With the rise of impossible foods like fake meat, we are getting much less than advertised. The phony meat, its fake benefits to the climate or the planet, and now, according to new research, phony nutrition.
Related: Fake Meat-Fraud Prediction – They’ll Market it Like COVID Vaccines and Hide What’s Bad About It.
From Science Daily.
‘Among these products, we saw a wide variation in nutritional content and how sustainable they can be from a health perspective. In general, the estimated absorption of iron and zinc from the products was extremely low. This is because these meat substitutes contained high levels of phytates, antinutrients that inhibit the absorption of minerals in the body,’ says Cecilia Mayer Labba, the study’s lead author, who recently defended her thesis on the nutritional limitations of switching from animal protein to plant-based protein.
I’m guessing that the FDA is too busy trying to regulate vitamins and supplements to keep people from self-treating or embracing homeopathic medicine (which they are) to take up the suspicious nutritional claims of fake meat mongers. But Chalmers University and Dr. Cecilia Mayer Labba, Ph.D., think they should.
‘It is clear that when it comes to minerals in meat substitutes, the amount that is available for absorption by the body is a very important consideration. You cannot just look at the list of ingredients. Some of the products we studied are fortified with iron but it is still inhibited by phytates. We believe that making nutrition claims on only those nutrients that can be absorbed by the body could create incentives for the industry to improve those products,’ says Ann-Sofie Sandberg, Professor of Food and Nutrition Science at Chalmers and co-author of the study.
I agree as long as we add that the processing is far from “green,” as is the product. Making “meat” from plants requires increased agriculture, which has been on the CO2 naughty list for decades. From earth-churning releases of CO2 to machinery emissions to fertilizer algae bloom and issues with storage, transportation, and processing, the level of framing needed to replace real meat is anything but green.
The sudden embrace of plant-based meats stinks like yesterday’s (and today’s) green energy addiction. The latter is less about saving the planet and more about crippling the fossil fuel energy industry, which leans right politically. By green, they mean money; more for theirs and less for yours. Using fear to wipe out revenue streams to their political opponents comes with the territory.
Real meat is not a health risk (certainly not the one they advertise) and provides proteins and nutrients you can’t get anywhere else. But if the result of the push toward fake meat means lower nutrition, the Dems don’t care – unless requiring better nutrition from faux meat gets them something else they want.
HT | Science Daily
