Beyond Meat and The Impossible Burger are making a splash all across the country. Many are turning to these meat alternatives instead of buying traditional beef. But are these meat alternatives a healthier option? Many so-called experts will tell you to avoid them. But the truth is they are a way better option than beef. Here’s why.
The biggest argument that I have seen against these new meat alternatives is that they are processed foods. Experts warn that you shouldn’t eat anything that’s processed because it’s not natural. While this is generally good advice, it is not good advice when it comes to hamburgers. Why? Because the meat in your burger is also highly processed.
In fact, the beef inside your hamburger has been chopped up and blended with all kinds of stuff that you shouldn’t eat. This stuff includes flavor enhancers, fillers, artificial colors, stabilizers, preservatives and the list goes on and on. It took me spending six months in New Zealand as an exchange student to realize that meat isn’t naturally pink! Straight off the cow, it is quite brown. If you see pink meat, it has been messed with!
The ingredients inside these meat alternatives are plant-based. They are not organic and they are certainly not whole foods. These meat alternatives are generally held together by coconut oil, which is high in saturated fat. But so is beef, with about 5 grams of saturated fat per serving!
Eating these meat alternatives isn’t going to make you healthier. Eating an Impossible Burger is not the same as eating a salad full of a rainbow a vegetables. But these meat alternatives do not have all of the flavor enhancers, antibiotics, dyes, and other things that you find in beef. So they are healthier because they don’t contain as much bad stuff.
One tremendous benefit to eating meat alternatives is they have very little environmental impact. They are made from vegetables and grains and oils that are easy to produce without needing a lot of resources to produce them.
Meat, on the other hand, takes a ton of resources to produce. It’s hard to imagine, but North America used to be covered in forest. Most of those Forest have been cut down to make way for cows. It takes about 10,000 gallons of water and hundreds of pounds of grain to produce a single pound of beef!
It takes cows a long time to grow up to the point where they can be slaughtered for a decent yield of meat. During this time, they eat and drink like crazy. They also pollute the air with methane and their urine and feces often gets into our water system.
Ranchers also pump their cows full of a lot of antibiotics to keep them from getting sick. These antibiotics often find their way into our drinking water. That’s one of the reasons why everyone should own a water ionizer to filter out all of those antibiotics!
For me, the choice is simple. I will choose a meat alternative whenever there is one available. However, I also understand that eating a Beyond Burger is like eating a piece of cake or a donut or something else unhealthy in my diet. Meaning I will only eat them once in awhile.
My core diet consists of whole grains and vegetables, usually in a stir fry. I also make a lot of soups and stews with whole grains and vegetables. I try to get my ingredients from farmers markets because I know those ingredients aren’t treated with pesticides and other things that I don’t want to eat.
In an ideal world, we wouldn’t eat burgers, fries, cake, donuts, and all the other unhealthy stuff that’s out there. But is that really living? Sometimes we all get a craving. When I get a craving, I’m happy that there are meat alternatives that I can choose from that make me feel a little less guilty when I give in.
When I eat a hamburger or cheeseburger, it’s nice to know that hundreds of pounds of food and thousands of gallons of water weren’t sacrificed for my lunch.
The bottom line is you shouldn’t be scared away from meat alternatives. They aren’t a healthy choice, but they are a better choice when compared to meat.
