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From Impossible Burgers to Fake Steak · What's Your Problem?

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. Let's talk about meat. It's delicious, very satisfying to
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: cook and to eat, smells incredible on the grill. But
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: at this moment in history, billions of human beings eating
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: all that delicious meat has become something of a problem.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Raising livestock and growing food for them to eat takes
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: up a huge amount of the earth, an area the
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: size of the Americas, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: in all, and the animals themselves make climate change worse.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Cows methane, you know that story. These facts, though, are
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: not going to be enough to change the way billions
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: of people eat. Meat. Just taste too good, Our relationship
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: with it is too deep. But what if we could
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: nudge people not with facts or guilt trips, but with
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: something delicious. I'm Jacob Goldstein. This is what's your problem.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Pat Brown, the founder of Impossible Foods.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Pat's problem is this, how can you make meat without animals?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Pat founded Impossible Foods in twenty eleven. Since then, the
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: company has received roughly two billion dollars in investment. Burger
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: King now sells the Impossible Whopper. You can buy Impossible
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Burger patties and chicken like nuggets at the grocery store.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: But Pat doesn't come from a business background, or even
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: really a food background. He got an m d and
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: a PhD and worked for decades as a professor of
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: biochemistry at Stanford. I had my dream job. I had
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: awesome colleagues, awesome students, a great intellectual environment, all the
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: funding I needed. I had no intention of leaving it.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And my research was into something completely related food, so biomedical,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: very basic biomedical research. Essentially, I had zero interests in
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the business world. And about ten years ago I had
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: a little extra time, and I challenged myself to find
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the most important problem in the world that I might
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: be able to contribute to solving. And so step one
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: was figuring out what is that problem? And it was
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: pretty apparent to me at the time that the two
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: most urgent threats the future of humanity were number one,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: ob used to pretty much everyone, global heating by anthropogenic
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: greenhouse gasses and climate change climate change, and less well
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: known but actually probably more important and more urgent threat
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: is the precipitous, ongoing collapse of global biodiversity. That was
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: what I was going to take on. And then the
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: second step was figuring out, oh, it's a lot. That's
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: a lot. You're going to take out the two biggest
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: problems of the world. Okay, keep going, why not? Why not? Fair?
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: So then the second step was to figure out what
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: would be a path to a solution, and that started
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: with recognizing that the fastest, surest solution to both problems
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: is to eliminate the user of animals to produce food.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I think I know the answer, but just briefly, why
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: is raising animals to eat really bad for both climate
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: change and biodiversity? For climate change, obviously it's an ongoing
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: source of greenhouse gases, but more importantly is the opportunity cost.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: So cows burp up a lot of methane. That's really bad.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: And you're saying the second thing is if we weren't
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: using all this land to raise cattle, we could grow
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: new plants. I mean, is that the other piece of it?
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, the two greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: the biggest source of which is livestock, biggest anthropogetic source
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: of livestock. And then the land footprint of animal agriculture
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: is more than eighty percent, probably about eighty five percent
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: of the entire land footprint of humanity. Okay, it occupies
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: about forty five percent of the ice free surface of Earth.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: All of that land used to hold a lot of
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: biomass in forests and prairies and savannahs and so forth.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: That was eliminated when they got transformed into annual crops
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: and pasture land. Okay, and the annual crops are largely
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: going to feed livestock, right, yes, yes, yes, so you
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: got the big problem. Now, you just got to decide
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: how are you going to solve the two biggest problems
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: facing humanity? Right? Well, the nice thing about was the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: solution was the same in both cases. It was to
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: eliminate the use of animals as a food technology. You're
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: not going to solve the problem by telling people what
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: to eat. You're not going to solve the problem by
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: asking governments to you know, make animal our culture illegal. Yeah.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: So the problem isn't that people love meat, it's that
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: we're using the wrong technology to produce That seems like
