Image: Unsplash/Maude Frédérique Lavoie

Trying to eat a healthy diet with an eye toward sustainability is bewildering these days. The recipe for perplexity includes long-running arguments over the nutritional and environmental merits and demerits of meat vs. plant-based foods, the supposed need for more protein around the world, and the latest spicy ingredient: fake meat billed as being better for you and solving all our global food-production problems.

An international team of experts recently cooked up a fresh take on the burgeoning global alternative-protein industry, including imitation meat products like the Impossible Burger and the Beyond Burger, as well as emerging plant-based and lab-created substitutes for other animal products.

“Fake meat is a ‘silver bullet’ technology that may not be as sustainable as its advocates claim,” the report concludes. “Fake meat will not save the planet.”

The data-driven report, from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), questions and debunks several industry claims and commonly held beliefs. While it’s unlikely to end any food fights among businesses, governments, environmentalists and various advocacy groups, it offers tasty new tidbits of information that you and I can consume before our next meal.

Among the specific criticisms of plant-based protein substitutes:

• They contain so many ingredients, including salt and various oils, that nutritionists may consider them ultra-processed, a category of food to be avoided.
• The use of soy, palm oil, or wheat may worsen chemical-intensive crop production.
• Creating the products is often energy-intensive.

“Alternative proteins are promising reduced damage to the climate. However the evidence for these claims is limited and speculative,” the report notes. “Indeed they may cause more harm than good, and risk entrenching domination of food systems by giant agri-business firms, increasing dependency on fossil fuel energy, promoting standardized (Westernized) diets of processed foods, driving loss of livelihoods for livestock farmers in the global South, and reinforcing industrial supply chains that harm people and the planet.”

Dubious problems and misleading solutions

The report, generated by two dozen scientists and experts in nutrition, global food policy, sustainability and other fields, calls out the following claimed problems and solutions as over-generalized or misleading, despite being widely repeated as fact:

The report questions the validity of each of these supposed problems and proposed solutions. Graphic: IPES-Food

“I think this report is well done, well written, and well presented,” says Marion Nestle, PhD, an emeritus professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. Though she took issue with some of the wording in the report, Nestle calls its analysis “deep” and its recommendations “sensible.”

Alternative protein products are already big business, generating $4.2 billion in global sales in 2020 and projected to grow six-fold by 2025. The industry has been backed by wealthy tech entrepreneurs like Sergy Brin and Richard Branson and the governments of China, Europe and the United States. Big meat companies like Tyson and Cargill are all investing in alt-meat products, dispelling any illusions that it is a cottage industry.

Key conclusions of the analysis:

There’s lots of hype about meat and protein.
It’s narrowly focused on CO2 [carbon dioxide emissions].
It ignores how food is produced.
It ignores differences between world regions.
It fails to see the whole food system.
It’s focused on simplistic silver-bullet solutions.

The report also cites society’s overemphasis on protein.

“For decades, the perceived need for more protein has led to distractions and distortions in development programs, flawed marketing and nutritional campaigns, and calls to increase the production and trade of meat, dairy, and protein-enriched foods,” it states. “Today, the evidence clearly shows that there is no global ‘protein gap’: protein is only one of many nutrients missing in the diets of those suffering from hunger and malnutrition, and insufficiency of these diets is primarily a result of poverty and access.”

The recommendations:

Focus on achieving a transformation to “sustainable food systems”— not a “protein transition”
Prioritize reforms that deliver on all aspects of sustainability starting at regional level
Reclaim public resources from “big protein,” realign innovation pathways with the public good, and reset the debate.

What’s in fake meat?

Plant-based meat substitutes are nothing like an old-fashioned veggie burger. While the protein is typically derived from soy or peas, manufacturers add other key ingredients to make the alternative products taste and feel like real meat.

• Indigestible fibers such as methylcellulose, which is already used in many food products and as a laxative, add texture.
• Leghemoglobin, an iron-packing molecule extracted from soy, beets or other roots, helps them look bloody.

Neither of those ingredients are deemed bad for us. But the Impossible Burger and the Beyond Burger, to cite just two of many meat substitutes, each contain more than 20 ingredients.

While nutrition labels on ground beef versus substitute burger “meat” can appear virtually the same, a deeper analysis finds “large differences” in vitamins, amino acids, fat types and other important building blocks of your body’s biochemistry, according to a 2021 study in the journal Scientific Reports.

“It is important for consumers to understand that these products should not be viewed as nutritionally interchangeable, but that’s not to say that one is better than the other,” said Stephan van Vliet, PhD, a Duke University researcher who says he eats a plant-heavy diet but also meat. “Plant and animal foods can be complementary, because they provide different nutrients.”

Protein is not a food

Amid what’s sure to be an ongoing debate over the value of meat substitutes for nutrition and sustainability, Marion Nestle offers this important morsel:

Her beef with the IPES-Food report is that it uses the word protein as a stand-in for foods that contain protein, implying the benefit of a particular food type is based on a single component.

“Protein is a nutrient, not a food,” Nestle writes in her daily blog, Food Politics. “What about vegetables and grains? They have protein too. Legumes are particularly good sources; grains have nourished entire civilizations.”

You and I could argue all day about what’s the best diet (that’s what the comments section is for!). In fact, there’s no such thing. Eating well, much research has shown, involves focusing on a variety of protein sources, lots of fruits and vegetables, avoiding highly processed foods, and ingesting most things in moderation as a healthy way of eating.

That much shouldn’t be up for debate.

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