Are we over coconut oil?

What I talk about when I talk about the new Beyond burger made with avocado oil, rice that's not all carbs and plant-based sushi in the frozen aisle.

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Last night, I attended a food and climate happy hour at Indie Bio in San Francisco. On my way in the door I chatted with Adam Yee, self-labeled “dumpling scientist” at Sobo Foods and Sunny Kumar of Black Sheep Foods, which makes plant-based lamb that you can try at Souvla. Our talk instantly went to ingredients and then to Beyond Meat, which announced its newest innovation, a burger (number four if you’re counting) that uses avocado oil instead of coconut and canola oil. We also talked seed oils, which I wrote about here and continues to be what everyone wants to know more about.

It’s been a stretch since I last ate a Beyond burger – I’m not much of a burger person. But they scratch an infrequent itch, and are tasty. I hope this change in formulation helps some of the things I haven’t liked in the past – how the cooking smell lingers, how it coats my throat, how heavy it feels. Burger IV is 20% lower in sodium, and 60% lower in saturated fat by removing the coconut oil. 

The new Beyond burger will be on the shelves in the spring.

For fiber and protein it uses peas, red lentils, faba beans and brown rice. I’m all in for foods that incorporate more plants but when I heard a registered dietician refer to them as “beautiful natural vegetables” in this video by Beyond, I had to object. These are good. They’re better than industrially-raised red meat, but they aren’t unadulterated vegetables from the farm. Peas, for example, are processed and refined to extract the protein, which is then used by Beyond. The burger is still an ultra-processed food, but it is certainly better and Beyond should be cheered for staying focused on nutritional improvements while still (we hope) making something that’s delicious. I look forward to trying it.