In another strike against urban chicken lovers, today Whole Foods stores in California began selling Beyond Eggs, a plant-based egg substitute made from ground-up peas, sorghum, and “a few other ingredients.” Backed by high-profile investors like Bill Gates and Paypal’s Peter Thiel, Beyond Eggs can “replace eggs in everything from cakes to mayonnaise” without any filthy chickens getting involved.
Beyond Eggs (and their soon-to-be released Just Mayo) are creations of Hampton Creek, a company with a poetic mission:
Welcome to Hampton Creek.
Where doing good actually tastes good.
And it all started with...
They look out for you.
Sometimes even inspire you.
So when our founder’s lifelong best friend told him
that eggs contribute to higher cholesterol and
come from chickens crowded in small spaces,
he brought together a team
to create something that is just, well, better.
Hampton Foods founder Josh Tetrick admits the process of creating the chicken-less egg was not un-disgusting:
“Our first attempts weren’t great, we tried to make a muffin using a mix of plants,” said Tetrick. “Ours tasted really gummy, and didn’t have the ‘bounce’ we wanted. Our mayonnaise would not hold the oil and egg together, so had what looked like liquid syrup. Scrambled eggs were even worse - they just wouldn’t congeal at all, and had a really bad aftertaste.”
The firm ultimately hopes to help developing countries in the process of growing “plant eggs” to help increase food supply and decrease nutritional deficiencies. They are also still struggling with developing an “artificial scrambled egg” because it turns out that plants aren’t really scrambled eggs.
[Image via Shutterstock]