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Plant-based Whopper and nuggets being developed by “Meat. The End” to be served to the public this week.
By Pesach Benson, United with Israel
Burger King Israel today began serving up vegan Whoppers and nuggets to the public created in partnership with Tel Aviv-based startup “Meat. The End.” The food is available at a pop-up Burger King branch in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square.
According to Burger King Israel, the meatless Whoppers and nuggets will become available by next month at nine other locations in Gush Dan, the greater Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Several of those branches are certified kosher.
Israel has one of the highest rates of vegetarianism and veganism in the world. An estimated 13 percent of Israel’s population is vegetarian, meaning they don’t eat meat, fowl, fish or the byproducts of animals killed for food. Around five percent of Israelis are vegans, who maintain a stricter diet — refraining from all animal byproducts such as dairy, eggs and honey.
Indeed, Tel Aviv has been regarded as the unofficial world’s vegan food capital for years.
MTE founder Dr. Yishai Mishor explained that the biggest obstacle to more widespread acceptance of plant-based meat products is the food’s texture.
Taste studies consistently find “100% of [meat-eating] tasters can tell 100% of the time whether [a product] is real meat or alternative meat, and the reason is mostly in texture,” Mishor said in an interview with the Big Idea Ventures podcast last year.
“It’s a very complicated process to take plant protein, which has its own shape and body, and turn this into something that resembles animal protein. This is not an obvious task at all,” he said.
Mishor explained that MTE uses a proprietary process to produce what he called a texturized protein ingredient, or TPI. The end result, he said, is a soy-based product that “looks a little bit like Corn Flakes…and that is the texturized soy protein, the chunks that make up the body of the burger.”
Not only does MTE produce the food, MTE plans to license its technology to other foodtech companies.
The Burger King Israel franchise is owned by the Delek Israel conglomerate. Delek’s vice president of Marketing, Trade and Business Development, Keren Kupermintz said in a statement that “the launch of the plant-based category at Burger King Israel is a strategic move since, in our opinion, a large audience is looking for meat-alternatives — not only vegans, but also those who reduce meat consumption, and this is a fascinating and developing trend on a global scale.”
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