In what might be the biggest marketing blitz ever for a vegan food product (well almost, but we'll get to that later), Burger King has just launched the Impossible Whopper nationwide. Let's take a look at what the Impossible Whopper is and whether you should choose it over the regular beef Whopper.
The Impossible Whopper is the same Whopper Burger King has been serving for years with one huge difference: instead of a beef burger patty, the Impossible Whopper uses a plant based burger made by Impossible Foods. The Impossible Whopper patty is primarily made up of water, soy, vegetable oils and nutrient additives. The goal of Impossible Foods is to create a plant-based burger that has the look, taste and texture of a regular beef hamburger patty, and they've done a pretty darn good job of it. We tasted the Impossible Whopper and it definitely could have passed for beef.
The Impossible Whopper is sort of, kind of vegan. The Impossible burger patty is in fact a vegan product. However Burger King is preparing Impossible Whoppers on the same grill as their beef and chicken, so there is likely going to be some non-vegan contamination on your Impossible Whopper.
That means it probably isn't a good choice for hardcore, strict vegans. But for the vegan lite crowd (you know, the "I'm usually vegan, unless I'm on vacation or at a place that has REALLY good carnitas" type), the Impossible Whopper is a pretty solid vegan-ish option. You'll just want to remember to ask them to omit the mayonnaise, which comes on Whoppers by default.
If you're not a vegan, you might be hoping that the Impossible Whopper is a healthier alternative to the beef Whopper. Could it possible be a guilt-free, delicious burger? Is it all of the taste, with none of the inches on your waist? Not really. The Impossible Whopper does have fewer calories (630 calories vs 660 calories) and less fat (34 grams vs 40 grams), but the difference is not very large.
One nutritional metric that the Impossible Whopper does shine in is cholesterol. A beef Whopper has 90 mg of cholesterol, which is 9x the cholesterol on an Impossible Whopper! The Impossible Whopper has twice the amount of dietary fiber (4 grams vs 2 grams) as the regular Whopper. One area that the beef Whopper edges out the Impossible Whopper in is sodium. Both options are major salt bombs, but the beef whopper does have about 10% less sodium than the Impossible Whopper.
At the end of the day, the Impossible Whopper is slightly healthier than a beef Whopper. However, the difference in nutritional value is small, so we wouldn't look at the Impossible Whopper as a healthy alternative to the Whopper.
See the full nutrition facts for the Whopper and Impossible Whopper at the links below:
Burger King Impossible Whopper Nutrition
Burger King Whopper Nutrition