Cornell Expert & How Not to Die Author Dr Michael Greger: ‘Plant-Based Meat Is the Ultra-Processed Food Exception’


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Dr Michael Greger, founder of NutritionFacts.org and author of How Not to Die, spoke to the Good Food Institute about misinformation and the link between ultra-processed foods and plant-based meat.

Perhaps the most pertinent public debate around plant-based meat today concerns ultra-processing, a topic that has prompted a shift to more whole foods, pushing industry leaders to reformulate products and talk more about nutrition on-pack.

Ultra-processed food (UPF), a subset of the Nova classification, was never meant to be about health – it simply was a reference to how much processing a product has undergone. But the confluence of processing and ill health has strengthened over recent years, thanks to a host of studies.

This has adversely impacted plant-based meat products, which – because of being ultra-processed – are thought of as unhealthy. Or at least not as healthy as they’ve been made out to be. A wave of misleading media coverage has only bolstered this narrative.

is beyond meat processed
Courtesy: Robbie Lockie

It has dissuaded people from buying meat alternatives, with a 10,000-person survey from 2024 suggesting that more than half of Europeans avoid these products because they’re ultra-processed.

Nutrition experts have been fighting back, highlighting the distinction between food processing and human health, and reiterating the benefits of meat analogues – especially over their animal-derived counterparts.

NutritionFacts.org founder and How Not to Die author Dr Michael Greger, a leading health expert, is one of these voices. He plans to write a book dedicated to the subject, and hit back at the misinformation surrounding meat alternatives in the Good Food Institute’s latest Science of Alt-Protein seminar.

Here are 10 takeaways from the event.

1) UPF effects can be independent of dietary quality

Studies involving nearly 10 million people have linked greater exposure to UPFs to a higher risk of chronic health conditions and premature death. But this association was found after controlling for dietary quality, so it wasn’t just that people were eating “junkier diets”.

“At least some of the adverse consequences of ultra-processed foods may be independent of dietary quality. This could involve things like harmful additives, heat-induced contaminants or packaging chemicals,” said Greger.

2) Plant-based meats are the UPF exception

While there are several factors that could explain the connection between UPFs and ill health. Normally, when you compare ultra-processed products (like Kool-Aid or fruit candy) with the foods they were designed to replace (in this case, water or fruits), the former category tends to perform worse on the health scale.

“However, plant-based meats appear to be the exception – better in most ways compared to the foods they were designed to replace,” said Greger. He cited a 2024 systemic review of nine studies comparing plant-based with conventional meat, and found that the former scored better based on every nutrient scoring system tested. And a 10th study rated plant-based meat three times healthier than animal-derived meat.

plant based meat ultra processed
Courtesy: Dr Michael Greger/GFI

3) Are additives like methylcellulose a concern?

There is growing evidence suggesting toxicity from several artificial food additives, like synthetic dyes and emulsifiers. One of the most commonly used additives in plant-based meat is methylcellulose, known for its binding, gelling and thermoreversible properties. It’s also often used in laxatives.

But while there has been some potential harm found with methylcellulose use in mice, this is at 10 times higher concentrations than what’s found in plant-based meat.

“Reassuringly, vegetarians who eat plant-based meat may actually have lower rates of irritable bowel syndrome than those who don’t consume plant-based meat, suggesting that at least from that standpoint, plant-based meat emulsifiers are not a problem,” said Greger.

4) The sodium comparisons are misleading

Despite plant-based meat having more fibre, lower saturated fat, zero cholesterol and oftentimes comparable protein levels, one area they face scrutiny over is the sodium content. “The most harmful additive currently in use is ironically the most traditional of all, and that’s salt. The number one dietary risk factor for death on planet Earth [is] excessive sodium consumption,” Greger noted.

One study found vegan burgers to have 10 times as much sodium as beef. “But that’s because they were comparing raw beef with pre-seasoned plant-based meats. Now, they could have compared [cooked] burgers to burgers, but intentionally excluded them from the study, skewing the results,” he explained.

