From multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns aiming to convince viewers that plant-based meats are toxic and unhealthy, to misrepresented research findings giving rise to sensationalist headlines about meat alternatives ‘slowly killing’ vegans – the category has faced an onslaught of bad press over the past few years. Melissa Bradshaw, editor of The Plant Base, delves into the discourse around 'ultra-processed' plant-based meat.
In recent years, ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have hit the headlines as numerous studies and reports bring awareness to potential health risks associated with this category of food products – a category largely dominated by pre-packaged convenience foods, often high in saturated fat, sugar and salt.
The ‘ultra-processed food’ definition was conceived by researchers at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, as part of the ‘NOVA’ system – a classification framework that categorises foods according to their level of processing. It ranges from group one – minimally or unprocessed foods such as fruit, vegetables and unprocessed meat – through to group four: UPFs.
The system defines UPFs as foods that have undergone industrial processing and tend to be formulated with a mixture of many ingredients, such as artificial food additives you wouldn’t find in the home kitchen, for enhanced palatability and increased shelf life among other purposes.
The UPF category comprises food and beverage products you’d typically expect – calorie-dense foods such as chocolate bars, crisps, biscuits, ice cream and fizzy drinks. It also includes many consumers’ everyday diet staples such as packaged bread, flavoured yogurts and some breakfast cereals.
Then, of course, there are ultra-processed meat products like sausages, ham and burgers – and their plant-based counterparts, many of which are created with additives to enable a more realistic imitation of the meat they emulate.
But does ultra-processed automatically equal unhealthy?
The issue may not be so clean-cut. In a world that loves to think in extremes, perhaps we could benefit from a more balanced view. Within plant-based, and more broadly, there is no denying the positive health benefits of a nourishing, whole foods-led diet. But not all UPFs are created equal.
In studies assessing health risks associated with such foods, many tested UPFs contain high levels of sugar, sodium and saturated fat, while being low in other beneficial nutrients like fibre. We already know the health risks of consuming too many of these foods, and these unbalanced nutritional profiles are likely the main culprit behind negative health outcomes – rather than the processing itself.
Additionally, it’s difficult to ignore the important role that food processing plays in preventing food waste. Many of the preservatives added to everyday food items are vital in extending shelf life and preventing spoilage, reducing environmental impact – around 6% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions are caused by wasted food.
UPFs often also provide more convenience than whole foods – particularly for individuals who may lack the time, money, access to ingredients and cooking ability to prepare more ‘healthy’ meals on a daily basis.
Alt-meat misinformation
So what’s it all got to do with plant-based meat alternatives?
Recently, as consumer awareness of UPFs has grown, pro-meat lobbyists have seized the opportunity to criticise plant-based meat substitutes. Many of these substitutes are classified as ultra-processed under the NOVA system, similar to numerous meat, bread and dairy products. Critics use this classification to undermine claims of health or environmental benefits associated with consuming vegan alternatives.
The US group Center for Consumer Freedom – an organisation that advocates for the meat industry, funded by anonymous food industry members ‘from farm to fork’ – has launched a series of adverts in recent years targeting ‘fake meat’ and its ‘chemical ingredients,’ with one declaring: “If you can't spell it or pronounce it, maybe you shouldn't be eating it”.
This has promoted alt-meat heavyweights like Beyond Meat and Impossible to launch their own advertising campaigns, bringing attention to the positive health and environmental impacts of their products as a replacement for conventional meat. Both companies also had their steak and beef alternatives certified by the American Heart Association’s Heart-Check Food Certification Program, which certifies products based on heart-healthy nutrition requirements.
The latest blow to the category has come in the form of a slew of misleading headlines splashed across the mainstream media, reporting on a new study from the University of São Paulo and Imperial College London that was published in the Lancet Regional Health journal last week.
The study assesses the impact of UPFs on heart health, finding that they are linked with worse health outcomes and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. It goes on to reveal that plant-based UPFs are linked with a 7% increase in the risk of cardiovascular diseases, compared with eating unprocessed plant-based foods.
However, it classifies ‘plant-derived’ foods as products that don’t fall into the meat, eggs or dairy-based category – and includes foods that may still contain animal-derived ingredients even if not the ‘primary ingredient,’ like biscuits, pastries, confectionery, breakfast cereal, alcohol and salty snacks. Plant-based meat alternatives constitute the smallest food category within the plant-sourced UPF group, accounting for just 0.2% of the foods eaten by the study’s participants.
Most of the foods within the plant-sourced UPFs group are consumed regularly by those following an omnivorous diet – not just vegans or vegetarians – and are already widely known to be associated with higher health risks if consumed in excess, many of them being classed as HFSS foods. With this in mind, the study doesn’t offer a huge amount of insight into vegan diets and plant-based meat in particular, instead showing relatively unsurprising findings about UPFs being less healthy than non-UPFs generally.
Despite this, the findings have been misrepresented and the study direly misunderstood – headlines across major media outlets have used it to suggest that plant-based meat and ‘vegan diets’ are responsible for the health risks mentioned, rather than the categories taking up the largest share of the plant-sourced UPF group: packaged bread, pastries and cakes, and biscuits. One such headline published in The Telegraph, authored by a dairy farmer, reads: ‘Vegans are slowly killing themselves – there’s nothing healthy about ultra-highly processed fake “meat” products’.
