A few days ago, Craig Benzine (known to his fans as Wheezy Waiter), released a new episode of his The Good Stuff series (above). As a fan of Benzine’s for years, I would have come across this video on my own. But because the episode was about a company called Beyond Meat that is endeavoring to make a plant-based hamburger patty to (eventually) take the place of beef patties, my inbox was flooded with people asking me what I thought of it.
My feelings were mixed, of course. On the one hand, the 2,500 gallons of water that it can take to produce just one pound of beef (through the entire process of beef production, from making a space for cow grazing to getting the patty on my plate) is troubling to me. On the other hand, I can’t imagine a life without hamburger beef. Over the many years that Benzine has shared his life on YouTube, fans have seen him eat a fair number of burgers. I had to know what he thought about the future of beef and hamburgers. Luckily for me, he was up for talking about it.
You said the plant-based burger tasted good, but not like a burger. Did it taste like a veggie burger? I don’t like veggie burgers very much, but this sounds more like a Coke Zero burger.
Craig Benzine: It was kind of like a veggie burger. They didn’t even claim that the burger was supposed to taste like actual meat. It was a superfood infused substance that tasted closer to a veggie burger. It was a little better and tougher than a veggie burger, but I don’t think it would replace a burger. They are working on a synthetic beef, but I wasn’t able to try that.
Let’s say hypothetically that synthetic beef tasted like a burger. As someone who enjoys a good burger, can you imagine ever subbing out the real thing for synthetic beef?
CB: If it tasted exactly the same I could. For me it’s more about the taste. It might be a while before they got to the point where they could make it taste exactly the same.
If The Good Stuff is about exposing things that are good to your audience, does your experience with Beyond Meat have you believing that meat is now the Bad Stuff?
CB: No, not meat by itself. I’m not a vegetarian and I still like eating meat. I think we could produce it better and there are a lot of people who do produce it better than where the majority of our meat comes from. But I don’t think that meat on its own is a bad thing.
A lot of people had questions about this video in the comments, about things like how wasteful is the food they’re making. It takes water to grow plants, it takes water to make any food. I just think in general that there’s a lot that we can improve upon.
Beyond the current playlist that is rolling out, which will feature episodes about bugs and farming, do you have any plans to do future food-related episodes?
CB: We don’t have any specific plans, but I’m sure we’ll revisit food again. We’ve talked about it in earlier videos too, but no specific plans right now. The bug video will be interesting. We went to a place in Chicago and they were delicious. Truly delicious. They actually raise crickets and feed them healthy vegetables, breeding them to be delicious.
It’s also a lot about how it’s prepared. The chicken at Beyond Meat genuinely tasted like chicken. They didn’t tell me to say anything, I just thought that it really tasted like chicken. But one of my producers just recently went out and bought Beyond Meat chicken, and I don’t know if it was the same thing that I tried in the video or not, but when I tried it it definitely did not taste as good as the stuff that they gave me. So I think with the plant-based meat it matters how it’s prepared.
My takeaway from the video was that if it takes up to 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef, it better be an amazing tasting pound of beef. What was your big takeaway from this experience?
CB: There has to be a better way. The way that we got to where we are with producing beef has a lot to do with political factors, with subsidies given to the industry. People say that Beyond Meat will cost more, but we already pay a lot in subsidies for corn and beef. If we bought locally, it would be more efficient. There just has to be a better way to produce food.
I thought The Good Stuff episode was really interesting, and only sort of made me feel terrible for what I do here on Burger Weekly.
CB: I don’t think you should feel bad. We’re not trying to say that meat is bad.
One day we’ll have to make a New York burger tour happen for you.
CB: Yes, I want to. I want to show people that I eat meat.
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