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The Bill Gates-backed veggie burger that 'bleeds' like beef is coming to America's largest grocery chain — here's what it tastes like

Beyond Meat's veggie burger aims to disrupt the $48 trillion meat industry. And it will soon be available in 1,300 Kroger stores.

The new Beyond Meat burgers.

When Beyond Meat, a company that produces plant-based alternatives to animal proteins, claimed it invented a vegetarian burger that tastes like beef, it sounded too good to be true.

But the Beyond Burger has grown in popularity since it was first sold at a Whole Foods in Boulder, Colorado last year. Since then, the product has become available in 350 more Whole Foods locations, and In July, it came to eight of burger chain

Each package of Beyond Burgers comes with two four-ounce patties. It's usually sold for $5.99 — almost twice the price of beef per ounce.

When I opened the package, the patties looked exactly like raw beef — but they're made mainly from pea protein, yeast extract, and coconut oil. They contain beet juice, which gives them a reddish color.

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According to the nutrition label on the back, the Beyond Burger has more protein, sodium, and calories than a normal burger.

When I cooked my first patty, I threw it on a small skillet without oil. Unlike most vegetarian burgers I've tried, the Beyond Burger sizzled like meat. It didn't smell like beef, however — more like a vegetable I couldn't identify. Peas perhaps?

About three minutes later, I flipped the patty over, and it was slightly browned.

After waiting about three more minutes, the burger was done. It generated a lot of liquid on the spatula, although it didn't really look like normal beef burger juices.

After I added lettuce, tomato, and ketchup, I took a bite. In a blind taste test, it definitely wouldn't fool me as beef, but its texture was shockingly close — and it was even pink in the middle. To make the patty taste more like a normal burger, next time I would use steak seasoning.

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Inside, bits of veggies mimicked the texture of ground beef. Overall, it was tasty and juicy, unlike most plant-based burgers that often taste closer to cardboard.

Beyond Meat sells other plant-based burgers, but the Beyond Burger is the first that's not sold in the frozen food aisle — it sits next to real refrigerated beef at Whole Foods.

Beyond Meat aims to shake up the $48 trillion global meat industry by creating palatable alternatives. For that reason, it's garnered much hype from vegetarians, meat-eaters, and a long list of investors, including

Since the Beyond Burger somewhat closely mimics a traditional burger, it may represent a step towards creating a more environmentally friendly patty.

Meat production can be harsh on the planet. Traditional livestock farming accounts for an estimated 18% of global greenhouse emissions, uses 70% of the world's water, and exhausts 47,000 square miles of land every year.

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