Burger King's Impossible Whopper: Vegansk kontrovers

Recently Burger King launched their new burger the Impossible Whopper, which was a new step in Burger King’s history. The new Impossible Whopper patty is made by the plant-based meat company Impossible Foods in a co-work with The Vegetarian Butcher founder Jaap Korteweg. Jaap Korteweg comes out of a meat loving farmers family for 9 generations. After the “Swine influenza” he decided to revolutionize his farming into plant-based “meat”. He has become the icon of plant-based meat and famous amongst vegans and vegetarians for his products.

Impossible Foods which produced the patty is well known for its mission to reduce meat production and vegans have a natural believe that any product associated with Impossible Foods will be 100% natural and vegan safe. Therefore, Burger King targeted their marketing mainly on the vegans by introducing the new meatless patty as “Veggie” and using the product name “Impossible”. Burger King most surely had the best intentions to bring this vegan alternative to their customers.

The Impossible Whopper launched back in August 6th, but just shortly after the new burger hit the restaurants, it has made many vegans upset about the new burger. The main problem is that the patty is flamed grilled on the same boiler as the rest of the meat patties. This means that the plant-based patty is able to get in contact with the meat from other burgers. To the vegan audience, which has an almost religious belief of not eating anything that comes from or has made contact with an animal, this is a very severe mishandling in the food preparation. It has made the headlines, of the Impossible Whopper not being a 100% vegan.