Red Meat’s Nutritional Advantage Over Plant-Based Alternatives

Fake meat is all the rage. But how does it stack up nutritionally?

Fake meat…

It’s so 2022.

A time when a plant-based diet is being widely pushed by many in the health and food industries as the way forward. The way to save our planet. A more ethical alternative to eating meat.

I’m not here to discuss that.

Instead, I’m going to talk about new research out of New Zealand comparing the protein quality of red meat to plant-based alternatives.

Meat alternatives are marketed as having nutritional value to the meat it imitates.

But is it that black and white?

The plant-based “meat” market

The meat substitute market is expected to grow rapidly, with sales increasing from $4.2 billion in 2020 to $28 billion in 2025, according to figures from IPES-Food.

According to The Week, in 2020, meat replacements had a market share of around 11% of the global meat and alternatives market. They also reported that the market for plant-based meats grew by 37% in some regions.

It’s estimated that 40% of Americans have tried a plant-based meat alternative and figures show that US retail sales of plant-based meat grew 45% in 2020.

Substituting meat

According to Business Insider, “The fake meat trend is fueled by consumers’ increasing concern for healthier and more sustainable food as well as by innovation in the development of tastier meat alternatives.”

Plant-based meat alternatives, or “fake meat”, have been developed to have the same taste, texture, appearance, smell and flavour as the meat it's replacing. It commonly comes in the form of burgers, mince, tenders, nuggets, or sausages.

Meat alternatives are not a new idea — products such as vege-burgers have been available for decades. But fake meat is relatively new to the marketplace.

Often, these products are marketed to meat-eating customers as opposed to vegetarians, to replace some of their meat purchases.

But some are also turning to a vegan or vegetarian diet for ethical reasons, given concerns for farming’s potential impact on climate change and some farmed animals being subjected to cruel practices.

Fake-meat burgers

Let’s face it, you don’t want to buy a burger that doesn’t taste as a burger should.

Plant-based burgers have spiked in popularity over the past few years

For example, in 2019, Burger King launched its plant-based Whopper burger and many other burger chains now offer a vegetarian burger option.

In late 2020, the product used in this study, Beyond Meat, partnered with restaurants such as McDonald’s and KFC.

Protein quality: red meat vs plant-based alternatives

Plant-based meat alternatives were created “to mimic the taste and basic nutrient composition of meat.” But we don’t know how their nutritional quality compares…

Until now!

Research findings from two New Zealand universities suggest that red meat is a better source of protein than plant-based alternatives, even though they contain a similar amount of protein per serving.

The human clinical trial is a collaboration between AgResearch, the University of Auckland, Massey University and the Riddet Institute. Findings from the first study were published in the Journal of Current Developments in Nutrition.

The study methodology

The double-blinded randomized crossover trial gave thirty healthy men (aged between 20 and 34) breakfast on four different days, collecting blood samples 4 hours immediately following the meal.

Served randomly to participants across the four days was a burrito containing a single serving of one of 4 different protein sources — red meat or fake meat, each weighing 220 grams raw and 160 g cooked.

“All non-meat ingredients per meal, including brown onion (53 g), red capsicum (72 g), corn kernels (137 g), tortillas, salsa, seasoning salt, black pepper, and brown sugar, were purchased at local supermarkets.”

The four types of meat were:

• pasture-raised beef
• grain-finished beef
• lamb
• plant-based alternative (Beyond Meat — Beyond Burger)

The researchers chose Beyond Burger because it was closest to their selection criteria for the trial of a fake-meat product.

The product’s main ingredients are pea protein, canola oil, and coconut oil.

The study findings

Findings indicated that red meat is better digested than the plant-based alternative and has greater bioavailability.

There was also a significant difference in the types and amounts of amino acids from red meat protein to that of the plant-based meat alternative. Meaning, that red meat has more essential protein building blocks.

“Amino acids from red meat were of greater biological value and better absorbed by the body.” — Dr Andrea Braakhuis

The fake-meat meal produced “significantly lower plasma concentrations of total, essential, branched-chain, and non-proteogenic amino acids”.

The paper also showed pasture versus grain origins of the beef had little influence on participants’ responses.

