Impossible Foods has filmed a hilarious spoof video to respond to Super Bowl’s ad that claims plant-based beef contains chemical laxatives.

 It all started with The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) running an ad targeting plant-based “meat”.

According to CCF, the Super Bowl 2020 ad is meant to educate viewers that plant-based meat is not natural and is laden with chemical ingredients.

In the commercial, a spelling bee contestant is tasked with spelling ‘methylcellulose’, which the girl fails to comprehend.

The moderator explains methylcellulose is “a chemical laxative that is also used in synthetic meat” taking a jibe at plant-based meat patties that use the ingredient as a thickening and texture agent.

A narrative then states: “You might need a PhD to understand what’s in synthetic meat.

“Fake bacon and burgers can have dozens of chemical ingredients. If you can’t spell it or pronounce it, maybe you shouldn’t be eating it.”

Spoof Impossible Foods Video

To counter the video, the Impossible Foods team filmed an in-house parody with the CEO Pat Brown playing the spelling bee moderator.

In the video, he asks a contestant to spell “poop.”

He then goes on to give an elaborate description, “Poop. … The stinky brown stuff that comes out of your butt. Poop is a mixture of incompletely digested food and billions of bacteria, expelled from the bowels of animals. There’s lots of poop in the places where pigs and cows and chickens are killed and chopped to bits to make meat. And there’s poop in the ground beef we make from cows. Poop.” 

The video ends with a cheeky retort: “Just because a kid can spell poop, doesn’t mean you or your kids should be eating it.”

Clarifying the reason the team filmed a video, Impossible Foods’ chief communications officer Rachel Konrad said: “They did such a lame, dopey, sad job with such an easy-to-parody script.

“So we thought we’d have a little bit of fun with it.” 

The parody video has been viewed around  22,070 on YouTube.

‘Campaign is getting to them’

 According to CCF, the commercial has touched a raw nerve, which is why Impossible Foods rushed to give its response.

“It’s obvious our campaign is getting to them, or they wouldn’t have rushed to produce a whole counter-commercial in a couple of days,” said James Bowers, creative director for the Center for Consumer Freedom.

“At the end of the day, their spot is an effort to throw poop at the wall to see if it distracts consumers from its ingredient list.”

“They mislead consumers by implying that this is just plants and vegetables mixed up in a way to form a patty,” he continued.

“In reality, there’s a lot more processing and additives necessary in order to make plants or other things taste like meat.”

According to Bowers, Impossible Foods will have to make more parodies to counter CCF, as it intends to continue raising awareness of the “ultra-processed nature” of synthetic meats.

“We are planning to run more ads, so [Impossible] should be prepared to do more parodies,” added Bowers.

 “We are doing a lot more to educate consumers on this topic.”

Response

On the other hand, Konrad, believes the meat industry is feeling the pressure with the rising popularity of the alt-meat market.

“The incumbent industry is very scared,” Konrad told Business Insider.

 “And historically when there’s an incumbent industry on the wrong side of history, whether that’s tobacco or coal or whatever, you go to a group like the Center for Consumer Freedom and you ask them to spread fear and doubt about your existential threat.”

She added that the company always responds to any attack so as to dispel doubts and misinformation about their products.

“We always respond to attacks against us,” she said. 

“We have an all-new product and people are curious about it. People deserve total transparency, so if there is any confusion about our product, we seek immediately to clarify it.”

 “Meat from animals doesn’t have fiber, our product does,” she added.

 “That’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”

Methylcellulose

The ingredient in question-methylcellulose is a common dietary fiber derived from plants and is an accepted food additive in baked goods, and processed foods.

The World Health Organization declares it harmless to health.

The Centre for Consumer Freedom

The group calls itself a nonprofit “devoted to promoting personal responsibility and protecting consumer choices,” and claims on its website, to be supported by “restaurants, food companies, and thousands of individual consumers.” 

However, in an opinion piece featured  in The New York Times in 2006,  Michael Pollan stated: “The Center for Consumer Freedom is actually not a consumer group but an astro-turf (that’s faux grassroots) advocacy group funded by Big Food to discredit those in the media and government who would do anything—including litigate, regulate, and, apparently, express disagreeable opinions—to interfere with the industry’s freedom to make as much money as possible selling us junk food.”

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