Jonathan Steedman (00:02.082)

Hey food groupies, welcome back. Today we're talking about fake meats, which is probably going to be a very quick chat now that I think about it, but I think it's an important chat. So it's a question that comes up a lot and you know, particularly a lot of people moving away from eating meat or their, you know, for environmental reasons or honestly financial reasons. And so this is not here. If you eat meat, great. If you don't eat meat, great. I'm not here to discuss that. What I am here to discuss is

whether these fake meat alternatives are healthy or not and how to approach them because it's a question I get a lot. And so, yes, I'm specifically talking about fake meat alternatives. I'm not talking about necessarily vegetarian protein sources. So just to define those like beans, lentils, legume, like not those. Tofu, ugh. I guess I'm still talking about tofu here even though I don't really consider tofu a fake meat. It's kind of just...

a vegetarian protein alternative. But a lot of the arguments and criticism that gets leveled at fake meats kind of also include tofu. you'll probably find what we will talk about will be relevant for tofu and not just like tofu, tempeh, natto, those sorts of fermented soy products. But I guess what I'm mostly going to focus on is things like vegetarian sausages beyond meat, or the fake mints or the

you know, all of the fo chicken, all of those sorts of products and talk about those, right? So the first thing is as always, we need to distinguish between, there's a wide range of fake meats and then nutritional value is quite different across the range, right? So I'll talk through a little bit later, like maybe a couple of specific nutritional things to be on the lookout for how you can start to differentiate

between the fake meats that are more nutrient dense and potentially healthier versus the fake meats that are just more of sometimes food, right? And so we'll go through that. But the first thing I wanted to say is what frustrates me the most about this argument? And you'll see it. you are getting posts from people saying, here's something, the classic, here's three things I would never eat, here's five things I would never feed my children, here's...

Jonathan Steedman (02:28.151)

two things I would never get from the supermarket. All of those garbage posts. First of all, honestly, if that stuff comes out of someone's mouth and then the next, the first thing isn't like a joke, because I've seen those two and they're pretty cool. Here's three things I would never eat. Number one, food that's off. I mean, that joke's been done to death, but at least if someone's making that joke, they probably are legitimate. But if someone is making a serious post or a serious bit of content about three things they actually would not buy from the supermarket, that's your first red flag. And honestly, you should just stop listening to them.

forever, just delete, unfollow, whatever, because if that's their lens, even if they have some valuable content, it's always going to be tainted by their misunderstanding of nutritional science. Anyway, tangent. coming back to that, those people, their first argument always seems to be these things are bad because they're processed and particularly what we would call an ultra processed food, a UPF. Now I do have a podcast that dives into those in a bit more depth. So if you're wanting to,

I can't remember what episode it is. I don't know when did I record that like a couple of months ago. So it's probably whatever this episode is minus like 10. Anyway, the main point in that podcast is still super relevant here. The level of processing that a food undergoes actually does not tell us anything about the nutritional value of that food. I know it can feel like it does because deep down we have what there's this thing called this naturalistic fallacy, right? So there's this belief that

the more natural something is, the less processed it is, the healthier it is for us. But that's not always true. Okay, so we need to push back against that because sometimes your gut feeling is wrong. And so just saying they're bad because they're ultra processed is ridiculous. And we see that again, coming back to ultra processed foods in general, there are some ultra processed foods which do negatively impact our health, but there are some that actually positively impact our health, right?

and it can absolutely be the same for fake meats. So just saying they're bad because they're ultra processed is a silly, overly reductionist. It's just like, it's just shows to me a lack of critical thinking on behalf of those, I wouldn't even call them health professionals, call them professional content creators. That makes it sound like I have something against professional content creators. Like they're great, they're entertaining, but that's what it should be. Professional content creators should be entertaining if they're not, they don't know what they're doing.

Jonathan Steedman (04:52.14)

and they should shut the hell up. Anyway, another tangent. Sorry, come back, Jono. Cool. So basically, here's the deal. We have studies comparing meat intake and meat alternative intake, and then studies on what happens when you replace meat intake with some of these meat alternatives. And for the most part, we actually see improvements in health, right? Now, there's a lot of these improvements are due to things that you can, the changes that you can make.

and continue to eat meat. And so I'll talk about that if that's what you want to keep doing, that's totally fine. This isn't a podcast trying to convince you to stop eating meat. Like I said, this is trying to give you the actual info on fake meats. But overall, we see a positive improvement when positive, we see an improvement when people include more of these fake meats. Once again, not saying don't eat beans lentils, like you actually absolutely keep doing those because they're phenomenal for you. But

including these fake meats is totally fine. With the caveat of, you need to be mindful of the sodium content and the saturated fat content of these two foods. Those are the big ones. Now they're getting heaps better as well as, you know, food science gets better and they're formulating better and better products. But particularly right back at the beginning when fake meat was kind of new. And so I'm thinking of like the Beyond Burger, that sort of thing. It was no healthier than a really fatty

red meat hamburger, okay, which is fine, right? Like if you're choosing not to eat the meat for ethical or environmental or whatever reasons, and you're instead having the Beyond Burger patty, that's not a bad thing. They're about the same amount of healthfulness. But what I wouldn't want you to do is then eat tons of that Beyond Burger because you're like, it's healthy, it's not meat. That's not the case. It was very high in saturated fat or still is very high in saturated fat and pretty high in sodium, okay?

The other one I saw is at Fable. I don't know if they're still around, that had like your whole day's worth of saturated fat. Like it took you above the recommended daily intake of saturated fat in one serve. So really not great for your heart. If you were replacing meat with that, you would not see improvements in health. You see quite the opposite. However, there are heaps of really great products now that seem to be a lot more like pea-based or soy-based. Textured vegetable protein, one of my all time faves is phenomenal for this purpose.

Jonathan Steedman (07:17.491)

a lot of the, even though they see, annoyingly they keep going out of business, but they're like the fake, some of the fake chicken stuff, the sunfed stuff, which alas is no more. And then I think even the, was it feed? Damn. Anyway, there was another one that was meat. That's what it was, meat, M-E-E-T. That was really good as well. Unfortunately, I think they've gone into receivership, but hopefully someone picks up the ball and runs with it, because those products were phenomenal. Really high protein, really low saturated fat.

not a heap of sodium and a fantastic alternative to meats. so basically the take home message is the lack of, the amount of processing tells you nothing about the food. Don't panic about that. Overall, we see improvements in health when people replace meat with some of these products, providing those products are a lower saturated fat and a low sodium content. And so if you are looking to include more of these foods in your diet, don't panic. If anything, like I said, it's a positive step.

as long as you're mindful of the sodium and the saturated fat. Go for it. Don't listen to idiots who tell you that they're processed. Yeah, big deal. They're telling you that from their iPhone. the hypocrisy is ridiculous. Anyway, I'm getting ranty, so I'm going to stop now. I hope this helps. If you've got questions, let me know. Otherwise, I'll chat to you next time.