San Francisco-based startup Impossible Foods might have just achieved the impossible – making plants tastes like meat. Their Impossible Burger is made entirely of plants, but sizzles on the grill, oozes fat and reportedly tastes like a delicious cooked beef patty. Red meat consumption around the world is at an all time high, but producing high quantities of meat to satisfy demand is not sustainable and it’s already taking a heavy toll on the environment. In recent years, experts have been busy coming up with alternatives to animal meat, like switching to a protein-rich insect-based diet, growing meat in the lab and even artificial meat made from sewage mud. But one San-Francisco company may have discovered a much more viable solution – a mashup of plant-based ingredients that tastes just like real meat. Impossible Foods has been working on an alternative to meat for the last five years, and its soon-to-be-launched Impossible Burger is already receiving high praise for its likeness to beef patties in taste, texture and appearance. When former Stanford biochemist Patrick Brown founded Impossible Foods, he set his goal on creating a product that would change the world, and the Impossible Burger might do just that. He and his research team have spent years analyzing meat molecules to find out what makes a burger taste, smell and cook the way it does, in the belief that everything animal can be replicated using plant-based compounds. And judging by the testimonies of the few people who have actually sampled this revolutionary burger, Brown was right. Read More »

In 1976, Roger Bennatti, a chemistry teacher at George Stevens Academy, in Maine, unwrapped a fresh Twinkie and placed it atop a classroom chalkboard so he and his students could see how long it took for it to decompose. 40 years later, that question remains unanswered, because mould simply refuses to grow on the world’s oldest Twinkie. The official shelf-life of a Twinkie – as stated by the company making them nowadays – is only 25 days, but as the famous Twinkie of George Stevens Academy clearly shows, it’s really a lot longer than that. It has been sitting in a glass case for four decades now, and even though it might not be safe to eat, it is looking fantastic for its age. Its shape hasn’t change a bit, and if mould hasn’t grown on it so far, chances are it never will. Read More »

Red meat hardly seems like the perfect ingredient for delicious chocolate, but a New Zealand-based food scientist is willing to bet that his high-protein, 50% beef chocolate recipe is going to be a hit. Mustafa Farouk, Senior Food Technologist at Ag Research has partnered with Auckland boutique chocolate maker Devonport Chocolates to bring meat chocolate to the masses. The quirky idea of combining the two very different ingredients came to Dr. Farouk one day, while looking at ways of adding value to beef and pondering ways the staple food might be consumed in the future. Mixing beef and chocolate seemed like the perfect way for people to get proteins and other nutrients in meat, because chocolate is such a popular dessert. So Farouk took a very lean cut from the hind quarter of a Waikato-raised bovine, turned into what he calls “chocolate butter”, which I assume is a sort of fine paste, and handed it over to Devonport Chocolates to use in their confectionery. The resulting combination reportedly has a consistency similar to a Turkish delight, and while the food scientist admits you can tell that it’s not regular chocolate, the taste of meat is almost impossible to pick up. In an interview with the New Zealand Herald, Farouk described the taste of beef chocolate as “wonderful”, adding that although people are initially put off by the unique dessert when they here it is 50% beef, once they bite into it and taste the rich chocolate flavor, most agree that it is excellent. Read More »

If you’re all alone on your couch watching TV and can’t decide between drinking a glass of wine or stuffing yourself with ice-cream, you’ll be happy to know you can now have both, thanks to Winecream, an ingenious dessert that combines wine and gourmet ice-cream. Created by Crossroads Company, a family-owned business in Baltimore, Winecream is a mashup of craft-made fruit wines and super-premium, gourmet ice-cream. Customers get to choose a wine from various house-made options including pineapple, mixed berry, peach, or strawberry, which is then mixed in to a cream and sugar base and flash frozen using liquid nitrogen, a food-safe cryogenic liquid that’s nearly -320 degrees Fahrenheit. First announced back in 2014, Winecream has so far only been available at wine festivals and private events, but Crossroads Company has recently made the adult dessert available for online orders and plans to launch it in liquor stores in Baltimore and Washington D.C. later this summer. Read More »

