Author Archives: KirkPJHixoknucv

Burger King’s ‘Impossible Whopper’ is 0% meat and 100% real

Subscribe to The Beacon

Burger King, the fast-food giant known for meaty excess, has announced it intends to pilot a fully vegetarian, beef-free version of its classic Whopper.

The company announced on Monday that it will test out plant-based patties from startup Impossible Foods starting with stores in the St. Louis, Missouri area. And thank the flame-broiled Gods, this does not appear to be an April Fool’s Joke. The chain already offers a meatless patty in the form of the MorningStar Farms Garden Veggie Patty, which is made from vegetables and grains. But the more meat-like Impossible Whopper represents a promotion for vegetarian options from sub-in to front-of-brand star.

Fernando Machado, Burger King’s chief marketing officer, told the New York Times of the new Impossible Whopper that even fans who know the traditional beef Whopper inside and out “struggle to differentiate which one is which.”

Plant-based meat substitutes have been gaining popularity as people have become more aware and focused on the environmental woes associated with standard animal-based food systems. Plus, health-conscious customers may be drawn to plant-based options because of their lower cholesterol and calorie counts.

Burger King is the biggest fast-food company to launch a vegetarian-friendly burger option to date, but it’s far from the first. In January, Carl’s Jr. started offering a meatless “Beyond Meat” option at more than 1,000 locations. And the mostly Midwest-based chain White Castle (of Harold and Kumar fame) has been offering a meatless “Impossible Slider” at their nearly 380 locations since September of last year.

Burger King’s “whopper” of a contribution to the meatless fast food landscape is, at least for now, still theoretical. The Impossible Whopper will only be tested in 59 of the company’s approximately 7,200 locations, with plans for broader rollout in the future if the trial goes well.

One potential barrier to the Impossible Whopper’s success is its price tag: the meatless burger will cost about a dollar more than its meaty namesake. But according to Burger King’s North America president Christopher Finazzo, research shows consumers are willing to pay more for the plant-based burger.

And as Impossible Foods gets deeper into the fast food game, it’s possible prices for the popular, plant-based patties could drop.

“Burger King represents a different scale,” Impossible Foods COO and CFO David Lee told CNN. “The only thing we need to be affordable and at scale versus the incumbent commodity business is time and size.”

Read More: 

Burger King’s ‘Impossible Whopper’ is 0% meat and 100% real

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Burger King’s ‘Impossible Whopper’ is 0% meat and 100% real

Queen Elizabeth has no patience for plastic.

Here’s how humanity could all but ensure its own demise: Dig up all the coal we have left and burn it, warming the planet 4 to 6 degrees C.

But that worst-case scenario doesn’t match up with what’s really happening in the world, Justin Ritchie, lead author of a new study published in Environmental Research Letters, told Grist.

That’s because money spent on climate change measures goes further than it did 30 years ago. Plus, baseline trends show greenhouse gas emissions are on the decline. Most studies underestimate the effect these factors have on global decarbonization.

The study indicates that the goals outlined in the Paris Agreement are more achievable than previously projected — but that’s not to say humanity isn’t in deep trouble.

It’s not “4 to 6 degrees bad,” Ritchie says. “It’s 3 degrees bad. You can’t say we don’t have to worry about implementing policies, we do. But it’s not going to reach the truly catastrophic scenarios.”

Another recent study published in the same journal shows that if all the coal plants currently planned actually get built, humanity could blow past the Paris goal of limiting warming to 2 degree C above pre-industrial levels.

Ritchie said his research doesn’t counteract that finding. “There’s a whole range of scenarios that can occur,” he says. “What our paper is trying to do is look at that whole range and how can we design policies that are more robust.”

Visit site:  

Queen Elizabeth has no patience for plastic.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Jason, LAI, LG, ONA, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Queen Elizabeth has no patience for plastic.

A tiny Iowa paper just won a Pulitzer Prize for tackling farm pollution.

Contrary to what you may have heard, the reef isn’t dead — not yet. But aerial surveys show that 900 miles of the 1,400-mile-long reef have been severely bleached in the past two years.

Bleaching occurs when warm water causes stressed-out corals to expel symbiotic algae from their tissues; corals then lose their color and their chief source of food, making them more likely to die.

Last year’s El Niño–induced bleaching event was devastating, knocking out two-thirds of the corals in the northern section of the reef. We’d hoped that 2017 would bring cooler temperatures, giving the fragile ecosystem some much needed R&R.

Instead, temperatures on Australia’s east coast were still hotter than average in the early months of this year, and on top of that, the reef’s midsection took a hit from a big cyclone in March.

ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

This is the first time the reef has experienced back-to-back annual bleaching events. If this keeps happening, it’ll quash the reef’s chances for recovery and regrowth, a process that can take a decade or longer under normal conditions.

Under the abnormal conditions of climate change, though, there is little reprieve — unless we, y’know, address the root of the problem itself.

Link:  

A tiny Iowa paper just won a Pulitzer Prize for tackling farm pollution.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A tiny Iowa paper just won a Pulitzer Prize for tackling farm pollution.