ENCORE: Beyond Meat vs Impossible Burger | Pressure Cooker | 1

0:00A listener note as we get started. As we close out 2025, we're taking a look at some big consumer trends, like Americans' still insatiable hunger for protein, especially meat, and just how much tastes have soured on the fake stuff. You know, it wasn't that long ago that Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods looked like brilliant bets to investors. Climate and health-conscious consumers were spreading the gospel of these brands' innovations far and wide, and it seemed like plant-based foods were fully entering the mainstream. But now, Beyond Meat's stock has fallen more than 95 % from its peak, and Impossible Foods has weathered multiple rounds of layoffs.

0:40In fact, Beyond Meat's stock briefly did rally this October, when it became a meme stock. But that shine certainly didn't stick. We're revisiting this business war season to look back both at the company's meteoric rises, but their fierce rivalry, too, and how they set out to upend the meat industry.

1:07It's June 2024 in New York City. In his office on bustling Fifth Avenue, George Shea fiddles with his smartphone. The thin, gray-haired 59-year-old is the commissioner of Major League Eating, the world's biggest competitive eating league. And right now, he's sick to his stomach. Shea searches his phone for a video he hopes will make him feel better. He calls up one showing last year's Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island. In the video, Shea himself dramatically introduces the defending champion of the hot dog eating contest, Joey Chestnut. And the gods shine down on us still because of him alone.

1:48Because of him alone. The Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Champion of the World.

2:00Joey Chestnut!

2:06Shea pauses the video and reluctantly reaches for his office's landline. He dials 40-year-old Joey Chestnut's number and prepares for a confrontation with the biggest star in competitive eating. Hey, George. We're going to talk about Impossible Foods again? I'm afraid so, Joey. Chestnut recently agreed to become a brand ambassador for Impossible Foods, a maker of plant-based meat products. Shea wants Chestnut to chew that deal up and spit it out. Now listen, Joey, you're the hot dog eating champion of the world. I can't have you out in public endorsing another hot dog brand in a plant-based one at that.

2:44Are you going vegan or something? No way. I ate 62 beef hot dogs in last year's contest, and I'll do it again this year. Besides, Impossible Foods doesn't even market to vegans and vegetarians. They want meat eaters to buy their stuff. Why do you think a meat eater wants vegan meat? Well, it has no cholesterol. It's better for the environment. Raising animals takes more resources and growing plants. Shea shakes his head. Oh, for God's sakes, Joey, the Fourth of July contest is a beef-only event, and competitive eating celebrates overconsumption. Plus, we've already offered you a lot,$300 ,000 a year to stick with us.

3:21So, this is the last time I'm going to ask you. Will you drop your deal with Impossible Foods? Chestnut takes a deep breath, opening his mouth wide to reveal a sharp set of teeth that have earned him a fearsome nickname, Jaws. George, Impossible Foods is paying me way more than$300 ,000. I am not going to quit. Joey, if that's your final decision, then I'm afraid you're banned from this year's hot dog eating contest. Stay off Coney Island on the 4th of July.

3:55Chestnut is gutted by the ban. But for his new sponsor, Impossible Foods, the public beef with a hot dog brand is a huge opportunity that comes at just the right moment. Impossible Foods and its closest competitor, Beyond Meat, exploded like fireworks when they debuted their plant-based meat substitutes less than a decade ago. But consumers have cut back on plant burgers and dogs since then. That's left Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat on the brink of implosion. Now, if the companies can use chestnut as an example of the power of plants, they just might be able to save their hides.

4:39Hey, basketball fans. Steve Nash here. Ready to elevate your basketball IQ? I'm teaming up with LeBron James to bring you the latest season of Mind the Game. And we're about to take you deeper into basketball than you've ever gone before. We're breaking down the real game, the X's and O's that actually matter. In every episode, we'll share elite-level strategy, dive into career-defining moments, and explain the why behind plays that changed a game, a team, or a championship. LeBron and I have lived this game at the highest level for decades. We've been in those pressure moments and made those game-changing decisions and learned from the greatest basketball minds in history.

