close to the real thing. The meat-like flavor can largely be attributed to an ingredient called heme — the magic spark that even allows the Impossible Burger to "bleed" like a real burger does.

But that magic spark may be poised to ignite a fire.

After opting to ask the Food and Drug Administration to review the burger's safety (something it was not required to do) in 2015, the company was taken aback by what it received: A long letter saying that the data they'd submitted wasn't sufficient to "establish the safety" of heme for human consumption. In response, Impossible Foods sent the agency more than 1,000 pages of additional research data to back up its claims that the burger was safe, and although the agency said it would respond in April, it recently extended that deadline to this June.


Melia Robinson/Business Insider

A handful of environmental activists have also taken issue with the burger.

But their issue with the burger isn't heme — it's the fact that the Impossible Burger is made using genetically engineered ingredients, or GMOs. Those concerns largely take the shape of the old and unsubstantiated claim that GMOs cause everything from autism to cancer, despite the scientific consensus that they are safe.

Still, several journalists at places like Grub Street, Bloomberg, and Food and Wine have glommed on to the recent controversy, saying they aren't sure the burgers are ready for prime-time.

But the science so far is clear on Impossible's product. Both heme and GMOs are safe to eat, according to researchers and several large, peer-reviewed studies.

"Heme has been consumed by humans and other animals for a long time with no issues," Robert Kranz, a professor of biology at Washington State University in St. Louis who's studied heme extensively, told Business Insider.

Heme, the essential nutrient you've never heard of


Melia Robinson/Business Insider

Heme is an essential nutrient in many proteins. It's also in just about every living thing on Earth.
In our bodies, heme can be found tucked inside of a molecule in our blood called hemoglobin. Heme helps ferry oxygen throughout the body, carries iron, and colors our blood red. For most of us, the majority of the heme we consume comes from animals.

But soy roots also contain heme — and that's where Impossible Foods gets theirs.

Still, soy roots only produce a tiny amount of heme, which initially presented Impossible Foods with a problem: They'd need to harvest roughly an acre's worth of soy plants just to get a kilogram of heme.

GMOs: The old villain that's hard to forget

Instead of wasting land and resources — something that would be antithetical to the company's mission to make a tasty meat alternative — Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown found a different solution.

But it involved GMOs, that old villain that everyone from environmentalists to conspiracy theorists love to hate, despite the scientific consensus that the ingredients are safe.

By tweaking the DNA of yeast in a process known as genetic engineering, Brown realized the company could turn the ingredient into tiny manufacturing hubs that would churn out heme. Admittedly, this wasn't an entirely novel solution: insulin, the compound that diabetics' life depends on to regulate blood sugar levels, is manufactured in much the same way, using GM yeast. Drugs, beer, and perfume are all frequently made this way, too. (Yes, all of these products are technically GMOs because of it.)

GMOs, heme, and a wave of sudden controversy


A Greenpeace activist displays signs symbolising genetically modified maize crops during a protest in front of the European Union headquarters in Brussels Nov. 24, 2008. Reuters/Thierry Roge

Once several activists began linking the GMOs and the heme in Impossible Foods burger to potential safety issues (none of which have yet been substantiated), the controversy grew.

In an article published in Food and Wine magazine in March, the author wrote that "excessive" heme consumption had been linked to colon and prostate cancer, citing a 2012 blog post in the New York Times.

But again, the science here is clear: no such link between heme and cancer exists.

That problem is that there is a plethora of studies linking red meat and cancer. Red meat also happens to be where most Americans get the majority of the heme they ingest. According to the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Health Organization, there is a strong link between red meat, especially processed meat, and cancer. The type of cancer with the strongest link is colorectal cancer, a variety of the disease that begins in the colon or rectum.

But no such link appears to exist for heme alone and cancer — potentially because the amount of heme you'd have to consume to reach "excessive" levels would be prohibitively high.

"Considering how much heme we are eating in red meat, I do not see any health issues arising" from putting it in a vegetarian burger, Nicolai Lehnert, a professor of chemistry and biophysics at the University of Michigan, told Business Insider.

Studies that have attempted to isolate heme and study its link to cancer separate from red meat have also come up empty-handed, either finding no link or finding a negative one.

ADVERTISEMENT

In a 2012 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that involved a sample of nearly 90,000 men and women, researchers found no tie between heme iron intake and colorectal cancer.

"Our results ... suggest that zinc and heme iron intakes are not associated with colorectal cancer," the researchers wrote.

Iqbal Hamza, a professor of cell biology and genetics at the University of Maryland who runs a lab dedicated to the study of heme and is working on a heme-based supplement for iron-deficient people in developing countries, similarly concluded that the ingredient was safe for human consumption.

"I would have no qualms about getting heme from the Impossible Foods burger and I would have no qualms about getting heme from a plant based source," Hamza told Business Insider.

A 2011 study published in the journal Cancer Causes and Control also examined a large group of people in an attempt to suss out links between heme and cancer. They found none. In fact, they found a slightly negative relationship between the two things, meaning that people who consumed more heme were actually less likely to develop cancer.

"It's not a lack of evidence [linking heme to cancer]. There's evidence. And the evidence is for safety," David Lipman, Impossible Foods' chief science officer, told Business Insider.