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the big insight, right like, that seems like a real
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: shift from what I've heard before. Right Like, people have
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: been arguing for decades longer in some cases, that it's
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: wrong to eat meat even before climate change was a
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: known issue. But the idea that you're going to change
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: people's behavior not by telling them that they're wrong to
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: be doing what they're doing or that it's bad, but
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: by giving them a better option. That seems like your
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: big insight. Well that was the critical thing that caused
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: me to leave my job and found impossible foods. Because
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: you're not going to get a grant for that, you're
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: not going to get university funding for that. But fortunately
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: you can get investment because there's a big investment proposition.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: If you can develop better technology to replace animals in
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the food system by producing products that consumers value more, okay,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: you can capture a market that today is worth two
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: trillion dollars globally. And the thing about it is that
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of people think, oh, that's such a big
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: how could you possibly do that, Like it's such a
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: part of the world. You know, animals, livestock, and you know,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: you could have said that about horses one hundred years ago,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: and the horse was much more a part of the
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: family than a cow. You know, essentially every every household
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: had had a horse. But in less than two decades,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: basically it went down to essentially zero, and the horses
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: were a hobby and not a motive transportation. So better technology,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: if it does a better job of delivering what consumers value,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: can sweepingly replace an old technology very fast, much faster
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: than people ever expect. Okay, so that's that's like the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: big picture behind the company. I want to talk in
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: a little more detail. In particular, I want to talk
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: about this molecule called hem hem as in hemoglobin, like
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: what we have in our blood. It's also in a
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: protein called soy leg hemoglobin. And I guess that protein,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: if I understand right, is a key reason your burgers
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: are way more meady than the like old school veggie
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: burgers that I grew up with. So tell me about
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: hem and soy leg hemoglobin. I would say it was
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: the first thing that we really put a lot of
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: effort into because we didn't know, nor did anyone, why
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: doesn't beat taste like meat and unlike anything from the
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: plant world. So we had to figure that one out.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: And one of the striking characteristics of meat in general
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: is that it behaves like an active chemical system. It
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: starts out with one flavor profile, which is relatively not
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: very strong, mostly bloody kind of and when you cook
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: it in a matter of minutes, it completely transforms and
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: in the process it produces this explosion of aromas that
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: weren't there at the beginning. Okay, that's why a barbecue
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: smells so good, right exactly. And you will notice that
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: you don't you don't get any similar behavior if you
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: barbecue broccoli, okay. And so meat has this distinct behavior
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: word behaves like a really kind of explosive chemical system.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: And because meat, unlike plants, like hundreds of thousand times
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: higher levels of heam and HEAM is one of the
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: best biological catalys is known. So how do we get
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: to soil like hemoglobin? So we needed a plant source
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: of heme at scale. This this is known in botany
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: that legums, that plants that fix nitrogen. They take atmospheric
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: nitrogen and turn it into a monitarne into fertilizer. They
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: have the structure called a root nodule that does that
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: little trick. And the root nodule contains very high concentrations
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: of a hem protein called leg hemoglobin. Okay, okay, And
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: leg hemoglobin presumably is like it's like hemoglobin like in animals,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: but from a legum. Is that what leg hemoglobin means exactly.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: You figured it out. It's actually structurally extremely similar, like
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: you would pick it out in a lineup as being
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: identical to myoglobin, which is the hem protein and muscle tissue.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: So if you're looking to make meat from plants, that
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: is a very promising protein. Is a correctical to protein.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: By the way, sorry remedial questions. So like hemoglobin is
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: a protein, I celic that the amount of leg hemoglobin
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: in the roots of the US soybean crop would be
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: enough to match all the hem and all the meat
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: consumed in the US. Okay, okay, good news. So it
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: seemed like, oh, bingo, that's how we'll do it. Well,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: we'll just harvest the root nodules from soybean something that
