Impossible Foods has launched Impossible Pork and Impossible Sausage.
The new products were unveiled on Monday evening, Jan. 6, 2020, at the CES gadget show in Las Vegas.
The California-based company started out with fake beef, or what fans would call "vegan meats".
The Impossible Burger went on sale in 2016.
Made from soy
Impossible Food's pork and sausage are also made from soy, but mimic the taste and texture of ground meat.
Impossible Pork will be sold in restaurants first.
Impossible Foods burgers are available at more than 17,000 restaurants in the United States, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau.
The company has only recently began selling its burgers in grocery stores in the U.S.
Burger King Impossible Sausage
Burger King in the U.S. will roll out the Impossible Sausage.
Some 139 Burger King restaurants in five U.S. cities will offer the Impossible Croissan’wich in January 2020.
The impossible sausage is served with traditional egg and cheese.
The Impossible Whopper debuted in Burger King in 2019 before expanding sales nationwide.
How is Impossible Pork made?
The pork products and the Impossible Burger are made in a similar way.
Impossible Foods gets heme from soy leghemoglobin, which is found in the roots of soy plants.
Heme is the protein that gives meat its flavor and texture.
Heme is made in high volume by inserting the DNA from soy into yeast and fermenting it.
That mixture is then combined with other ingredients, like coconut oil.
To mimic pork’s springy texture and mild flavor, the ingredients were tweaked.
The sausage comes with added spices.
Impossible Pork has 220 calories in a four-ounce serving.
That is about the same as a serving of lean ground pork.
Impossible Pork has a relatively high sodium content of 420mg though.
Chinese market next
Nearly 1.5 billion pigs are killed for food each year, a number that has tripled in the last 50 years, according to the World Economic Forum.
The company decided pork should be its next product because customers were frequently requesting it.
Chinese consumers eat more than 88 pounds (40kg) of pork per year, compared to 65 pounds (30kg) for Americans.
Impossible Foods is talking to Chinese regulators and potential partners that could make Impossible Pork in China.