Commenting on the study, Hilda Mulrooney, reader in nutrition and health at London Metropolitan University, said: “The study remains limited to showing associations and causality cannot be demonstrated. It also relies entirely on the NOVA classification system and a number of concerns about this have been raised – particularly that it assumes that the health implications of a foodstuff are based only on the degree of processing, rather than their nutritional content.”
She continued: “Although some may assume the message of this study is that all ultra-processed plant-based foods are bad for health, I think that in fact what the evidence in the study shows is that poor diets are associated with increased risk of chronic diseases. Too high an intake of any one group of foods is likely to result in imbalance, and I would have far more concern that healthy foods are made more affordable. Consuming lower quality foods is the only option for many people due to cost-of-living pressures.”
What do we know about plant-based UPFs?
It’s no secret to the food industry that many UPFs do have poorly balanced nutritional profiles and would not be considered ‘healthy’ options.
The food industry should make efforts to improve the nutritional profile of these foods and continue to provide cleaner label varieties – while as consumers, we can certainly all work to include more whole foods in our diets and promote healthier lifestyles while keeping consumption of UPFs in moderation.
The Imperial study showed that increasing the dietary contribution of plant-based non-UPFs by 10% was associated with a 13% reduction in mortality from all cardiovascular diseases, with a 20% reduction in mortality caused by coronary heart disease. This does demonstrate the benefits of adding more plant-based whole foods to our diets, regardless of where alt-meat plays into the picture.
The focus on UPFs is not likely to dissipate any time soon – a recent World Health Organization report has identified UPFs and alcohol as two of the four products responsible for 19 million deaths worldwide each year. In particular, it states that 117,290 deaths per year in Europe are caused by diets high in processed meats and 252,187 by diets high in salt.
However, as reported by FoodBev Media last week, food industry organisation FoodDrinkEurope’s science director, Rebeca Fernández, believes that the report – which groups UPFs and alcohol alongside fossil fuels and tobacco – is "highly misleading".
She commented: “We all need food – and we all need processed food. Unfortunately, the WHO report does not acknowledge that there is no agreed definition of what ultra-processed foods are, let alone their impact on health, which is why last year the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition and the Nordic Nutrition Guidelines concluded, respectively, that the evidence was insufficient to use UPF terminology to define public health guidelines and that it detracts from well-established food classifications and dietary recommendations.”
She instead recommended that the best way to tackle dietary-related diseases is to focus on food’s nutrition content and the regularity of its consumption in conjunction with lifestyle, adding that European F&B producers are making efforts to reformulate products to cut salt, fat and sugars whilst boosting fibre and micronutrients.
Elsewhere, a pan-European study published in the Lancet last year, as reported in The Plant Base magazine’s Feb/Mar 2024 issue, found that while higher consumption of UPFs was linked to increased risk of cancer and cardiometabolic comorbidity, this varied depending on the sub-category.
It found animal-based products and artificially- and sugar-sweetened beverages to be associated with the highest risk, while plant-based alternatives were not associated with risk, suggesting that we need to approach the UPF category with more nuance – considering overall nutritional profile, instead, when examining the health benefits or risks of food and beverage products.
When it comes to plant-based meat in particular, manufacturers and brands are paying attention to the clean label demand, endeavouring to provide tasty, nutritious and sustainable plant-based alternatives that are made with more natural ingredients and minimal processing.
Start-ups such as Umiami and Planted are championing this area of development, delivering plant-based meat products that are made with short and simple labels and recognisable ingredients that won’t deter consumers from picking up a plant-based option.
And bigger brands, like Beyond, continue to innovate to enhance the nutritional credentials of their offerings. The company’s latest Beyond Burger and Beyond Beef formulation provides 75% less saturated fat than 80/20 beef, 20% less sodium than Beyond’s previous iteration, no GMOs, and 21g of protein per serving, derived from peas, brown rice, lentils and faba beans. The products were the first plant-based meat alternatives to be officially certified by the Clean Label Project, which tests products based on the presence of impurities such as chemicals and heavy metals.
Moving forward
The food industry as a whole – including the plant-based category – must make conscious efforts to improve the health and nutrition of everyday foods consumed worldwide, encouraging healthier lifestyles and supporting consumers in making more beneficial and sustainable dietary choices.
The recent Imperial and São Paulo study sheds light on the fact that we, of course, shouldn’t assume that any food is ‘healthy’ solely because its main ingredients are not of animal origin. Equally, we should consume more whole foods such as fruit, vegetables and grains, feeding our bodies a diverse variety of everything that nourishes it most. Research suggests that we should all be eating 30 different plant types every week for a healthy and diverse gut microbiome, as explored in the recent Netflix documentary 'Hack your Health: The Secrets of your Gut.' This includes fruit and vegetables as well as herbs, spices, pulses, nuts and seeds.
In time, perhaps we will see a revised definition of an ultra-processed food, alongside further research into the effects of the processing itself. Until then, we can all make efforts to be more mindful of what we consume – with regards not just to food, but to the information we read about it.
