In sum, there are shared chemicals in vegan dog food and plant-based burgers. Additionally, Mitloehner’s point about the level of processing in plant-based burgers is a valid one - many of the ingredients are heavily processed and appear to meet international standards for ultra-processed food - generally considered to come with a host of nutritional deficiencies.
On the negative side, these plant-based burgers also contain comparable, if not elevated, amounts of saturated fat, which can contribute to heart disease. Impossible Burger also adds vitamins and minerals found in animal proteins - like vitamin B12 and zinc - in amounts equal to (and in some cases, greater than) both red meat and poultry. Both the Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger have comparable amounts, the former deriving protein mainly from soy and the later from peas and mung beans. The protein content of these newer plant-based burgers has been created to compete with beef and poultry gram for gram. Pound for pound, meatless burgers have comparable amounts of protein, and Impossible Burgers have the same (or more) vitamins, and minerals added, according to Harvard Medical School’s Health Blog: These burgers are indeed often marketed as a healthy alternative to meat, and that assertion is a bit muddier.
(Beyond Meat does not use GMO products and does not include the protein heme, which is touted as the key to Impossible Burger’s taste.) The amount of soy required to produce heme would not be sustainable in the long-run. As an example, this is why the Impossible Burger uses GMO yeast to produce a protein - heme - that could theoretically be produced by widespread soy cultivation. The original conceit behind these plant-based burgers was one of sustainability: being able to produce something that tastes like meat using a process that could scale up and still be sustainable. If you compare the three, you might have had a hard time identifying the dog food yourself, right?Īsked about his interest in the topic, Mitloehner told us it stemmed from “the many media requests I receive about plant-based products including several alongside Pat Brown and Ethan Brown and the many factually incorrect claims they make about animal agriculture, which often otherwise go unchallenged in the media.” These patties are as ultra-processed and consist of almost identical ingredients as dog kibbles. The claim of them being more healthy and/or wholesome than real meat is not supported by facts. In reality, they fully qualify for the NOVA definition of “ ultra-processed foods," of which many (or most) nutrition scientists, dietitians and clinicians warn us constantly. These plant-based alternatives are often marketed as burgers made from plants. Via email, he told us his concerns were with how the plant-based burgers were marketed: Congress, what scientific point he was illustrating with his tweet. We asked Mitloehner, who studies chemical emissions from animal agricultural practices and who has served as an expert witness defending the agricultural industry in the U.S. Indeed, like the Beyond Meat burger and the vegan dog food, the chili and the beef dog food both use the same protein source.
Indistinguishability is perhaps in the eye of the beholder, but significant differences do exist between the burger-ingredient lists and the dog-food lists.Ī broader question, though, is what scientific point does such a comparison serve? One could make a similar argument that the ingredients in high-quality, organic beef dog food are “nearly indistinguishable” from canned beef chili served in the supermarket, but such a comparison wouldn't be all that illustrative. In the case of the Beyond Meat burger comparison, both use peas as their source for protein. Using the current ingredient list (which differs slightly from the one used in the viral tweet), two of the 18 Beyond Meat burger ingredients also appear among the 28 in the vegan grain-free dog food: Most of the shared ingredients are vitamins and minerals. Sunflower Oil Preserved with Mixed Tocopherols
Let’s get into the weeds: 10 of the ingredients (taking some chemical liberties and ignoring entirely the relative amounts of each) of the 20 listed for the Impossible Burger can also be found among the 28 in the vegan, grain-free dog food: The point, Mitloehner later tweeted, was that the two most notable plant-based imitation burgers, Impossible Burgers and Beyond Meat Burgers, were “indistinguishable from dog food.” From a factual standpoint, the three images accurately depict ingredient lists for (from left to right) a Beyond Meat Burger, “Walk About Dog Food” brand “Super Premium” grain-free vegan dog food, and an Impossible Burger.
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