Micronutrients & recovery
Novel plant-based meat alternatives should be treated as sensory meat alternatives but not as true nutritional replacements for animal meat due to differences in nutrient bioavailability and complex food matrix interactions.
If you are swapping animal meat for plant-based alternatives to improve health, recognize that you are gaining sensory satisfaction but may lose specific nutrient benefits. To maintain nutritional status, ensure your overall diet includes diverse plant sources to compensate for lower bioavailability of nutrients like B12, Iron, and Zinc, or consider supplementation if you are not consuming fortified products.
Novel plant-based meat alternatives should arguably be treated as meat alternatives in terms of sensory experience, but not as true meat replacements in terms of nutrition.
Why this rating
Based on a comprehensive review of existing literature regarding nutrient bioavailability and food matrix effects.
Source
Plant-Based Meats, Human Health, and Climate Change
Stephan van Vliet et al. · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · 2020
DOI 10.3389/fsufs.2020.00128
More from this paper
- Plant-based meat alternatives generally provide lower bioavailability of key micronutrients (B12, Iron, Zinc) compared to animal meat, even when fortified, due to food matrix effects and anti-nutrients.Good
- Plant-based meat alternatives may have a lower environmental footprint than feedlot beef but a higher footprint than pasture-raised beef, and their nutritional complexity is underestimated by reductionist formulation.Moderate
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