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Vegetarian
Shaolin diet, vegetarianism and stuff

[David Jamieson]

The harvesters need guardians to walk around, shake their ring staffs and scare away the insects so that no monk may accidentally take a life.

[GeneChing]

Shaolin harvest
Source:IC Published: 2018/6/21 20:23:40


A student at Shaolin Temple harvests wheat as a form of Zen practice at a temple plot on Songshan Mountain in Dengfeng , Central China's Henan Province on Thursday. Photo: IC

There are more photos here: Shaolin monks harvest wheat (1/9) but it was too much work to copy & paste them in our forum.

I'm going to split this thread from the Shaolin diet, vegetarianism and stuff thread into its own Shaolin Farming Harvest thread.

[GeneChing]

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Wu Forever!
Shaolin diet, vegetarianism and stuff

[GeneChing]

THREADS
Wu Forever!
Shaolin diet, vegetarianism and stuff

[GeneChing]

I should try this. I've had Impossible Burgers before but it's been years since I've had a whopper. I actually gave up BK a few years before I gave up eating beef because it started giving me the runs after. Like immediately after. Like dash to the bathroom immediately. After a few episodes, I stopped eating there (but I was still eating beef at other fast food places).

Burger King is rolling out meatless Impossible Whoppers nationwide
Plant-based patties are coming to a BK near you
By Dami Lee@dami_lee Apr 29, 2019, 12:39pm EDT


Photo Illustration by Michael Thomas/Getty Images

Burger King is rolling out the Impossible Whopper nationwide, after a successful trial run testing the meatless burger in St. Louis. The chain announced in a statement today that it plans to test in more markets before distributing the burger nationally by the end of this year.

The Impossible Whopper is made with startup Impossible Foods’ plant-based patties, which are designed to look and taste like meat. The patties are also designed to “bleed,” just like the real thing, which can be attributed to the use of heme, a soy-based compound found in plants and meat. The burgers have 15 percent less fat and 90 percent less cholesterol than regular Whoppers, and Burger King’s taste test experiments claim that customers and employees can’t tell the difference.

Meatless options are gaining popularity at more fast food restaurants. White Castle offers Impossible Burgers, which uses another meat-free patty recipe from Impossible Foods, and Carl’s Jr. sells a veggie burger made by Beyond Meat, a competitor to Impossible Foods.

THREADS
Shaolin diet, vegetarianism and stuff
Fast Food Nastiness

[Shaolin Wookie]

Vegetarians are like eunuchs in a harem.

They lop off the one thing that gives them satisfaction and spend the rest of their life in pursuit of the very thing they have denied themselves.

Eat a burger, soy boys.

[GeneChing]

Brooklyn Burger King Delivered Beef Whoppers to Customers Expecting ‘Impossible’
One vegetarian ate two before realizing he wasn’t eating the popular fake meat, which won’t hit NYC outposts until later this year
by Eater Staff Jun 6, 2019, 8:47am EDT


The Impossible Whopper Impossible Foods [Official]

A Brooklyn location of the fast food chain Burger King has been advertising that it sells the meat-free Impossible Whopper on Seamless — but instead sends customers regular old beef Whoppers without telling them. At least one vegetarian customer didn’t realize until after he’d already eaten two Whoppers, simply believing the ads boasting the two burgers taste the same.

For at least the last few weeks, the 736 Broadway franchise of the burger chain featured the Impossible Whopper — “100% WHOPPER, 0% Beef” — on its menu, at one point listing it as its most popular item. But serving the burger here is actually impossible, since it’s only available in select cities. A 35-year-old Williamsburg resident, who asked to go unnamed to shield his eating habits, says he only found out when he went into the actual store at a later point to order the burger and was told they don’t sell it.

“I was incredulous,” he says. “It’s maybe 20 percent poisoning. This is a city where there are a lot of reasons why people don’t eat [meat], from religion to health to ethics.”

A manager at the Burger King tells Eater that when a customer orders it, they’ve been sending a classic beef Whopper in its place, asking the driver to inform people of the swap. But drivers have not told multiple customers who ordered the Impossible Whopper that it actually contained real meat, the customers tell Eater. The receipt on the bag also says “Impossible Whopper,” which led the Williamsburg man to believe it truly did contain the trendy plant product.


The Burger King’s Seamless page advertising the Impossible Whopper

The restaurant’s Seamless page removed the Impossible Whopper some time on Tuesday afternoon, after Eater sent an inquiry to Burger King corporate and to Grubhub, the Seamless parent company. A Burger King spokesperson chalked it up to a “technology error” from a franchisee.

Other NYC locations of Burger King on Seamless did not list the Impossible Whopper; Burger King, Grubhub, and the franchise would not clarify how only one location had the error.

“We apologize for any confusion this has caused. Any guests who ordered an Impossible Whopper through delivery in the New York area and have any questions may call 1-866-394-2493,” the Burger King statement says.

It’s not known how many people ordered the Impossible Whopper; Burger King did not say. The item — which was listed at the top of the restaurant’s page — had been up since at least May 20.

The Williamsburg customer had eaten Impossible product before at a different restaurant and thought it tasted “80 percent” like a true beef burger; when he tried the Whoppers, he thought the same thing.

“Nope,” he says. “The Whopper is just ****tier than I remember.”

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Shaolin diet, vegetarianism and stuff