Fake Meat: Good or Bad for You and the Planet?
Alt-meat markets its products as healthful for humans and the environment, but wait until you learn what’s in them and how they’re made
“Red meat used to be a symbol of high social class, but that’s changing,” said Dr. Frank Hu of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “The more highly educated Americans are, the less red meat they eat.”
By 2012, a third of Americans had tried fake hamburger. By 2021, two out of five people were eating alt-meat daily or weekly in the belief that it improves their health and also helps to save the planet. That’s a lot of people and a lot of highly-processed substitute meat.
But the complex industrial food processes required to recreate meat texture and flavor are antithetical to nutrition and health. The way alt-meat is made also poses questions about its genuine environmental benefits. Alt-meat, by definition, is an ultra-processed food (UPF).
If you understand what’s in it and how it’s made, you might question whether it should be considered food at all.
How and why fake meat is made
For over a century, meat substitutes have been made and used for health, convenience, and taste benefits…