5:16Now we're pulling back the curtain and sharing that knowledge with you. Time to go beyond the highlights and get into the real heart of basketball. Watch Mind the Game now on YouTube, Prime Video, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

5:32From Wondery, I'm David Brown, and this is Business Wars.

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5:49Music

5:56Music Music

6:01In grocery stores these days, there are all kinds of products that promise to be both good for you and good for the planet. Restaurants are in on this trend, too. Many chefs at fancy eateries have pulled back on meat and fish out of environmental concerns. In their place, they've made vegetable entrees the star of the show. Meanwhile, chain restaurants have amped up their vegetarian and vegan offerings, too. At some of those restaurants today, diners can order plant-based meats like chicken and pepperoni and burgers. Those same kinds of meats are now in supermarkets around the world. But go back in time by just a decade, and those options wouldn't have existed.

6:43Plant-based meat that looks, chews, and tastes like real meat only became widely available starting in 2013, when California-based Beyond Meat debuted its Beyond Chicken Strips. Three years later, the Beyond Burger debuted. It was joined that year by the Impossible Burger from another California company, Impossible Foods. Plant-based meat sales then skyrocketed, reaching nearly$1 billion in sales in 2019 and doubling that amount in 2023. The two California companies that pioneered the industry are led by two men who have much in common and yet couldn't be more different. Both share the same last name, Brown.

7:28Both spent their early years in Washington, D.C. Both were meat eaters when they were young, but became vegans because they abhorred the slaughter of animals. But Beyond Meat's founder is a tall jock who played college basketball, while Impossible Foods' founder is a skinny college professor. The companies have sold their fake meat by offering a real promise, that buying it could change the world. Both companies say their products require fewer environmental resources than animal agriculture. And both suggest that replacing meat with their burgers and sausages will make the world a cleaner, better place.

8:04The beef industry has pushed back on those claims through a testy lobbying battle. But the bigger problem for these pioneering firms is that their costs and prices have spiraled up. That's threatening to bring their entire fortunes crashing down. In our new four-part series, we'll uncover the secret recipes that led to the rise of the two dominant plant-based meat makers and reveal how their fight for the planet became a fight with each other. This is Episode 1, Fresher Cooker.

8:43It's June 2008. At a restaurant in Vancouver, Canada, four executives from a Canadian fuel cell manufacturer take seats at the bar. A bank of big-screen TVs above them is playing game two of the NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers.

9:09One of the executives takes special note of the game. He's Ethan Brown, a 6-foot, 5-inch, 37-year-old American who fondly recalls his days as a college basketball player at Connecticut College. Hey, Ethan, you think you could take Kobe Bryant one-on-one? Kobe's only an inch taller than me. So, yeah, on my best day, I could have kept the pace with him. But he'd probably beat me with his fadeaway jumper. The executives order a round of beers. They've just closed a deal to provide their company's environmentally friendly fuel cells to an electric bus manufacturer. That's what led Ethan to take this job.

9:46Since he was a student, he's wanted to combat climate change. When the drinks arrive, Ethan stands. Towering over his colleagues, he holds a glass aloft. Here's to us saving the world. One electric bus at a time. Ethan sits back down and his colleagues place their orders. I'll take the ribeye, medium rare. Yeah, same here. I'll take the ribeye too, but make mine rare. I like it bloody. Ethan goes in a different direction. I'll have the vegetarian meatloaf, please. The vegetarian meatloaf, Ethan? That sounds gross. Ethan gets this kind of ribbing about his vegan eating habits a lot. And he's growing tired of it.

10:27He runs one hand through his reddish-brown hair and fires back at his colleagues. Look, I used to love meat. When I was a kid, I took my first date to McDonald's. But I also spent a lot of time on my dad's farm in Maryland. And once I learned the environmental costs of raising animals for meat, plus the violence involved in slaughtering, I just couldn't eat them anymore. And honestly, maybe you guys shouldn't eat them either. Ethan, if you want to take my steak away from me, you're going to need to pry it out of my cold, dead hands. Ethan can feel his temper rising. I don't get you guys. Our fuel cell business creates clean energy sources to help the climate.

