The consensus is that anyone who wants to protect the climate should eat less meat. In addition, imitation meat from plants is said to be better for the body. In fact, there is no conclusive evidence that meat is harmful to health at all.
Flavor must come from spices and sauces: Planted’s meat substitute is based on pea protein.
At Knorr they are probably very annoyed right now. In 2018, the venerable brand company discontinued a product that would completely fit into the trend today: the pea sausage. A pressed mass of pea flour, spices and bacon that, when boiled with water, made a nutritious soup in minutes. Developed as a ration for soldiers, the pea sausage became legendary for fast satiation on mountain tours, expeditions or at the campsite. But recently the demand went to zero, Knorr dropped the pea.
Maybe that was a mistake. Because elsewhere, the legume is currently making a steep career: pea protein in the form of powder or sliceable mass for finished products is a hit. The protein from the pea is supposed to replace meat on the plate, just like tofu or wheat protein do.
A whole range of manufacturers use pea protein to replicate sausages, meatballs, cevapcici or schnitzel, such as the Iglo and Endori brands in Germany. In Switzerland, the startup Planted is causing a sensation with imitation chicken and a roast substitute. Raw mass: pea protein.
Star chefs advertise meat substitutes
Nenad Mlinarevic. picture PD
The young Planted founders were only able to collect 70 million euros from investors in 2022. When it comes to advertising, they cooperate with top chefs such as Zurich native Nenad Mlinarevic, who holds a Michelin star for his “New Tavern” on Glockengasse. In Germany there is even a two-star chef involved: TV star Tim Raue. For Planted he developed his own dish with chicken breast substitute, seasoned à la Peking duck.
On the menu of his posh restaurant in Berlin, the pea schnitzel is already emblazoned as “planted chicken breast” in the vegan menu. The trend is intended to solve pressing problems, above all man-made climate change, but also the agony of livestock. In addition, manufacturers of meat substitutes cite health – they want to save it as well as the climate and the animals. But whether no meat is healthier than meat is not said.
Hannelore Daniel, nutrition researcher, dismisses: “These questions about the health value of every food are a tragic mistake.” The internationally renowned scientist has been working on nutrition for 30 years, specializing in the intestines and personalized nutrition.
Health hype: delusional, almost sectarian
She finds clear words for the health hype: “You come across this all the time, even more often in science, and sometimes it comes across as almost delusional and sect-like. This is downright absurd. The health value of food was not a relevant selection factor in the past. As omnivores during evolution, humans did not analyze every mushroom, every nut, every tuber or even meat in the laboratory. We just ate it.”
In fact, it is true in professional circles that no normal food per se is harmful to health – not even meat. The Swiss Society for Nutrition (SGE) makes it clear: “There is no such thing as healthy or unhealthy food, everything is a question of quantity and frequency.” According to the SBU, at most one type of diet or lifestyle can be healthy or less healthy. The World Health Organization (WHO) also describes meat as a food with a high nutrient density, it is on a par with fresh vegetables and milk.
Meat is suspect – for centuries
Nevertheless, the meat has a hard time passing as harmless. It fills you up and makes you strong, provides many important nutrients and has one fatal property: meat tastes good. Too much lust for the church, whose fasting rules for centuries aimed at meat for up to 150 days a year. Today, religious reasons only tempt a few people to serve vegetarian alternatives – for this, actors in the nutrition scene pull the health card.
The most recent coup against meat was the cancer experts at the WHO: in 2015 they classified meat as “probably carcinogenic”, sausage even at the highest level, together with tobacco smoke, diesel soot and formaldehyde. However, the WHO failed to justify its judgment for a number of years, and there was resistance: other research groups did the calculations, but the classification of the cancer commission is now in doubt.
What really makes cancer: alcohol and obesity
It was not until October 2022 that a large overview study in the renowned journal “Nature Medicine” showed that all serious studies can only establish weak connections between meat consumption and diseases, including diabetes, colon cancer, heart attacks and strokes.
According to the authors, the effects are so small that it is not even possible to make recommendations for or against specific amounts of meat in the diet. In the case of colorectal cancer, for example, the analysis showed a relative risk of 1.2. In concrete terms, this means that the risk of developing colon cancer increases from 5.5 to 6.6 percent – a minimal effect.
As early as 2021, an international group of cancer and statistics experts had called for general warnings about individual foods to be stopped. The classification of the WHO is too strict, the risk from meat and sausage is estimated to be lower, if there is one at all.
Meat is not unhealthy
Instead, health policymakers should focus on the real causes of cancer: alcohol and obesity. Conclusion of the researchers: After so many thorough analyzes the data on meat and sausages will not change in the future.
So nothing is clear about the diseases and the meat, says Hannelore Daniel: “If meat were so unhealthy, then every study would have to show that and how sick it makes you, with cancer, stroke, diabetes or heart attack. But that is not the case: one study determines certain effects, the next finds none or hardly any. To date, with hundreds of thousands of people in observational studies, the evidence is anything but clear. This also applies to the cancer classification of the WHO. »
Health experts therefore use simple rules of thumb: do not overdo it, eat about 500 grams of meat per week and, if you eat a lot of meat, also eat a lot of vegetables and whole grains. Because fibers prevent potentially harmful substances in the intestine from having prolonged contact with the mucous membrane. In fact, large long-term studies have shown that omnivores with moderate meat consumption can live just as long and healthily as vegetarians.
Avoiding meat does not protect against cancer
The reverse is also not true: Eating meat-free, vegetarian or vegan does not completely protect against cancer, especially colon cancer, or against other diseases. Otherwise, vegetarians shouldn’t get colon cancer at all – but they do get it.
Those who avoid all animal foods, such as vegans, also run the risk of suffering from a lack of certain vitamins, fats and minerals. The list is long: iron, calcium, vitamin B12 and zinc are critical, as are important amino acids and omega-3 fatty acids, as well as iron, iodine, zinc and selenium.
The facts do not prevent manufacturers of meat substitutes from advertising with a health effect. On the Planted homepage, for example, you can read that the products not only show a more sustainable, but also a “healthier way” of feeding the world. But the protein pressed out of the pea lacks many of the trace elements, vitamins and important fatty acids that meat can have.
“We don’t want to recreate the chicken”
There is hardly anything left of the pea either, since the protein is separated from other substances and concentrated. The founders of Planted have an answer: They add some fibers, rapeseed oil and vitamin B12 to their protein mass. They also combine several plant-based proteins to supplement amino acids that peas lack, including methionine.
“All of our products consist of only four to six completely natural ingredients,” explains Lukas Böni, co-founder and managing director of Planted in Kemptthal. In detail, these are water, salt, yeast, rapeseed oil and vegetable proteins, plus vitamin B12 – but what is still missing is taste. Lukas Böni laughs, he explains the plan: With the planted chicken, they wanted to achieve the fibrous mouthfeel, the bite, the elasticity of the chicken meat.
But you weren’t allowed to taste the peas, and you didn’t want to reproduce the chicken with artificial flavor enhancers. Taste, says Böni, has to come from frying, spices and sauces, just like cooking: “Chicken meat tastes like nothing at first.” Then the technologist comes through, no cook and no gourmet in the world believes him. But what does that mean – when the customers buy.