Since I started taking more interest in nutrition and eating clean food, a number of well meaning people asked me why I didn’t go all the way and go for a fully vegetarian diet. Many suggested various meat substitute products “which really taste like meat”.

After all vegetables are healthy, so these products must be healthier than actual meat, right?

Tastes like chicken?

Not being sure, I looked up a few products to see what they’re really made of. Keep in mind I’m not a nutritionist and this is not a scientific study. Any observations below are just my layman’s opinion.

What’s in the mix?

First, I tried finding a baseline to compare. Since many of these products seem to come as packaged meals, the ingredient list includes more stuff than the meat substitute itself. In the end I settled on burger patties as they’re about the simplest you can get. The companies I looked at were listed as producers on a vegan web site.

The first burger I found had 31 ingredients, not counting composites like mixed oils and vegetable extracts. None of the ingredients were actual vegetables – at least, not in a form I would recognize as a vegetable if I saw it on a shelf. Between isolates, extracts, powders, and other stuff the ingredient list looked more like a chemistry experiment than a mix of vegetables.

This lot is apparently held together by the delicious-sounding Methylcellulose, an emulsifier which is “is not digestible, not toxic, and not an allergen”. Which is a nice way of saying that bit goes through you without doing anything to you.

For comparison, a burger patty from a popular fast food franchise has three ingredients – beef, salt and pepper. The beef is probably not the best quality and the way they’re cooked and served is not great, but at least those are ingredients I would recognize as food by sight.

Another meatless burger had 26 ingredients, most of which at least appeared to be actual vegetables. On the downside, it also included molasses and cane syrup. This is a small percentage of the content of one serving, but if you’re watching your sugar intake it’s good to be aware of it – every little bit adds up.

Soy features heavily in many of these products. While the debate on the health benefits or risks of soy is quite intense, there’s little conclusive evidence either way. It should not be harmful for an adult human in the dose that could be taken in by eating normal portions, but the jury is still out.

Expecting or breastfeeding mothers and parents of small children may want to watch out though. Regular consumption of soy products exposes developing children to considerable levels of plant estrogen.

The bottom line

So, where does that leave me? In my case, I’m only interested in any health advantage these products may offer. The ingredient lists alone are enough to put me off them. I sincerely doubt that something with that many ingredients is any healthier than simple, fresh meat and vegetables.

Vegetable based meat is not meat, and after that amount of processing, it’s a stretch to call it veg. Having no ethical issues with eating meat, I’d much rather eat real meat when I want meat, and eat real vegetables most of the time. When I want to avoid meat, real vegetables do the trick too. Vegetables taste good and can be prepared in a variety of ways. What’s the point of ruining perfectly good ones for the sake of making them taste like something else?

If you’d prefer to stick to vegetarian only and like the taste of something different sometimes, grabbing a substitute won’t do much harm – just be aware of what you are eating.

Even if you disagree with all of the above – and if you do, I would love to hear your opinions – there’s one point I’d like you to take away from this rant: don’t assume something is healthy just because it says vegetarian or meat free on the packaging. Check the labels, read up, and make your choices. While none of these products are likely to kill you, you could save yourself some cash you would otherwise be shelling out for the illusion of healthiness.

Image Credits

Header: “Veggie burger” – Shpernik088 – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license
“Dry TVP Flakes” – NTK – Public domain.
“A picture of a piece of steak with several cuts made into it” – FootosVanRobin – Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 License.
“Frutas e Vegetais” – Olearys – Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license