11:06And whenever we go out, you eat all this meat. But the worst thing for the planet isn't cars, it's livestock. Well, what are you going to do, Ethan? Quit and go open a tofu factory? In the days to come, Ethan's colleagues' indifference gnaws at him. He rethinks his entire professional future and eventually decides that a business making meat alternatives could be both profitable and have a huge impact on the climate. The problem is, he has no idea how to make fake meat. So he begins a hunt to find someone who can help him cook up a change.

11:49It's summer 2008 in Northern California. Two top scientists sit down for lunch at a cafe. One of the scientists is 54-year-old Pat Brown, a medical doctor turned biochemist whose genome breakthroughs earned him membership in the elite National Academy of Sciences. He's recently begun a long sabbatical where he hopes to find a way to change the world. Across the table from Pat is 41-year-old Michael Eisen, a computational biologist from the University of California, Berkeley, who's one of Pat's good friends. A server arrives to take their order. Can I get the brown rice bowl with the broccoli, corn, and spinach and sweet chili sauce?

12:30Eisen tops his rice bowl with tofu, cucumbers, and fried garlic. As they wait, the men discuss Pat's future. So, Pat, you wanted to talk about your sabbatical. I'm betting you're planning on studying something big while you're away. After all, you're the guy who invented the DNA microarray and figured out how retroviruses like AIDS integrate their genes into the genome of cells they infect. Nothing big. Pat nerdily pushes his oval-rimmed glasses up on his face with one finger. Well, I want to do something even bigger now. As their rice bowls arrive, Pat scoots himself closer to the table. He's thin and wiry thanks to a vegan diet and marathon training.

13:11Picking up his fork, Pat queries his colleague as if he were a student. Let me ask you this, Michael. What's the biggest problem we could work on? Climate change, Pat. I mean, duh, that's obvious. Okay, but what's the biggest thing we could do to affect climate change? I guess if we got rid of fossil fuel-burning cars and swapped them with electric vehicles? Nope, not big enough. You know, I haven't eaten a hamburger since 1976. I really believe that animal agriculture is our biggest problem. If we want to solve climate change, we have to do one thing. Get rid of all the cows. All the cows? Yes, all.

13:52Cows are a big source of methane and nitrous oxide, greenhouse gases that are more potent than carbon dioxide. Cows also outweigh every other wild vertebrate on land by more than a factor of ten. I mean, if we get rid of these friggin' cows, nature can recover. Come on, but how are you going to accomplish that, Pat? Brown stabs at a piece of broccoli and ponders his answer. After decades of successfully tackling some of the toughest problems in science, he's not used to being stumped. I honestly don't know how. Not yet, anyway. But I've got the next 18 months to figure it out. Just weeks later, Pat's sabbatical is underway.

14:31He begins his big mission of change in a very small way, by digging up little plants from the dirt that's just outside of his office. Pat has a long way to go if he wants to save the world. And across the country, another vegan, also named Brown, is about to get a head start on the same mission.

14:57It's fall 2009, Columbia, Missouri. Inside a research lab at the University of Missouri, Ethan Brown looks over the control panel of a refrigerator-sized food extrusion machine. For the past year, he's spent much of his time searching for someone who can answer a big question. Can you build a piece of meat from plants? And he thinks he might have found that someone in work being done by two Mizzou professors, Fu Hung She and Harold Huff. Huff presses a button, and the machine turns on. Ethan, follow me over to the mixing bowl. Six-foot-five Brown squeezes himself between a two-foot-wide canister of liquid nitrogen and a wall filled with pipes and gauges of various sizes.

15:41He meets the balding, mustachioed 58-year-old Huff at the other side of the machine. This thing looks like a giant KitchenAid stand mixer, Professor. Well, it is similar, but bigger. This is technically called a twin-screw food extruder. It has a mixing bowl, and then this metal box, it acts just like a pressure cooker. You know, Kellogg's uses this same kind of machine to make Froot Loops, but in my lab, we use it to make chicken out of dried soybeans. Huff smiles as he slides on a pair of white rubber gloves. He hands another pair to Ethan. This lab's director, Fu Hung Shea, and I worked for more than a decade to finally get this process to work.