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have an espresso machine for beer and bypass the whole fermentation process? It sounds like simple wishful thinking, but it turns out such a thing actually exists, and has for some time now. SodaStream has been selling home carbonation machines that let you turn tap water into soda for over two and a half decades, and now it looks all set to enter the beer market, as well. The company has apparently come up with an instant beer concentrate that works with their soda machines, allowing anyone to turn water into beer at the press of a button. The new Beer Bar kit turns SodaStream machines into microbreweries, enabling you to create crafted beer in seconds by simply adding a unique “Blondie” concentrate. The resulting brew has 4.5% alcohol content and allegedly has a “smooth authentic taste and a hop-filled aroma.” According to a company statement, one liter of Blondie yields three liters of cold brewski. Read More »

You couldn’t really tell by just looking at it, but this pitch black ice-cream doing the rounds on photo-sharing sites like Instagram is actually coconut flavored. It’s made with coconut milk, coconut cream, coconut flakes, and, for that unique confusing color, coconut ash. The Coconut Ash Ice-cream recently made its debut at Morgenstern’s Finest Ice-Cream parlor, in downtown Manhattan, New York. Owner Nick Morgenstern said he had been “monkeying around with coconut ash for a while”, and then had a fancy chocolate bar which also used the ash as an ingredient. So when he finally decided to include coconut as a flavor in his new ice-cream menu, it all came together. “I just had to use it,” he says. As bizarre a color as jet-black may seem for an ice-cream that’s not chocolate or coffee flavored, it proved a big hit with customers, who instantly started flooding Instagram with snaps of the unusual treat. Read More »

A couple of wine experts from San Francisco are apparently able to perform a miracle otherwise credited to Jesus Christ himself – they claim they can turn water into wine in a mere 15 minutes! The synthetic wine, made without the use of grapes, is produced by combining water and ethanol with flavor-compounds that can mimic the taste of real wine. Mardonn Chua and Alec Lee, founders of the start-up Ava Winery, said they were inspired to create the grape-free artificial wine after spotting a bottle of award-winning Chardonnay at a winery in California’s Napa Valley last year. They couldn’t afford the bottle of Chateau Montelena, but they got to thinking of ways to make wine that anyone can buy. “I was transfixed by this bottle displayed on the wall,” Chua said. “I could never afford a bottle like this, I could never enjoy it. That got me thinking.” So they skipped the expensive step of growing and fermenting grapes, and instead started off with ethanol, the major component in most alcoholic beverages. Then they added compounds like ethyl hexanoate for that fruity flavor. Their initial attempts were disastrous, but they kept trying and eventually achieved some decent results, including a very close replica of the sparkling Italian white wine Moscato d’Asti. Read More »

Popping and sucking a candy balloon is probably a sight you’d expect to see at a kid’s party, but it’s what all the adults are doing at this Michelin three-star restaurant in Chicago. They come dressed in their finest for an evening of elegant dining, but once they arrive at ‘Alinea’, patrons are encouraged to embrace their inner child with their latest dessert offering – the Edible Helium Balloon. The dish, created by head chef and Aliena co-owner Grant Achatz, is now being touted as one of the coolest desserts ever produced in the US. Achatz recently released a video on how the balloon is made – the process starts off with making a green apple taffy base, which is then blown up using a tube connected to a helium tank. The result is a transparent balloon that is tied with a ‘string’ made of dehydrated granny smith apple. The entire confection is then sprinkled with a dusting of green sugar. Read More »

Alcohol generally does nothing good for the skin, but the makers of this new brand of gin are claiming otherwise. Aptly named ‘Anti-aGin’, the 40 percent spirit supposedly contains several skin-boosting ingredients like collagen and other antioxidants, giving it anti-aging properties. So with Anti-aGin, you don’t need to worry about your drinking habit showing up on your skin. Created by UK-based Warner Leisure Hotels, in collaboration with contemporary food design company Bompas & Parr, the age-defying gin has been distilled with pure collagen – the glue that holds our skin together. As we grow older the collagen level in our skin declines, leading to wrinkles and sagging, so the supplement present in the gin is meant to reverse that. The beverage also contains antioxidant rich ‘skin-healing’ ingredients like green tea for detox, witch hazel oil to kill bacteria, gotu kola that helps reduce cellulite and sun damage, chamomile for healing and relaxation, and burdock to repair cracked skin. Other ingredients include angelica root, coriander, liquorice, and cardamom. Read More »