“Red meat is probably a better source of protein for the body than highly processed plant-based products promoted as meat alternatives.” — Dr Andrea Braakhuis

Protein Quality

Not all protein is made equal.

Proteins are made up of 20 individual amino acids. Each protein source has a unique amino acid profile— as in, different compositions and ratios of each amino acid.

A complete protein has the minimum required amounts of essential amino acids (there are 9) that our body can’t produce naturally.

An incomplete protein doesn’t, so has to be combined with other protein sources to get sufficient amounts of all the individual amino acids and improve the overall protein quality of a meal.

Protein quality is also influenced by its digestibility.

Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS) has been the industry standard to rank the quality of different types of protein since 1993.

“Protein quality is an index of how well a protein meets the requirements of essential amino acids, as well as the physiological needs, of the organism. It is based on an amino acid scoring method that compares the essential amino acid content of the protein with the requirement pattern.” — Kurpad, 2013

Protein sources are scored out of 100, based on a percentage of the protein that is available to the body to be synthesised.

Foods of animal origin, such as milk, eggs, and meats, have the best protein score.

Plant-based protein sources don’t have such a good score. This is because they have some “limiting” amino acids below the “ratio of amino acids estimated to be needed by humans”.

For example, a protein source might have 60% of the requirement of an essential amino acid such as Threonine. That means the body can only synthesise 60% of the total protein unless the meal includes another protein source high in Threonine.

“The highest PDCAAS score any protein can achieve is 100. This would mean that 100% of that protein can be used for protein synthesis — that it contains all essential AAs in appropriate ratios per gram of protein.” — Yu & Fukagawa, 2020

For more about protein, check out the article below.

Phase two of the study

There is also a second phase of research, looking at the longer-term effects of a diet including moderate amounts of red meat versus a vegetarian diet.

Over 10 weeks, 80 participants followed either a balanced diet containing a “modest” amount of pasture-raised beef and lamb, or a vegetarian diet including various plant-based alternatives.

In New Zealand, “animals are free-range, predominantly pasture-based and have zero treatment with antibiotics and hormones”.

The methodology included the researchers taking chemical and blood measurements, as well as using an app to collect food diaries.

These techniques helped the researchers to monitor the impact of the diets on physical responses in the body, such as weight, sleep and exercise.

Researchers also monitored psychological and well-being factors such as mood and satisfaction, to help them try to understand if there were any differences between the consumption of red meat and the plant-based alternative on an individual’s health.

The results will be published next year.

“This is the first clinical trial of its kind to compare the effects of flexitarian and vegetarian lifestyles on a range of outcomes of people’s health and wellbeing,” — Braakhuis, 2020

The research funding

‘The New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment — High-value Nutrition National Science Challenge’; the ‘Meat Industry Association Innovation Limited’; and ‘Beef and Lamb New Zealand Limited’ helped fund the research.

Which of course will raise eyebrows around the results of the study favouring meat.

However, the reasons for the research are pretty legitimate.

A collaboration with the New Zealand government, AgResearch explains that much of the previous research on the environmental aspects of producing red meat used intensive grain-finished farming systems. New Zealand is predominantly pasture-fed. Moreover, nutritional and health studies often high levels of meat consumption well exceeding the recommended dietary guidelines.

Discussion & Conclusion

This article has explored recent research that has found that red meat meals exhibit a greater bioavailability of amino acids when compared with plant-based meat alternatives.

I have also discussed why this is no surprise as it's well-known that plant proteins are incomplete sources as they have “limiting” essential amino acids.

Meat on the other hand is a high-quality protein source as they have a complete profile of essential amino acids.

In terms of the popularity of plant-based meat alternatives, they have proven to be more than a niche product for vegans or vegetarians. Many meat-eaters are turning to plant-based alternatives for ethical reasons, and the better these products become at intimidating meat, the more this trend will continue.

These products are cheaper to produce than meat, meaning that they can be a genuine alternative for most families.

However, brands need to improve the nutritional quality of products by using various protein sources that complement each amino acid profile to make up for any shortfalls in particular amino acids.

Otherwise, these products won’t compare to real meat in terms of protein quality.

The next step for meat alternatives is cell-based or lab-grown products developed in a food production plant rather than farmed animals. These are probably not far away from your local supermarket, so it’s an interesting space to watch.

Thank you for reading.

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