When comparing like-for-like, the nutrition expert said the saltiest plant-based meatballs have been found to be lower in sodium than the least salty conventional meatballs.

impossible burger vs beef
Courtesy: Impossible Foods

5) Plant-based meat can provide GLP-1 boost

Nearly three-quarters of Americans over 20 are overweight or obese, which leads to a host of other life-threatening conditions. This has also given rise to GLP-1 agonist drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. Greger cited research showing that a plant-based burger boosts the GLP-1 receptor about 40% higher than a beef burger.

Additionally, even when people swap only a single serving of meat a day with vegan alternatives, they lose significantly more weight. This could be due to fewer branch-chain amino acids, which improves metabolic health, or because the resting metabolic rate in vegetarians has been found to be 20% higher than meat-eaters.

6) Meat analogues enhance diabetes management

Nearly 15% of American adults have diabetes (mostly type 2), while almost two in five American children and teenagers are prediabetic. Greger highlighted the potential of vegan meat products in reducing insulin resistance and managing blood glucose levels in diabetics.

A four-year interventional trial shows that diabetics who replaced animal protein with TVP – a processed meat alternative – find significant improvements in blood sugar. Swapping a single serving of red meat with TVP vastly enhanced insulin resistance, though resting blood glucose levels were only significantly better through a shift to whole soybeans.

In another study, pregnant women with gestational diabetes who swapped half their animal protein for TVP not only saw improvements in insulin resistance and blood sugar control, but also found newborn hospitalisations lowered by 85%.

gut health diet
Courtesy: LaylaBird/Getty Images

7) Plant-based meat is good for the gut

The GLP-1 boom has also put gut health in sharp focus, and meat alternatives can bring major benefits here. They can promote positive changes in the microbiome, helping feed beneficial gut microbes, for example, which produce anti-inflammatory short-chain fatty acids.

Replacing a few servings of meat a day with Quorn’s mycoprotein alternatives has been found to increase the abundance of good gut bacteria and reduce the amount of DNA damage caused by faecal matter.

“According to the latest data, about 85% of ground beef and turkey are contaminated with faecal bacteria at a retail level. And about half a chicken, and a third of pork,” said Greger. “But you don’t have to cook the crap out of plant-based meat because there shouldn’t be any crap to begin with.”

8) Vegan products can reduce healthcare costs

“These days, most of us are dying from diseases of excess, not deficiency,” Greger remarked. Too much salt, too much sugar, too much saturated fat, too many calories. “Higher intake of meat in general – red meat, white meat, processed, unprocessed – [is] also associated with increased risk of death from all causes put together,” he added.

“If people swapped out about 75% of their meat, up to 50,000 lives can be saved every year in high-income countries potentially saving billions of dollars of healthcare costs,” he continued.

9) On-pack labelling requirements can help plant-based food

It was only last week that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed the rollout of a front-of-pack label that scored the saturated fat, sodium and sugar content of a processed food product from low to high. Greger praised on-pack labelling strategies, drawing a parallel with how the fight against trans fats was won when the food industry was forced to list them on their ingredient labels.

He argued that these policies – unwelcome as they might be for many food producers – have forced their hand. They now “actually have to care about sodium”, for example. “It would be nice if companies were like: ‘Maybe we should care about sodium because we don’t like killing people,” Greger said, acknowledging that it’s not something shareholders will ask about.

But front-of-pack labelling means companies can’t “hide behind some health halo”, such as “plant-based” or “natural”.

10) Whole-food plant-based meat is the way to go

Asked what his dream meat alternative would be, Greger said this already existed in the form of plant proteins “made by Mother Nature”, like kidney beans. But he painted a bigger picture.

“Can we make something healthier than a kidney bean?” he said. The way you make something healthier than a lentil is to do something to it that makes people eat more lentils. “Add some potassium chloride to lentils – all of a sudden tastes better you’re eating more lentils,” Greger suggested.

This could be complemented with some healthy fat, like a nut butter, and added fibre – or at least a mechanism that strips less fibre away. “Just more whole healthy foods in people’s bodies would be ideal,” he said.

Author

  • Anay Mridul

    Anay is Green Queen's resident news reporter. Originally from India, he worked as a vegan food writer and editor in London, and is now travelling and reporting from across Asia. He's passionate about coffee, plant-based milk, cooking, eating, veganism, food tech, writing about all that, profiling people, and the Oxford comma.

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