16:19Here, let me show you. Huff rolls up the sleeves on the white lab coat and grabs a large white bucket with both of his hands. The bucket is filled to the brim with an unappetizing gray substance that looks like concrete mix. Huff pours it into the extruder's mixing bowl, then dumps a big bucket of water in. He leads Ethan back to the extruder's control pen. Now hit that green button, Ethan. That turns on the mixer. The soybeans, seasoning, and water combine in the mixer. The machine then forces everything through a long metal box. Inside, the soybeans mix into a firm, long patty that slowly slides out of a small gap at the front of the extruder.

17:00Huff rips small pieces off and lays them on a sheet tray. Now this is plant-based chicken. It's cholesterol-friendly. Ethan picks up a strip and studies it carefully. It actually looks a little like chicken, Professor, but it's a little too gray. Ethan pops the strip into his mouth, chews for a while, and swallows. Then, a huge grin spreads across his bearded face. I really taste like chicken. It even chews like chicken. Professor, I want to license this technology from you right now. If we can use it to make plant-based chicken, then we can use it to make a plant-based burger, too. Having found the tech he was looking for, Ethan quits his fuel cell job and signs a licensing deal with Huff, Shea, and the university.

17:46he's ready to bet everything he owns that the future of plant-based meats will be a profitable one. But that bet will nearly cost him everything.

18:21It's November 2010 in Washington, D.C. Inside a drab, gray-walled hotel conference room, dozens of academics and policymakers are watching a speaker give a slideshow presentation about livestock. Well, the next slide shows hundreds of cows in a feeding barn. Now, globally, agriculture accounts for a significant amount of methane emissions. In the back of the room, Stanford professor Pat Brown stands by himself. His arms are folded across his chest, and he's scowling. Pat has organized this conference. He's invited some of the country's top minds, asking them to bring proposals for blunting animal agriculture's impact on the climate.

19:00But Pat doesn't like what he's hearing. Now, my proposal to slash methane emissions from livestock is to create a new paradigm for manure management. If we can store manure better, we can make a real impact on the climate. Brown rolls his eyes. He mumbles under his breath. Bulls**t. Manure management isn't enough. We need to do a whole lot more. Brown walks briskly to the exit, then through the lobby and out the front door. As tourists and taxis pass by, Pat paces. Moments later, he's joined by his friend and Stanford colleague, Michael Eisen. Hey, what's up, Pat? I saw you storm out. Michael, I put this event together because I wanted to find new innovative ways to enact change.

19:46But all we're hearing are the same old, typical, misguided academic approaches to this problem. But Pat, come on, this is an A-list gathering. What were you expecting? I think these are the best ideas in all of academia. And that proves we can't solve this from our ivory towers. I think I might have another way to go about it. You know, the capitalist way. Pat reaches into the pocket of the navy blazer he's wearing and pulls out a folded piece of paper. He unfolds it and hands it to Eisen. You know, the only way to beat big beef is to give people something better to buy. And I think I might have found a way to make something better, something I could build a business around.

20:24That paper shows a sketch of a dissected soy plant. You see these little roots? Yeah. Well, during my sabbatical, I had this hunch there might be a component in root nodules, similar to what's found in meat. So I've been digging up little plants around my office and slicing their roots open. In all of them, I found a compound called leghemoglobin, or just heme. It's the same thing you find in animal tissue, except in animals it's called myoglobin. It gives meat its red color, and I think it's the thing that makes beef so delicious. So how do you build a business out of that? Well, I want to use heme to make beef substitutes, something made from plants that taste identical to beef.

21:07That way meat eaters will buy it and they won't have to give up eating burgers. And because plant-based meats will require fewer resources than cows require, I'll have a big cost advantage. I mean, hell, I'll pull the economic rug right out from under big beef. It'll be a form of legal economic sabotage. Eisen hands the paper back to Pat. Where are you going to get the money for this plant burger business? It'll be easy. I work in Silicon Valley. You can't walk down the street there without tripping over a venture capitalist. The next day, Pat heads back to California and starts drafting his pitch to venture capital firms.

21:43If he gets the money, he'll still have one big problem. This Stanford genius has no clue how to run a business.