Here’s the Good Food Institute argument:
- It uses the example of cacao beans, which are separated into cocoa butter—a product high in saturated fats— and cocoa powder, a product rich in healthy flavanols that can be used healthily on its own.
- Compared with conventional beef burgers and chicken nuggets, popular plant-based options including those from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have fewer calories and fewer grams of fat per serving.
- The plant-based burgers contain several grams of fiber while the beef burger contains zero.
- Plant-based burgers are significantly higher in sodium than conventional beef burgers, though, with some containing more than 400 percent more sodium than beef, but thats “pre-preparation”. For example, the Impossible Whopper contains only ten percent more sodium than the traditional Whopper.
- Plant-based meats can be a better choice because they have more fiber, less fat, and fewer calories than what people may otherwise eat.
- Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, male athletes saw double their muscle growth rates after consuming Quorn’s mycoprotein when compared with milk consumption.
- Plant-based meat can help to reduce cardiovascular disease risk factors, as well as support gut health and a healthy weight.
- Plant-based meat may also help to reduce the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. According to GFI, 70 percent of the U.S. supply of medically important antibiotics is used for animal agriculture.
- Due to the end-to-end process control, alternative proteins have orders of magnitude less bacterial contamination, which reduces the risk of foodborne illness.
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Bonus benefit
10. While there are also narratives pushing the benefits of cattle grazing and other free-range animal products in slowing climate change and promoting soil health, GFI says that’s not the case when more than 99 percent of animal products come from factory farms.
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