Impossible Foods is Rebranding Itself as a Meat Company
- Amelia Keefer
- Feb 12, 2025
- 3 min read
Amidst its massive rebrand, the plant-based powerhouse, Impossible Foods has a new target audience: die-hard meat eaters. The iconic teal packaging has changed to a bold red, sporting a new catchphrase in big, white font. Meat from plants. “Listen up, America. Meat has problems. And it’s gonna take us meat eaters to solve it,” their new ad proclaims. It’s Urban Americana. Backyard cook-outs, motorcycles, and hay barns. A mustachioed man flings burgers and hot dogs to the ground like old news, leaving in his wake plant-based versions that look anything but.
The rebrand asks consumers not to eat less meat but more. They're a meat company, not an alternative. It’s an interesting take, considering their biggest competitor—Beyond Meat—still maintains its green, environmental vibe with a continued mission to serve up love. "We build meat from plants to nourish and protect our bodies, heal earth and climate, and better share the planet with the miracle of life that surrounds us," their mission statement reads. It conjures up evergreen forests, beanies, and trail mix. Impossible Foods has flipped that image on its head with its new meat-colored packaging and large butcher-esque font, with the hopes of appealing to more flexitarian eaters that could be put off by demanding environmental claims. "We're solving the meat problem with more meat," Impossible Foods says in their new campaign. That is, tastier and healthier versions of your favorite cuts. I couldn't be more excited.
“We’re solving the meat problem with more meat.”
I've been fully vegetarian since 2019, and I've tried my fair share of meat alternatives boasting to be meatier, tastier, and more nutritious than the rest. But nothing beats Impossible Foods when it comes to taste. The 13g of protein doesn't hurt either. I recommend grinding up their burger patties for tacos, and try adding one or two of their sausage patties to your breakfast sandwiches. Their chicken nuggets are my go-to dinner at least once a week. And, did you know that they have nuggets shaped like endangered animals? They're "inspired by the wildlife that choosing meat from plants can help preserve," Impossible Food says. And as someone who is environmentally conscious, that campaign is everything. Think: chickie nuggies with a cause!
I was curious how they make plants taste like meat. The answer? By using heme. All animals have high amounts of this iron-containing molecule in their muscles. It's a chemical catalyst that reacts with sugars, fatty acids, and amino acids when cooked. “We discovered heme is essential to the flavor of meat,” the Impossible Foods research team said. “[It] transforms abundant, simple nutrients into this explosion of hundreds of diverse volatile odorant molecules. When you experience them, together they add up unmistakably to the smell and taste of meat.” The problem then became finding a plant-based alternative. Well, soybeans to the rescue! I'm no biologist, but the basic gist is: soybean roots contain a heme protein called leghemoglobin. Literally: Legume. Hemoglobin. Using yeast to increase production, the company is able to produce loads of that sweet, sweet leghemoglobin for use in their products (well, more like meaty, meaty). To this day, Impossible Foods still produces its heme using yeast and soybeans.
Obviously, the new campaign isn't targeting me—a 20-something, vegetarian environmentalist. But it's a promise of greater things to come. It means that the plant-based meat industry is adapting and appealing to a larger audience, and they're doing this by promoting undeniable taste and health benefits. It's meat, but healthier! I can only hope it's successful for them. From an Impossible Food enjoyer, I encourage you, reader, to check them out. You just might become hooked, like I was.
Over and out,
Amelia Keefer
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