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: nobody was bothering to harvest. That's amazing. They're growing it anyways,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: and they're just getting rid of it right perfect. So,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: for the first year or so, our primary effort was
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: figuring out how to go a scale source of a
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: hem protein okay, and in particular soyle hemoglobin, in particular
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: soilake hemoglobin, because it was the only plant source of
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: a hem protein that was a sufficient scale anyway, So
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: we spent a lot of time in fields of soybeans
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: figuring out how to harvest the root nodules. There are
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: some ludicrous videos of the contraptions we built for that.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Give me an example, you say ludicrous video and contraption.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: One of the first things we did was we went
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: to a soybean farm that was owned by the cousin
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: of our chief businessperson in Minnesota and harvested a couple
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: of acres of soybeans, dug them up with a potato digger,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: and then we had to figure out how to separate
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: these nodules, which are like two millimeters in diameter attached
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: to these fragile threads of roots, and they're buried in dirt,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: so we could isolate it while we built a contraption
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: out of sheets of plywood and then the bottoms of
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Janitor brooms, you know those rectangular rooms. And then we've
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: brought along a street sweeper that has this big spinning
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: room so that that broom would cross with the Janter brooms.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: And then I was doing a lot of this shoving
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: these soybean roots under this wheat streeper so that the
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: spinning thing could rip the nodules off from the rest
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: of the plant. Did it work? Did it work? It worked? Okay,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: But here's the problem. Okay, when we looked at the
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: entirety of it, after six months or more of trying
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: this approach, we realized that the cost and complexity of
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: getting rid of the dirt and all the other crap
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: from the root nodules made it. Basically the economics didn't
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: look like they were going to scale. So, but meanwhile
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: we got enough of the soil people who are willing
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: to prove that this is the magic ingredient for meat flavors.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Then the question was, Okay, we need another way to
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: get this to scale. So we knew just from the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: economics of producing proteins by fermentation and so forth, that
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: that was potentially doable. Producing proteins by fermentation, that's a
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: whole other thing that doesn't actually involve soybeans or dirt
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: or anything. Right. Yeah, So this has done a lot.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: You know, most of the enzymes that are in your detergents,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: A lot of the enzymes they're using breadmaking and stuff
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: like that are produced by microorganisms that have been engineered
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: with the genes that encode those those proteins and so forth.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: This has been going on for decades, so that technology
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: is reasonably mature in its own right, and so we
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: could project the economics of it and seem like this
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: would be scalable and doable and so forth. So just
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: to be clear, you decide that instead of trying to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: get soileg hemoglobin out of the roots of soybeans, you're
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: going to take the gene that produces soi leg hemoglobin,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: put it into yeast and grow the soileg hemoglobin in
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: a vat. You're going to cut out the soybean middleman. Yes, exactly, exactly, Okay,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: I mean it comes to mind, like why not just
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: do the one that's in a cow? Right? It is
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: that a dumb question? No, it's not at all dumb question,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: and it's actually one of the ones that we looked
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: at was bovi and myoglobin, which is the one that's
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: in a cow. But we also looked at similar heame
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: proteins from everything from paramecium to barley and the end
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: we looked at three dollsand different heame proteins, and just
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: by random chance, the best performing one was soilo hemoglobin.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Best performing meaning it just made the tastiest burger, stayed
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: fresh the longest, was the best behaved in terms of
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: expressing in yeast, in terms of being able to be
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: isolated efficiently, in terms of not turning brown, sound up,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: putting the planting then code soil hemoglobin into yeast, do
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: you know? And so they were able to produce it
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: in a minute. Impossible burgers are still way more expensive
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: than beef burgers. What's it going to take for the
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: price to come down? Also, when will I be able
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: to order an impossible steak? That's the end of the ads.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Now we're going back to the show. Let's talk briefly
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: about oh, health and safety. I like that you're not
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: trying to make like a super healthy burger, right. I
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: like that you're trying to make a burger that's like
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: a burger, and a burger is not that healthy? Right?
