Best vegan chicken nuggets: A tasting menu of plant-based meat alternatives | ZDNet

Meat analogues or “plant-based” meats, such as the Impossible Burger and the Beyond Burger, have received wide media coverage over the past several years. As fast food chains have begun offering meat-free versions of their popular sandwiches, much of this content has been positive, such as my write-up about the Burger King Impossible Whopper for my local newspaper. 

When compared to their meat counterparts, however, the nutritional “healthiness” of these analogues has not been fully researched. It will require long-term study to determine if they can replace animal meat in a well-rounded diet due to their lack of overall amino acid “completeness,” concerns regarding additives and processing, and questions about their sustainability in terms of overall manufacturer impact on the environment.

Despite these unknowns, there is still significant interest in creating these foods for several reasons.

Why Fake Meat?

The first reason is the amount of energy and land required to produce animal protein versus plant protein. The energy inputs in an agricultural system are direct inputs of labor (human and animal), fuel (oil, gas, coal), electricity (which is grid-supplied), solar energy (to drive photosynthesis in the plants, and to potentially supply electricity), and indirect inputs of seeds, fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, machines, and water. 

Animal meat also requires more land to farm animals and produce viable proteins than plants.

When we eat plants, about 20% of the energy within that plant will be passed on to us to use as fuel or to rebuild body tissue. The same would be true if a livestock animal eats a plant. But if a human eats that livestock animal, energy loss occurs a second time. This time, the energy loss involved in the animals eating plants and the humans eating the animal are combined, significantly reducing efficiency to only 20% of the 20% of the energy.

The energy, other resource inputs, and total cost of production of plant-based proteins versus animal-based proteins will become a significant factor in the future, as our planet’s climate continues to change and specific resources become scarcer with our growing population. 

Additionally, as we consider the possibility of human colonization on the Moon and Mars, we need to factor in how those resources would need to be conserved to sustain populations. It’s likely, save for the use of other experimental technologies like cellular printing, that plant-based protein would need to be a significant part of a human diet in those environments.

But as with any new food technology, there’s the issue of user acceptance. And yes, some people already don’t eat animals or want them to be raised for food. But others are slower to give up animal meat.

That hasn’t stopped Impossible Meat. Building on their success with the Impossible Burger and their partnership with Burger King, the company has now launched Impossible Chicken Nuggets, a meat analogue that is supposed to be a dead-ringer for the fast food equivalent. 

For parents with hungry, picky kids of all ages — and for the future of human colonization on other planets — my wife and I decided to “take one for the team” to see how the new Impossible Chicken Nuggets hold up against rival products on the market. 

Test Rubric

In no way should this be viewed as an exhaustive comparison of everything that exists in this space; we bought the brands we could easily find at Walmart and Trader Joe’s.

All the nuggets were heated up in an Instant Vortex air fryer and consumed with various condiments, including honey mustard, Asian sweet chili sauce, and a commercially-available BBQ sauce. Although deep frying might have improved the overall taste (and is more likely to be how a restaurant would serve them), we chose not to deep fry because this is not a typical home cooking method, and these products were bought in retail.

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