I keep seeing these advertisements on television for meatless burgers. ?They seem to be gaining ground among the public, or maybe they’re just trying to place a stake in the ground. Either way, it seems that people are at least trying these. Heck, even Burger King is promoting a meatless Whopper. I wonder how those are selling?  I was asked if we could try one of the major brands so I added it to the grocery list. The price wasn’t bad: $3.89 for four burgers and I thought that was pretty decent, until I got home.

What I discovered is that the four burgers in the package have a net weight of 9.5 ounces, considerably less than a pound so not as good a deal as I thought. I also looked at the nutrition facts and discovered that there is only nine grams of protein per burger. That may sound okay, but I normally buy 90% fat free hamburger and each serving (4 ounces) contains twenty-two grams. Quite a difference. When looking at the price based on weight, even though the ground beef was $4.38 per pound (ouch!) the price per ounce was of course considerable less ( 27 cents versus 40).

So there’s the basic economics and some of the nutrition. Of course, the ground beef had more calories per serving than the veggie burgers (200 versus 110) but then there’s the weight discrepancy to take into account so I don’t think there’s a difference ounce for ounce.

As for taste, the vegetable based burgers are actually tasty and  while at the grocery store I discovered that they come in a few different flavors. They also seemed to have the texture of meat and I think that if I didn’t actually know what these actually were, I would not have ever guessed I was not actually eating a meat hamburger.

Would I buy them again? I don’t know but I might keep a package in the freezer. I don’t think these will become a staple in my home as we use ground beef for a lot of other dishes and buying the veggie brand of  ground beef is still more expensive overall and that’s what it really comes down to for me. I also don’t know that these are any better for me than traditional ground beef, no matter the propaganda I hear in the ads on TV.