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: First of all, is that a fair way to think
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: about it? Like you're not trying to make health food,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: You're trying to make something that is delicious, like meat
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: is delicious, but without an animal. It's almost fair. But
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I want to do better than almost sure. I want
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: to get to face. We want to make something that
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: delivers what meat consumers want, which is above all, a
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: delicious eating experience, and we can't compromise on that, but
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: we have the opportunity to make it healthier than the
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: cow version, Okay. And one of our core principles has
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: always been We're never going to sell a product that
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: we don't believe, based on the evidence, is healthier than
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: what it replaces. Not healthier than a salad, but healthier
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: than a burger made from a cow, or a chicken
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: nugget made from a chicken, or whatever product it's intended
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: to replace. So we are very conscientious about health and nutrition,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: but within the context of a product that consumers actually
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: want to buy in place of specific animal products. Right.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Your target customer is not a vegetarian, right, It's a
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: person who eats burgers, and you want that person to
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: buy an impossible foods burger because they like it better,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: not because they feel bad about cows or climate change
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: or whatever. Right, Yeah, exactly. You know. The problem that
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to solve is that this industry is supported
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: by people who love meat, Okay, and for us to
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: compete them out of existence, we have to give them
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: exactly what they want and do it better than the animal,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: and we're not interested in serving vegetarians. Perfectly, I love
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: vegetarians and vegans as much as the next guy. Okay,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: I'm vegan, my wife is vegan, no offense, but we
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: don't accomplish anything by making better meat for vegans. One
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: other thing on health and safety is, well, just that
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: what you're doing is novel. Right. I'm interested in it
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: because you are out on the technological frontier trying to
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: solve what is clearly a very large problem. At the
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: same time, you know, it seems to me there's a
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: kind of common sense in eating things that people have
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: eaten for a long time and being cautious about new
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: kinds of foods, not new mixtures of old foods, but
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: actually new kinds of foods. And I think of, say, margarine, right,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: which was introduced as a healthier alternative to butter and proved.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say at this point to
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: be less healthy than butter. Help me not worry. Convince
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: me that impossible burgers are not margarine. So if you
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: look at our product, okay, there's nothing at them like
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: your level that isn't an abundant part of the human diet. Humans,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: for example, consume thousands of different heam proteins every single
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: day in their normal diet, because every plant has hundreds
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: of hem proteins, all the meats have their own different
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: heam proteins, and so forth. The other ingredients in our
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: product are all things that have been part of the
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: human diet for decades, if not centuries, okay, and most
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: of them have been really really well studied in terms
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: of their nutrition and health properties. When will an impossible
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: burger be cheaper than a beef burger, Well, the definite
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: answer is eventually, because producing it requires one twenty fifth
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the land, at tenth the water, less than a tenth
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the fertilizer, and agrochemicals, less farm labor growing plants, no
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: farm labor, imagine the animals, and our production process is
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: much more labor efficient, and yet it's more expensive now
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: in spite of all that. But the point is, the
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: fundamental economics of the technology are vastly, vastly better. Again,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: all the inputs, all the costly inputs of agriculture are
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: much much less, like not just a little less. But
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: the difference is that the incumbent industry already has all
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: its infrastructure in a place doesn't have to introduce a
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: new project product that consumers can't imagine and haven't heard of. Yeah,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: and we are building all our everything about our business
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: from scratch, which means we have to be investing in
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: that continually making investments. And we're not nearly at their scale,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: but as emtotically at scale. It's no contest. So look,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: I'm a fan of impossible burghers. I grilled them for
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: my family last night. True story. The impossible Whopper is
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: our go to road trip food. I'm not a vegetarian,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: but some people in my family are, and I'm happy
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: to not eat beef. So what's next? And in particular,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: I would love for you to tell me the story
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: of something you haven't cracked yet, whether it's steak or
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: chicken breast. I mean, those things seem way harder than
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: ground meat. Is there something some problem you haven't solved
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: yet that you can just tell me about sort of
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: how you're trying to do it? What hasn't worked when
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: we started out, Okay, we took on a problem that
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: we didn't know how to solve. Right. We believed it
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: was solvable based on not fantasy but understanding the biochemistry.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: But we didn't know how. We had to figure it out,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: and every new product, if it's not already on the market,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: we're still figuring it out. And we have very high standards.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: So we've had a lot of products that you know what,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: have been successful in the market well before we launch them.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: But we want to launch products only if we believe
