If you are the person who has secretly imagined the taste of human flesh but has always kept yourself quiet over this indulgence, then this is your time to fulfill this secret wish as this Swedish-based company is making human flesh-flavored burgers that are actually based on a plant diet.
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Are you the person who has secretly always imagined how human flesh tastes? Well, this Swedish company Oumph! has a solution: a plant-based burger patty made to taste like human meat.
As the New York Post reported, the company released this bizarre flavor of burger on Halloween 2021 which was released with a gruesome horror-themed advertisement on their YouTube channel.
Oumph!/YouTube
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And oh they can add an additional modifier to their plant-based human meat burger — award winner.
In the summer of 2022, the company received a Silver Brand Experience and Activation Lion at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity for its flesh-textured burger.
Oumph!/YouTube
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Honestly, the whole idea of flesh-flavored meat is quite off-putting, but when it comes to creativity, then hands down it is the best. However, we can't help but question that why a company would want to create meat that tastes like human flesh.
Thankfully, Henrik Åkerman, the global brand leader at Oumph!, had an answer: “As a small brand we need to be bold and ready to push some boundaries to breakthrough, and I think this campaign is a good example of us doing just that.”
Oumph!/YouTube
Now with its creative idea, the company has managed to attract attention, it also serves as a message to people who denounce plant-based meats as not actually tasting like the meat they’re trying to replicate.
Tomás Ostiglia, executive creative director at creative agency LOLA MullenLowe, the company behind the burger’s advertising campaign, called this “a claim most are tired of hearing and even more tired of being disappointed by. And of course, a solution was to make a tasty plant-based human meat burger. The bravery of launching a risky idea that is 100 percent on-brand is always rewarded.”
Oumph!/YouTube
The idea, Åkerman said, was to show people that any meat — even human meat — can be replicated by plants.
The fake meat itself was made with soy, mushrooms, wheat protein, plant-based fats, and “a mysterious spice mix,” Insider reported.
“Our mission is to change how people eat, and it is our duty to use creativity as a tool to make this change happen,” Åkerman said.
Per Vegconomist, Oumph! first launched their plant-based pulled pork in their home country of Sweden to immediate success, after which they began to expand their operations all across Europe, including the Netherlands, Germany, and the U.K.
By 2020, their sales had surged 400 percent in the U.K., and in early 2021, they expanded beyond Europe into Australia.
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In June 2020, they were acquired by LIVEKINDLY co., telling Vegconomist, “Our goal has always been to transform the food systems in a way that the planet can ultimately feed ten billion people by 2050, and the LIVEKINDLY co. work with the same goal in mind.”
Hitting the jackpot with its sales, the company has added a wide array of plant-based meat alternatives including smokehouse-style ribs, bacon bits, buffalo bites, kebabs, and burgers.
Ideally, Oumph!’s co-founder and head of progress strategy Anna-Kajsa Lidell said, the company hopes that by creating plant-based meat alternatives that not only capture the taste of the meat they’re based on but also the texture, they can offer a viable alternative to skeptics.
Other factors that they have taken into consideration are sustainability, health, and cruel farming practices as further incentives for meat-eaters to branch out of their comfort zones and try an alternative.
“As consumers become more aware of the widespread use of antibiotics within industrial animal farming, I believe that consumers will make more selective choices in what they eat,” Lidell said. “I believe many people will join the plant-based movement largely for health reasons, and not for the more holistic reasons… I think it will be more common that people don’t put a strict label on their diet, but have the aim of eating smarter, both for personal health reasons and for the health of the planet.”
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The company’s “human meat” campaign was, ultimately, just another stepping stone on the path to reaching this goal.
Oumph! co-founder, corporate chef, and head of innovation Anders Linden described the prospect of developing the flesh-tasting burger as “exciting, and a little bit scary.”
“This is our ultimate and weird way of showing that it’s possible to create any type of food by using just plants.”