Have you noticed the new advertisements by Burger King for their Impossible Whopper? And it’s not made from beef…it’s made from 100% plants! Yes, that’s right! BK has flipped their patty and gone “green”. But why?? What is the world coming to?
Well it’s true. And the reason might actually surprise you. You see, there’s a lot of people in the world that are trying to find solutions to reducing carbon emissions and addressing global warming.. And it turns out that one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions….after automobiles…is actually beef and dairy cattle. Their emissions dwarf all other types of animal emissions and represent about 10%-12% of ALL U.S. emissions. For reference, that’s about half of all emissions for all of the vehicles on the roads in the U.S.!! So if you’re trying to reduce carbon emissions, you MUST focus on one of the leading sources….
Why are cattle such high pollution makers? It’s because when they eat, they constantly burp as well and their burps produce methane (CH4). Methane is a bigger issue than carbon dioxide (CO2) as every molecule of methane is equivalent to 23 molecules of CO2 and nearly all methane in the air comes from cattle or petroleum by-products. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that meat consumption growth is outpacing the huge global population growth on the planet, so the trend for greenhouse gas production is growing as well.
Enter veggie burgers….bigger and better than the old ones. Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are two of the companies that are now selling plant-based burgers on a wide scale. Are their burgers any good? Well, apparently they are as recent taste testers have not been able to tell the difference between real beef burgers and the new plant-based burgers!
But is it worth it? What do we gain? Well, eating chicken vs beef burgers alone would reduce your personal greenhouse gas emissions by 10x ! And if everyone gave up meet and cheese for one day a week, it’s estimated that would be equivalent to taking 7.6 million cars off the road per year! Now that’s an impact.
So the next time you are in the mood for a burger, don’t be afraid to try an Impossible Whopper at Burger King; you might not notice the difference. And if you don’t, it won’t be long before society moves from “Where’s the Beef?" to a “Rant for Plant” in its burger culinary taste.