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: they can successfully compete against the best animal products on
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: the market. So we're working on hull cuts like you
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: could say steak and chicken breast, and that seems so
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: much harder, is it? It's harder in a different way.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Do you have to kind of start from square one? No,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: we don't have to start again because because first of all,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: we've already figured out the fundamentals of the flavor chemistry.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: So the different thing about hull cuts they have the
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: same kind of components, but they have anatomy okay, and
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: they have a different texture and cooking behavior you know
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: related to that. Yeah, but we understand and it pretty well.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: We're making great progress. Let's just say, um, but I
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: don't want to say anything more anyway. The point is, yes,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: it's a harder problem. It's not I would say a
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: step function harder. It's just it's just got additional sort
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: of technical engineering challenges that we have to figure out.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't be saying it if I wasn't highly confident
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: that we're going to have something to launch the world
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: within the next, say, couple of years. What are you
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: going to launch? And by when more or less, we
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: certainly expect to be launching a great steak product and
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: other hole cuts you can think of as like pork
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: tenderloin or chicken breast or like great pieces of meat
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: years pieces of meat that have that have the anatomy,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: if you know what I mean. Yeah, Yeah, within a
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: couple of years, meaning like twenty twenty four ish. You know,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna make promises here, but
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: I would say pretty high confidence. Yes, Impossible Foods has
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: made a profoundly better veggie burger, but the company still
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: has a ways to go to solve that big problem
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: slash dream of really making meat without animals, which is
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: an absurdly big, hard problem that lots of companies are
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: working on. We'll have more about that next week, including
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: both some of the struggles the industry has been going
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: through lately and also more on what may be coming
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: in the next few years. But before we go to day,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: we'll do the lightning round. That's in a minute. Okay,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: let's get back to the show. We're gonna close with
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: the lightning round. What's the most overrated vegetable? That's interesting?
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: I think the sweet potnia. I'm gonna get some haymail
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: on that one. But sweet potato, Heymail's good, Hey mail.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: What's the most underrated vegetable? That's really tough fun. Oh
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: maybe Brussels spread. Okay, they've made a comeback. It's a
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: divisive one. They've made a comeback. Yeah, they're hip, They're
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: it vegetable. I'm a fan. If everything goes well, what's
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: a problem you'll be trying to solve in say, five years. Oh, actually,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: that's a very good question. So and impossible foods. What
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: we're doing is using market competition to reduce the economic
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: incentive for covering land with cows and crops to feed
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: pigs and chickens and stuff like that. Right. The next step, though,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: is what to do with that land and how to
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: make the most of the opportunity. Okay, here's another question.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: There are other companies trying to do what you do.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Beyond meat is a big one. There's lots of others.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: You are clearly driven by mission, right, I believe that
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: you are not in this to get rich or whatever.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: So does it matter to you whether Impossible Food winds
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: or some other company makes incredible technology that makes meat obsolete? Like,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: does that matter to who wins? Not? Really? No, I
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: mean it matters to me a little bit. Now that
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: I have the company. There are people who you know,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: depend on it for their jobs. But basically, even the
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: from the standpoint of our business, the best thing that
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: could happen with other companies is for them to make
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: better products. Okay, because the biggest obstacle to you know,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: our growth and traction and so forth is there's a
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: very strong preconceived notion that any purported meat product that's
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: made from plants is going to suck and making more
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: products that reinforce that notion only hurts us. So I
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: would love to see any any plant based company, any
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: company that's trying to replace animals in the food system,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: however they're doing it as far as I'm concerned as
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: an ally, and I sincerely wish them the best success.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Pat Brown is the founder of Impossible Foods. He's currently
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: on leave from the company, scheduled to return in March.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: I spoke with m last year. Next week, we'll have
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: more on the future of fake meat, including a company
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: trying to grow meat from animal cells. Which do you
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: even call it fake meat anymore? If it's made from
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: animal cells? Truly, I don't know. Today's show was produced
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: by Edith Russolo, edited by Robert Smith and Sarah Knicks,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: and engineered by Amanda k Wong. I'm Jacob Goldstein. You
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter I'm at Jacob Goldstein, or
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: you can email us at problem at pushkin dot fm.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: We'll be back next week with another episode of What's
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Your Problem.