As the veggie burger celebrates its 20th anniversary, dozens of choices abound in the rapidly expanding meatless section of supermarket frozen food cases.
There are Texas burgers, California burgers, burgers with roasted garlic and onion, Mexican-inspired burgers, portobello burgers, crumbled soy products masquerading as ground beef and more. Some could easily be mistaken for meat in color, texture and taste.
More Top Picks Best Truck Bed Racks For Overlanding
And that’s not even touching on the countless other mock-meat products now so common in even the mainstream grocery stores–from “chicken” nuggets to soy hot dogs, vegetarian “ribs” and veggie meatballs.
Boca Burgers, the granddaddy of this food category, began as a restaurant dish in 1993 in Ft. Lauderdale when a “restaurateur set out to create a meatless burger that actually tasted good,” Boca spokeswoman Carolyn Cone said.
At first called Sun Burger, the name morphed into Boca Foods. In 1998, Boca began making other products, from veggie sausages to ground burger and more.
Other companies followed suit with burgers and other forms of meat substitutes.
“The veggie burger turned into wings, cutlets, riblets, meatballs [and more],” the Gardenburger company says.
Reed Mangels, a registered dietitian for the Vegetarian Resource Group, has conducted marketwide research on the growing veggie burger and meatless alternative trend. In her “Guide to Burgers and Dogs,” she found that a decade ago there were fewer than 10 choices in veggie burgers and soy dogs. But in seven years, the number of choices had jumped to more than 50 types of veggie burgers and a dozen hot dog alternatives. Today, the numbers are even larger and growing.
In the guide, Mangels compares the alternatives to their meat-based rivals for nutritional information.
“Veggie burgers and dogs are generally lower in calories and fat than hamburgers and hot dogs,” she said. “Even extra-lean ground beef gets more than half its calories from fat; most veggie burgers have less than 20 percent of calories from fat. Meat has no fiber; most veggie burgers have at least 3 or 4 grams of dietary fiber per serving.”
Veggie burgers, especially those made with soy, contain generous amounts of protein and iron. Vitamin B-12 is added to some veggie burgers, she said. “The only negative for veggie burgers is that most are higher in sodium than ground beef.”
Veggie burgers made with soy protein tend to look more like hamburgers. They often have a chewy texture, a brown color and a grilled flavor.
The Food and Drug Administration recommends 25 grams of soy protein a day “as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, to reduce the risk of heart disease.”
Even veggie burgers haven’t escaped the low-carb craze. Many manufacturers have tinkered with their ingredients to lower carb content and have added “net carb” information to their labels.
———-
Edited by Cara DiPasquale ([email protected]) and Kris Karnopp ([email protected])