Impossible Foods Fires Back at TV Spot

What’s more disgusting, methylcellulose or poop?

Impossible Foods and a meat-industry lobbying agency have traded disparaging videos, each with a spelling-bee theme, alleging that repulsive components are in each other’s products.

A TV spot by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a lobbying group that advocates for the fast-food, meat, tobacco and alcohol industries, features a spelling bee where a child struggles to spell the word “methylcellulose.” The spot, which aired in the Washington, D.C. market during the Super Bowl, explains that methylcellulose is a component in meat-analogue plant products and declares that “if you can't spell it or pronounce it, maybe you shouldn't be eating it.”

Impossible Foods, a leading meat-analogue processor, shot back with this YouTube video posted the next day:

It features Impossible CEO Pat Brown – or an actor who strongly resembles him – asking a child to spell the word “poop.”

“There’s lots of poop in the places where pigs and cows and chickens are killed and chopped to bits to make meat,” Brown or his doppleganger explains to the nonplussed little girl. “And there’s lots of poop in the ground beef we make from cows.”

The description beneath the YouTube video reads, “Did you see Big Beef’s #BigGame disinformation campaign? Get the real poop on beef here.”