tl;dr for those who haven't tried the meatless meat -
There are two main competitors in the nuMeat market, Beyond and Impossible.
Beyond is pea protein, and it is not quite meat, but it has a nice, solid chewy mouthfeel. Downside is there is virtually no taste - its not unpleasant-bland, as there's fats and proteins in there, but its very clearly not meat.
Impossible does not taste like beef, but it has a meaty taste. There are two versions of Impossible - 1.0 used wheat protien as its base, 2.0 uses soy. Impossible does not have a beef texture - the outside is ok, the inside is tofu-watery (made worse by the fact they use beet juic to make it 'bleed'). Burger king has solved this problem by making the Beyond Whopper as slim as their other burgers, so its just that same dry consistency through out, but this sacrifices flavor (we already know its from burger king so I know I'm repeating myself but).
Having done the "challenge", and with the caveat that I usually never order whoppers at BK, I liked the Beyond whopper slightly better than the normal whopper. Neither really tastes like beef, but the Beyond whopper has some sort of spice/flavoring in it so it has a better profile than your normal base-tier dry fast food burger. Put that same flavoring on the beef and I'd prefer the beef.
It has nothing on a Quarter Pounder or even the value-menu Wendy's burgers, let alone something like a Dave's Single or Five Guys or better.
Anyway,that was a long post to point out that it should be no surprise that John is pushing a lab-created fake that will only really fool people who haven't had the real thing in years (or ever).
