
- Researchers report that plant-based meat alternatives offer greater improvement to cardiovascular risk factors when compared with real meat.
- They say that plant-based meat alternatives can improve cholesterol levels and have not been linked to higher blood pressure, despite the sodium content of some products.
- While plant-based meat alternatives are often ultra-processed, experts say they are lower in saturated fats and higher in fiber when compared to real meat.
Plant-based meat alternatives improve cardiovascular risk factors when compared with animal meat.
That’s according to a review of studies published today in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology that reports that while there is considerable variability in the nutrition profile of plant-based meat alternatives (PBMAs), they tend to have a more heart healthy nutrition profile when compared with real meat.
“Commercially available PBMAs are nutritionally diverse but generally have a cardioprotective nutritional profile relative to meat, including less saturated fatty acid and more fiber per serving. The available randomized clinical trials evaluating PBMAs are promising and suggest that replacing meat with PBMAs can improve cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors, including a reduction in low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C),” the study authors wrote.
“PBMAs do not seem to negatively affect other CVD risk factors such as blood pressure, despite their classification as ultra processed foods and the high sodium content of many products,” the researchers added. “These improvements in CVD risk factors may result in a lower risk of developing CVD; however, there is a need for high-quality long-term studies evaluating CVD outcomes.”
Christopher Gardner, PhD, is the chair of the American Heart Association’s Nutrition Committee as well as a professor of medicine and researcher in nutrition at Stanford University in California.
He told Medical News Today that there are many qualities that can make plant-based meat alternatives a healthy choice when compared with meat.
“Saturated fat is lower, unsaturated fat is higher and fiber is higher in the PBMA relative to animal meat – all of those would suggest being “healthier” for cardiometabolic risk factors than animal meat,” said Gardner, who was not involved in the research.
“Meat and animal foods contain carnitine and choline, which are precursors for TMAO, and those are absent in PBAM. TMAO has emerged as a potentially important new risk factor for heart disease. That could be another reason for a plausible benefit of PBMA,” he added.
Trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) is a substance that is produced when red meat is digested. It may raise the risk of cardiovascular problems.
In 2020, Gardner was part of a
“The Beyond Meat lowered LDL-cholesterol, TMAO and weight, relative to animal meat,” he said.
Gardner argues that although PBMAs can be highly processed or ultra processed, that should not detract from their potential benefits when being used in place of meat.
“For decades public health professionals have advised Americans to eat less meat. Americans have eaten, and continue to eat, more animal meat than almost any country in the world. Public health efforts to move the needle on this have had very limited success. The new generation of PBMAs have taken the approach of not simply being an alternative, but being an alternative that looks, smells and tastes as similar as possible to animal meat, with the hope of making it more likely that people would choose this over animal meat,” Gardner said.
“Healthy vs. unHealthy is a false dichotomy. Good vs. evil is the same. Unprocessed vs. ultraprocessed is the same,” he added. “Some foods that can be characterized as meeting the criteria for ‘ultraprocessed’ have a better nutrient profile than others. Some PBMA happen to have a better nutrient profile than many of the other ultra-processed foods. If demonizing PBMAs because they are ultra-processed foods leads people to consume animal meat instead of PBMAs, I think this is an inappropriate use of the intention of cautioning people against ultra-processed foods.”