Plant Based Meats: Removing the Health Hal0

👩‍🍳A nutritionist's perspective on plant-based meats.
🥬The #1 reason people choose to buy plant-based meats over animal meats is that they believe plant-based meats are healthier.
🥦Nutrition Profile: Unprocessed meats (steak, chicken, turkey, etc.) are some of the most nutritionally dense foods one can consume. 👉🏼Plant-based meats are trickier to determine in terms of how the body processes nutrients. Although vitamins and minerals are added to the burgers to make up for the lack of these ingredients, whole foods contain thousands of compounds that aren't listed on a nutrition label, which assist the body in absorbing the nutrients contained in animal meat.
❗️Risk of iron deficiency: Plants contain iron in a form called non-heme, while animal meats contain iron in a form called heme. Heme iron is absorbed by the body at a rate of around 25-30%, while non-heme iron is absorbed at a rate of 2-9%.
🔬Plant-based burgers are considered an ultra-processed food, because they consist of proteins extracted from plant-based sources in a lab, mixed with additives such as fillers and binders, none of which are "real" food.
🧪Additives------
💩Aside from its use to create bulk in burgers, methylcellulose can also be used as a laxative.
🩸Leghemoglobin creates the "bleeding effect" in the meat, and has little research backing up the health of the product, and some have linked it to colon cancer.
🌱Soy is an ingredient that affects individuals differently, depending on hormone balance. Soy isoflavones are much weaker than estrogen receptors in the body but can bind to estrogen receptors and disrupt estrogenic activity.
🥔Potato starch adds roughly 30 calories/7 calories per gram, without any added nutritional value.
🤢Cultured Dextrose: helps to prohibit the growth of mold, but can also have negative effects on the gut.
🧂Most plant-based burgers contain 2-3x's the amount of saturated fat and sodium, as compared to animal-based burgers.

👩‍💼Bottom line: Eating a plant-based diet isn't bad. However, there are significant nutritional considerations one must take to ensure that appropriate amount of vitamins/minerals are consumed/absorbed for optimal health.