The Meat Lovers' Guide to Plant-Based Meat

For some consumers, what’s not in it—namely, animals—is reason enough to give it a try. Others, however, are put off by what is in it—namely, a long list of unfamiliar ingredients. In fact, 19 percent of people in a 2020 nationwide survey by Mattson, a food research firm, cited “too many ingredients I can’t pronounce” as a reason to take a pass.

Creating meat from plants takes some doing. Most start with a protein, often pea or soy, to provide structure. These aren’t the whole foods, but concentrates and isolates extracted in a lab. Oil is added to make the food juicy and tender. Binding agents, such as methylcellulose, starch, and gums, give it texture.

Some manufacturers fortify the products with nutrients, such as vitamin B12, so they’re closer to meat. One of the fish replacers—from Gardein—has added omega-3s, the heart-healthy fats in fish. The products also contain meaty flavorings and colorings, though the details are often proprietary.

None were identical—but some came close, and our panel of sensory experts judged at least one in each category to be very good. “It was the overall flavor profile that gave the impression of meat,” says Amy Keating, RD, a CR nutritionist who oversaw our testing.

Among the burgers, Impossible and Beyond’s were the most meatlike. Impossible’s Chicken Nuggets came “closest to tasting like a typical chicken nugget,” and MorningStar Farm’s Veggie Chik’n Strips shredded “like chicken breast,” Keating says. Three pork pretenders—Beyond Meat’s breakfast and sweet Italian sausages and MorningStar’s breakfast links—were reminiscent of the real thing. Gardein’s fish-and-chip-style fillets and Good Catch’s patties were at least somewhat fishlike.

Of course, food doesn’t have to taste like meat to taste good. And CR’s testers rated several without a meaty taste highly, including Boca’s All American Veggie Burgers and Quorn’s Meatless Nuggets.

No, at least not now. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, this past June a pound of ground beef in U.S. cities on average cost $5.03, while in the Midwest region, it cost an average of $4.88. Boneless chicken breast averaged $4.19 in U.S. cities and $4.49 in the Midwest region. The least expensive plant-based meat in our tests was a Tofurky sausage at $5.13 per pound. The priciest: No Evil Foods’ No Chicken Comrade Cluck Shredded Plant-Based Strips, at about $22 per pound.

The differential may diminish in coming years if meat prices continue to rise and plant-based meat production becomes more efficient and competitive. For example, Amazon Fresh launched a “budget friendly” line of plant-based meat, which includes Chick’n Nuggets for about $6.69 a pound and plant burger patties for $6.69 as of this writing.

That’s the main reason people say they’re interested in plant-based meats, CR’s survey found. But it’s not clear that they always are healthier.

Many products in CR’s test had fewer calories and less artery-clogging saturated fat. The sausages, for example, had less per serving than the 6 grams in a serving of Jimmy Dean Fully Cooked sausage. But that wasn’t true across the board.

While many of the burgers had less saturated fat than what’s in 85 percent lean ground beef, two—Gardein’s and Impossible’s—had more. “Some of these mock burgers have highly saturated coconut or palm oil,” Keating says. “That’s because they melt slowly, giving a similar mouthfeel to animal fats.”

Most of the products CR looked at—unlike real meat—had lots of sodium, which can raise blood pressure. In general, the plant-based sausages, breaded chicken nuggets, and fish fillets had amounts similar to those in their counterparts from the farm and sea. But nuggets from Raised & Rooted had more sodium than Tyson’s real ones.

No surprise: Plant-based proteins have more fiber (meat doesn’t have any). Most don’t have a lot—less than 3 grams per serving.

That is a worry. Lots of evidence supports plant-based diets, but most comes from research involving whole foods, says Basheerah Enahora, PhD, who is an assistant professor at North Carolina State University in the department of agricultural and human sciences and has a plant-forward nutrition counseling practice in Durham, N.C. That means lots of fruits, vegetables, beans, and grains, and modest amounts of poultry, fish, and low-fat red meat.

These mock meats are plant-based—but they’re not whole foods. And that raises concerns among nutrition pros because growing research has linked ultraprocessed foods to increased risks of heart disease, weight gain, and more.

It’s not clear whether processed “meats” pose the same risks, says Stephan van Vliet, PhD, of the Center for Human Nutrition Studies at Utah State University in Logan. “Not all ultraprocessed foods are bad,” he says, citing soy and almond milks as healthy examples.

Still, van Vliet, the lead author of a study comparing grass-fed and plant-based burgers, sees important differences between the two. Notably, whole foods contain thousands of compounds in addition to those listed on nutrition labels. “Foods are more complex than the sum of their parts,” he says. “It’s challenging to put together a replacement that contains them all.”

It can be a struggle to include even some familiar nutrients. One study found that swapping animal products with plant-based meat and dairy makes it harder to get enough calcium, potassium, magnesium, zinc, and­—especially—vitamin B12, which is found naturally only in animal foods. Among products CR looked at, only five—two “chickens” and three “burgers”—had that vitamin added.

Trying to recreate the benefits of whole foods can raise other issues. Impossible’s burgers, for example, have soy leghemoglobin, a compound created from soybean roots that’s chemically similar to the heme iron in meat. Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown says it “produces the explosion of flavor and aroma when you throw a burger on a grill.” But some research has linked the heme in beef to colon cancer. “So in theory, an Impossible Burger may pose a similar problem,” says Michael Hansen, PhD, a senior scientist at CR.

The makers of plant-based meats play up protein: 27 of the 32 products CR tested come with a protein claim. In some cases, the amounts were fairly close to what’s in the real thing. For example, a Beyond Meat Beyond Burger has 20 grams and No Evil Foods “chicken” strips have 25 grams.

While protein is essential, the average American gets plenty. Much of it does come from meat, which raises concerns, says Dana Hunnes, PhD, a dietitian at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. She says meat protein is inflammatory, which could make tumors grow faster and pose other health issues. That suggests that getting more protein from plants could be a good thing. Some of that could come from faux meats—or from beans, lentils, tofu, nuts, and nut butters. “There’s some protein in many foods, and small amounts add up,” Keating says.

That is the second most common reason people give for trying plant-based meats, CR’s survey found. And meat clearly contributes to climate change. The way we grow, transport, and consume food accounts for about a third of the planet-heating gases created by humans, with animal-based foods causing twice as much as plant-based ones, according to a 2021 study in the journal Nature Food.

Beef alone accounts for roughly half the emissions linked to U.S. diets but provides just 3 percent of the calories. It also takes about 110 gallons of water to produce a pound of rice, compared with 1,840 gallons for a pound of beef.

So moving toward plant-based proteins can be a powerful way to address climate change. And a 2020 analysis led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found that plant-based meats could help, with a carbon footprint about 90 percent smaller than beef’s and 40 percent less than poultry’s. On the other hand, they’re 1.6 to seven times more energy-intensive than tofu, peas, or other less processed plant proteins. And beef raised with sustainable farming practices, such as pasturing fewer cattle on grass and tilling waste into soil, may produce fewer greenhouse gases.

Enahora sees these foods as a mixed bag but thinks that if they help people move toward a plant-based diet, that’s good. “Starting with plant meat might make sense if you’re not relying on it every day and you’re including whole foods,” she says. Shanika Whitehurst, associate director of product sustainability, research, and testing at CR, agrees about a plant-based diet, especially as it relates to natural resource usage. “Even though plant proteins are processed,” she says, “plant meat has less of an environmental impact than industrial animal production.”

Products are grouped by the type of meat they mimic and ranked first by nutrition, then by taste. Those with the same score are listed in alphabetical order.