This colorful grilled cheese looks like it belongs in a My Little Pony show, but it’s actually a real treat that’s all the rage in Hong Kong. It’s called the Rainbow Sandwich and consists of two slices of bread four different types of cheese, flavorings and, obviously, a lot of food dye. The sandwich, a creation of Kala Toast, recently got its five minutes of fame after Instagram user @hkfoodiexblogger posted a photograph of the snack along with a brief review on his account. It got shared by his fans and eventually went viral after being picked up by major websites. Read More »

This intricate, lacy wedding dress would make any bride feel beautiful on her big day, but surprisingly, it isn’t meant to be worn. That’s because it’s really a masterfully executed cake, and all the pretty frills and ruffles are actually white icing. But it’s so convincing, you can barely tell that it’s not real, even in close-up photographs. The remarkable dessert was created by award-winning cake sculptor Sylvia Elba, in collaboration with artist Ilinka Rnic, and Fun N Funky Cakes founder Yvette Marner. It took the talented trio over 300 hours to complete, but in the end, they all agreed that the 70-kg heavy, 170-cm tall hyperrealistic cake-dress was totally worth it. They’re now calling it the world’s first “Weddible Dress”. Read More »

Japanese food stylist Mitsuki Moriyasu is on a mission to prove that salads can look much better than they taste. Last year, she introduced the world to the concept of the ‘Vegiedeco Salad’, an exquisite preparation of vegetables made in the likeness of a cake. The hybrid dish was initially featured on the menu of a bistro in Nagoya, but it got so popular that it is now being exclusively showcased at a brand new cafe in the city. The savory dish consists of colorful layers of vegetables, sandwiched between two soybean-flour sponge and covered in a tofu or cream cheese frosting blended with vegetables for natural coloring. The end result is a sinful-looking salad-cake that is not just a visual treat but also packs a nutritious punch. Containing very little to no sugar, each salad also includes a good amount of roots and peels for fiber. Read More »

Bread has long since been considered the enemy of dieters, but this new weird-looking bread might just change the way we look at the staple food forever. White bread is linked to obesity and high blood pressure, but a Singaporean food scientist claims he has come up with a way of solving these problems, while retaining the texture and flavor of bread. There’s just one catch though – his bread is purple. Professor Zhou Weibiao, of the National University of Singapore, wanted to find a way to change the formula of bread while retaining its soft texture and wonderful taste. The result was purple bread, which he says is made entirely from natural ingredients. He started by extracting anthocyanin – the natural blue pigment found in foods like grapes and blueberries – from black rice, leaving behind its starchy compounds. He infused the anthocyanin into bread dough and used it to bake loaves that are apparently much better for you than white bread. Read More »

Getting a cold drink might seem like the perfect way to relax after a long, hot summer day, but for most Chinese the opposite is true. They routinely consume hot beverages with their meals and all through the day irrespective of the weather. So don’t be surprised if on a balmy day, you see a Chinese person sipping hot water from a thermos! While the western world might find this bizarre, the Chinese actually think that the Western habit of chugging ice-cold water is very strange. The idea of consuming anything at room temperature or below is, according to them, bad for your health. “In the big family I was brought up in, no one would dare to pour even room temperature water,” journalist Nicole Liu writes for the LA Times. “Doing so would risk a chorus of criticism, with parents, aunts, cousins, and grandparents chastising you almost simultaneously: ‘Cold water gives you cramps!’” Read More »

You don’t need to give up six-packs to get a six-pack anymore, thanks to ‘Barbell Brew’, a new alcoholic beer that contains over 21.8 g of protein per serving. That’s roughly the same amount of protein you would get out of a sirloin steak, so you can happily swap those disgusting protein shakes for this new, delicious brew! If you suspect that Barbell Brew might be just another health drink hidden in a beer can, worry not. With an alcohol content of 3.6 percent, it’s perfect for a beer buzz while also getting your share of muscle-pumping proteins. What’s more, it tastes great, it’s gluten free, and it only has 92.4 calories – that’s 33% less than what you’d get from regular beers, and even less than most light beers. Read More »