It is said that consuming plant-based meats can help with lowering environmental impact. But how about nutritionally? How is it compared to the natural food sources?
While plant-based meats are formulated to mimic real meats where they tend to be fortified with nutrients such as vitamins and minerals and have 0mg cholesterol because it isn't from an animal source, there are other concerns that you must know.
What's plant-based meats?
Plant-based meats are often made of isolated proteins (obtained from legumes, seeds, and cereals), as well as purified fats and oils (obtained from coconuts, cocoa fruit, sunflower seeds, and rapeseed) to imitate the taste, colour, texture and experience of eating real meat.
Although many of these ingredients used can be seen as a good source of dietary nutrients, they also contain anti-nutrients that are present in plant tissues. They include oxalates, phytates, tannins, and other antagonists. These antinutrients reduce the body's ability to absorb various nutrients such as iron, calcium, zinc. So, even if it is fortified, you may not be able to absorb them.
In addition, most plant meats available in the supermarket are manufactured into sausages, burger patties and nuggets and contain higher amounts of sodium, oils (usually coconut oils which are high in saturated fats), food additives such as colourings, flavourings and binding agents compared to real meat. These products are considered ultra-processed.
Several studies showed that individuals who opt to avoid animal-based foods, tend to choose ultra-processed plant-based meats over natural plant-based sources which compromises the nutritional quality of the diet. Moreover, ultra-processed foods have been associated with several health problems such as obesity, LDL (i.e. Low Density Lipoprotein) Cholesterol, higher risk of hypertension & heart diseases, etc.
In contrast, real meats have been long regarded as a good source of readily bioavailable nutrients (i.e. readily available for the body to absorb). Due to the amount of meat eaten and frequency that meat is eaten, the red meat has been criticized as a potential risk factor for the development of various diseases.
Does consuming plant-based meats really help the environment?
Consuming natural plant-based food sources such as beans and bean products such as tofu would be a better choice. These natural food sources tend to have low carbon footprint and provide the various essential nutrients when they are carefully paired.
There was a report showed that plant-based meats have a higher carbon footprint compared to chicken & eggs in Singapore's context. Although the report did a projection that when there is a substitution from red meats (where they define as pork, duck, beef, mutton) to plant-based meats there would likely to reduce environmental impact, we would hypothesis that taking other protein-rich food such as chicken, eggs, bean and bean products which are lower in carbon footprint compared to plant-based meats would reduce it further.
Key Takeaway
When you dig deeper into whether or not plant-based meats are good alternatives, you would find that it isn't exactly how the media and reports portray it. There are better alternatives when we want our diets to be nutritionally balanced.
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