Karlie Kloss Has a Summer Barbecue with a Silicon Valley It Food

Elise Taylor
Updated
Karlie Kloss and her family enjoyed a Beyond Burger from the Silicon Valley start-up Beyond Meat.

On Instagram, Karlie Kloss is indulging in a traditional summer pastime: the family barbecue. At first, it looked like a run-of-the-mill affair: there’s shared food, soda, and lots of condiments. But the burgers were unusual—and a Silicon Valley It food.

Instead of traditional beef, Karlie and her relatives ate Beyond Burgers, a plant-based patty from the food start-up Beyond Meat. But don’t call it a veggie burger; Beyond Meat aims to create a product that looks, cooks, and tastes exactly like meat, but. . . it isn’t. The animal protein is swapped for pea protein. A bit of beet gives it a red, juicy color, and coconut oil and potato starch make it chewy.

Kloss is an avid fan of the company (which reached 72 million dollars in funding this winter and has big name investors like Bill Gates and Twitter's Evan Williams), not just for the taste of its burgers, but as a champion of women in S.T.E.M. This spring, she interviewed Beyond Meat’s engineer, Lina Pruitt, at their headquarters in California for a Kode with Klossy episode.

Studies have long shown that cutting back on red meat is good for you. But lately, the debate over meat-eating has gone beyond health issues into ethical ones as well. Take the new documentary Eating Animals, which explores the detrimental effects meat has on the planet: according to the film, somewhere between 14 percent and half of all climate change is linked back to animal production, especially methane emissions from cows. Or Camas Davis’s new memoir, Killing It, which questions the wasteful—and often inhumane—way Americans consume meat. “Buying it and not asking any questions or thinking anything about where it came from is a big part of the problem,” she told Vogue in an interview. “I also think demanding cheap meat is a bad thing because you’re then supporting a system of meat production that is inhumane, bad for the planet, and bad for us.” It’s become clearer that cutting back on meat, or changing the way you eat it, can only help yourself, and the world.

There’s just one problem: burgers taste really good. Can any plant-based burger, including Beyond Meat, live up to its standard? Well, maybe ask Mr. Kloss: “I can’t tell the difference,” he said on his daughter’s Instagram story.

If you decide to try a meatless substitute this summer weekend, chef Ariane Duarte recommends throwing herbs like rosemary on the coals or the fire, “to infuse those roasted herbs into your burger,” and grilling your toppings (onions, tomatoes, even lettuce) to ensure a smokey flavor.

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