Strictly speaking: haem

Air New Zealand recently announced that it will be serving a newly developed piece of food technology, known as the ‘Impossible Burger’, to its business-class customers. It’s essentially a vegieburger, but the ‘impossible’ element is introduced by an ingredient called haem. This is an iron-containing molecule that gives meat its red colour and characteristic flavour, but is also found in plants. So by extracting haem from the roots of soy plants, the inventors of this burger claim to have created an authentically meaty alternative to the real thing.