The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best-time is now

Integrator Media had an exclusive interview with Noel Clarke, Senior VP of International for Impossible Foods

What inspired the founding of Impossible Foods?

Impossible Foods was founded with a singular purpose: to positively impact people and the planet by making delicious, nutritious plant-based meat with a fraction of the environmental footprint of meat from animals. People have said this is a lofty goal, but more than a decade later, we’re proving that progress is achievable. Impossible products are now available across four continents and in our two-and-a-half years of business in the UAE, we’ve expanded into more than 200 restaurants in the region.

The journey of creating the first Impossible Burger and the scientific breakthroughs involved

Before we launched Impossible Beef in 2016, the team spent five years working to understand how meat behaves at the molecular level so that we could replicate this same flavour chemistry with plant ingredients. It was during this process that we identified heme as the key ingredient for what makes animal meat so craveable, allowing us to innovate an animal-free version that’s identical to the heme found in soy. This breakthrough was the building block of what would eventually become Impossible Beef, differentiating our product as the plant-based beef that looks, cooks, tastes like animal beef. 

What’s the significance of the Impossible Chicken Nuggets launch in the UAE?

Many consumers know us for our flagship Impossible Beef product, but our Impossible Chicken Nuggets are one of the most accessible entry points to the Impossible brand and the plant-based space more broadly. Since first launching the product in 2021 in the US, Impossible Chicken Nuggets quickly became one of our most popular products because of their broad consumer appeal, versatility, and incredible taste – decisively outranking a leading animal nugget on flavour, texture and overall appearance in a blind taste test. As a result, they’ve become a key component of our international expansion strategy. Including the UAE, Impossible Chicken Nuggets are available in 7 countries and have proven successful in bringing more consumers around the world into the brand. 

How does Impossible Foods balance taste, texture, and nutritional value in its product development?

Every Impossible product is designed to match the animal on the overall sensory experience –– taste, aroma, texture –– as well as nutritional quality. We don’t consider “good enough” or “close enough” a true success. With Impossible, consumers don’t have to choose between taste or nutrition. This is what sets us apart in the marketplace. A great example of this is our Chicken Nuggets product, which not only beats the animal nearly 3 to 1 on taste, but also outperforms animal chicken on nutrition with 0 milligrams cholesterol and 40% less saturated fat. 

How does Impossible Foods address scepticism towards plant-based meats?

It’s normal to see some scepticism with new innovations. For example, we saw this with plant-based dairy and now as the market has matured, these options are just as commonplace as conventional dairy products. Similarly, plant-based meat is just getting started, so we still have a long runway of growth ahead of us. We know that tasting is believing when it comes to these products – once people try Impossible for the first time, more than 1 in 2 intend to do so again. It’s incumbent on us and the rest of the plant-based category to continue raising the bar when it comes to delivering great-tasting, nutrient-dense products. This will allow us as a collective industry to ensure a positive first impression for consumers and create a positive halo effect across the entire space.

What role do you believe plant-based meat alternatives will play in the global food system in the next decade?

Our mission at Impossible is to champion a global food system that is more reliant on plants than it is on animals. Vegans and vegetarians are already doing their part to live a more sustainable, plant-based lifestyle but the folks we have to win over are flexitarians and meat-eaters. Plant-based meat products like ours offer a seamless replacement for the animal meat products that consumers know and love, significantly lowering the barrier to entry for meat-eaters into the broader plant-based category. We have to make this transition easy for people and not force them into lifestyle changes that they’re unlikely to maintain in the long-term.

As a father to five children who wants the best for their future, the following Chinese proverb deeply resonates with me: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”