Plant-Based Meats, Human Health, and Climate Change

Abstract

There is wide scale concern about the effects of red meat on human health and climate change. Plant-based meat alternatives, designed to mimic the sensory experience and nutritional value of red meat, have recently been introduced into consumer markets. Plant-based meats are marketed under the premise of environmental and human health benefits and are aimed appeal to a broad consumer base. Meat production is critiqued for its overuse of water supplies, landscape degradation, and greenhouse gas emission, and depending on production practices, environmental footprints may be lower with plant-based meat alternatives. Life-cycle analyses suggest that the novel plant-based meat alternatives have an environmental footprint that may be lower than beef finished in feedlots, but higher than beef raised on well-managed pastures. In this review, we discuss the nutritional and ecological impacts of eating plant-based meat alternatives vs. animal meats. Most humans fall on a spectrum of omnivory: they satisfy some nutrient requirements better from plant foods, while needs for other nutrients are met more readily from animal foods. Animal foods also facilitate the uptake of several plant-derived nutrients (zinc and iron), while plant nutrients can offer protection against potentially harmful compounds in cooked meat. Thus, plant and animal foods operate in symbiotic ways to improve human health. The mimicking of animal foods using isolated plant proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals likely underestimates the true nutritional complexity of whole foods in their natural state, which contain hundreds to thousands of nutrients that impact human health. Novel plant-based meat alternatives should arguably be treated as meat alternatives in terms of sensory experience, but not as true meat replacements in terms of nutrition. If consumers wish to replace some of their meat with plant-based alternatives in the diet (a "flexitarian approach") this is unlikely to negatively impact their overall nutrient status, but this also depends on what other foods are in their diet and the life stage of the individual.

Plant Protein and Plant-Based Meat Alternatives: Consumer and Nutrition Professional Attitudes and Perceptions

“…However, in saying this, it is important to consider an individual's habitual diet when assessing nutrient risk [34]. As concluded by van Vliet et al, if consumers were to follow a flexitarian diet, it is unlikely that unfortified PBMA would negatively impact overall nutrient status [35]. Therefore, fortification of PBMAs with iron and vitamin B12 may assist with insufficient intakes and potential nutrient deficiencies within a population; however, on an individual level, nutritional adequacy of the entire diet must be considered.…”

Plant-Based Seafood Analogs

“…Plant-based diets or diets higher in plant foods, rather than animal foods, have been recently associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in the general population [ 60 , 61 ], promoting weight loss and preventing overweight and obesity [ 62 , 63 ]. Also, intake of micronutrients like vitamin C, vitamin E, magnesium, folate and potassium in particular, was found to be higher when consuming plant foods [ 16 , 64 ].…”

“…The market of plant-based meat analogs, or meat alternatives, has been steadily increasing [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. Intense research and product development efforts are aimed at mimicking the structure, texture or sensorial properties of whole-muscle meat, or processed meat products, such as burgers, patties, sausage, and nuggets, including the ones of fish-meat and seafood [ 14 , 17 ].…”

A metabolomics comparison of plant-based meat and grass-fed meat indicates large nutritional differences despite comparable Nutrition Facts panels

“…To meet these demands in a healthy and sustainable manner, it is put forward that diets would benefit from a shift towards consumption of more plant-based foods and less meat, particularly in Western countries 1 . This has raised questions whether novel plant-based meat alternatives represent healthy and nutritionally adequate alternatives to meat 2 – 5 .…”