Veggie Burgers

Carlos Sánchez 5 min. of reading Well-being habits Leave a comment

Veggie burgers have long been a fixture in Spanish supermarkets, but until now people had to settle for something that was similar in shape, not in taste, texture or smell.

In this post, I want to talk about vegan foods that replace their meat counterparts, imitating texture, taste and smell.

The Heura burger was the protagonist of the previous post, which is very similar to chicken, even in its macros, and in this one I want to talk about other vegan products that imitate red meat.

These burgers used to be made from pulses, cereals and/or vegetables, leaving quite a bit to be desired if you’re looking for something similar to meat.

Index

1 Vegetable Pattie
2 Veggie discs or burgers?
3 Beyond Burger
4 Next Level Burger
5 Conclusions
6 Related Entries

Vegetable Pattie

It’s true that there are some products that are fine, in fact I’d recommend the vegetable patty that you can find in several places like Lidl or Alcampo, which is high in protein, quite rich in flavour, but not in fact a burger, although in some forums they define it as such.

We can find this product with a multitude of flavours and ingredients, we usually consume the one in the picture, of mushrooms and peppers, with another of tofu and seaweed.

Their macros are quite reasonable, providing between 15 and 18g of protein, according to variety, and around 160kcal per 100g of product..

Veggie discs or burgers?

If we focus on the term “burgers”, that already gives us a pretty concrete clue as to where I want this to go.

Certain “authorities” of the European Union want to veto that name on product, instead calling them “veggie discs”….

But leaving aside this ridiculous issue of terminology, today I’m going to comment on two products that I find very interesting:

Beyond Burger

Up first, I’ve chosen a burger that’s super fashionable because its taste, texture and smell are very similar to those of the meat.

In fact, many people who eat it don’t know the difference, and I can vouch for that.

This burger is the star product of the American company BEYOND MEAT.

Amongst its ingredients are pea protein, coconut oil, sunflower oil, potato starch, etc, which makes gluten and soya free, two major allergens.

Nutritional Value

Its macronutrients are similar to those of red meat burgers, although it’s a little high in fat for my liking. I’ll put them down below:

Nutritional information per 100g
Energy	265.5 kcal/ 1142.5 kj
Protein	17.7g
Carbohydrates	9.7g
of which sugars	0g
Fat	17.7g
of which saturates	7.1g
Salt	1g

As you can see, it’s high in protein, offering almost 20g per 100g. But from my point of view it wouldn’t be a product to recommend for regular consumption. If you miss meat from time to time, it makes a great “fix”, but I wouldn’t include it in my daily menu.

Price

An important factor to emphasise, as with the Heura burger, is its price, which is approximately 30 Euros a kilo. Quite expensive for the pocket of the average person. If you want to raise your protein intake as a vegan, tofu, seitan, textured soybean or pulses options are still much better options.

You can already find this burger in many restaurants and chains, so if you’re vegan or vegetarian and didn’t go out for lack of options, now you have one 😉

Next Level Burger

More similar products are appearing on this line, and this is where I want to make a recommendation of one I recently found.

At Lidl they’ve recently started to bring in some vegan burgers from the brand NEXT LEVEL MEAT called NEXT LEVEL BURGER.

Amongst its ingredients are water, mushrooms, coconut fat, pea protein, wheat protein and soy protein.

Nutritional value

Nutritional information per 100g
Energy	229 kcal/ 952 kj
Protein	17.9g
Carbohydrates	4.8g
of which sugars	2.1g
Fat	14.5g
of which saturates	9.2g
Salt	1.3g

Price

These veggie burgers are cheaper in price, the 227g (2 burger per pack of 113.5g) comes out at 2.99, some 13 euros per kilo, approximately, and although I don’t use them that often either, I do consider them somewhat more interesting nutritionally speaking.

Conclusions

Of course, there are more similar products out there, although I haven’t tried them all.

As I always say, I prefer to talk about what I know firsthand 🙂

But the most important thing is that those of us who have decided to keep animal abuse out of our shopping cart have more and more options. And if this is the case for you, you’re in luck. And if you know of other interesting options that I haven’t mentioned, let me know in the comments. I’ll gladly review them.

Related Entries

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