The TRUTH About Plant-Based Meat Alternatives and Veganism

Hey everyone, Dr. Josh Axe here. Welcome to another episode. I want to ask you a question. Did you know that the founder and CEO of the meat alternative Impossible Foods plans for plant-based meat products to completely replace animal-based products within the next 15 years?

Well, he's quoted in saying that, and he's even said that this is the main mission of the company And that this transformation is inevitable. It's going to happen. And we know people like Bill Gates have been singing the same tune for a while now. But here's the question I want to pose. Do you think these meat alternatives are actually healthy? Well, welcome to the show.

I am Dr. Josh Axe, and every week I uncover the science behind how to grow yourself, your health, and even take your wealth, your relationships, your spiritual health all to the next level. And today I'm going to be going through several studies and news stories which show conflicting evidence about the health of these meat-based alternatives.

And I'll be addressing veganism and some things that vegans or vegetarians can do to make sure they're getting the right foods and nutrients into their diet, and even give my opinion on the environmentalism around veganism versus more of an omnivore diet. Now, here is the, uh, big take I want to go through. So Beyond Burger and Impossible Foods have been marketed as healthy meat alternatives.

But here's the reality. The studies show something very, very different. A medical review published in the journal Nutrients examined whether plant-based meat alternatives were healthy or not. And here's what they concluded from the study. They said, due to the high degree of processing of the foods studied here, they cannot be recommended for a daily diet. Whoa.

Uh, also here, Dr. David Katz, he's the founding director of Yale University's Prevention Research Center, uh, described Beyond Meat products as ultra-processed. Not just processed, ultra-processed. Which— and, and here's the big issue— they use highly processed oils such as expeller-pressed canola oil and highly refined Coconut oil. Now, this is interesting.

These oil globules are some of the exact same oils that they're using in Dipping Dots. That is what they use in their ice cream, that chain of ice cream stores. So here's the reality. I want to go through the ingredient list here, but basic hamburger is made of this ground beef. Now, sometimes when you go to stores or you go to a restaurant, it's all it's ground beef.

Seasoning, and maybe egg to help bind it. And that's really— that's all the ingredients, okay, is just beef and maybe some natural seasoning and egg. A Beyond Burger, though, has over 20 ingredients, including water, pea protein, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, rice protein, natural flavors, dried yeast, cocoa butter, methylcellulose.

Also contains potato starch, sodium potassium chloride, beet juice coloring, apple extract, pomegranate concentrate, sunflower lecithin, vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, vitamins and minerals. So now listen, you could read this ingredients list and think, well, that, that doesn't sound so bad.

But here's the reality: you're getting For the most part, pea protein, which, you know, is not that bad of a form of protein. Now, let me say, in large amounts constantly, it might be hard to digest. But really, the issue here is the primary ingredient along with pea protein is expeller-pressed canola oil. And I hate to break it to everyone out there, coconut oil is not a healthy oil.

Now, at best, it can be argued as being a neutral oil. Healthy oils are oils like extra virgin olive oil, which actually contain polyphenols, which have been shown to improve longevity. Regular extra virgin coconut oil, unprocessed, which has medium-chain fatty acids and your body can process like any normal food.

But again, when we're looking at this, we're seeing a lot of additives, ingredients, including methylcellulose. And so this isn't really food at all. It's a bunch of ingredients sort of thrown in together, some of which are not that unhealthy. But again, this is not really food that's going to nourish your cells, improving longevity. And the health of your body.

I do want to mention here, this methylcellulose is used as a thickening agent, but also it's been clinically shown to be a laxative at doses as low as just a single gram. And we find this to be a really strange ingredient choice. Also, natural flavors— some natural flavorings have been shown to be potentially toxic. Now, I want to go through sort of a cholesterol comparison, okay?

Beyond Burger has 0 grams of cholesterol. A grass-fed beef burger has 60.5 grams of cholesterol. And the reality is you need good cholesterol like you're going to get from grass-fed organic beef to actually help your neurological system and to help the health of your cells. You have to have cholesterol also for hormone production.

So if you're a woman watching this and you're saying, I want to have balanced hormones, I want to balance out estrogen and progesterone and my thyroid hormones, You need cholesterol to do that.

If you're a male watching this and you're saying, I want to be younger and have a lot of human growth hormone and testosterone so I can have the energy and vigor and strength, you need cholesterol in order to produce these types of hormones. And the reality is saturated fat is more damaging, or not saturated fat, having elevated triglycerides or consuming too much sugar.

Is really much more of the cause of heart disease than dietary cholesterol. So I'm repeating this, you know, processed foods and sugar are much, much greater, uh, put you at greater risk of having heart disease than dietary cholesterol. Even experts such as Peter Attia and others have done studies on this and have proven this to be a fact.

Now here are some of the deficiencies that tend to be most common if somebody is following a vegan diet. Okay, now this is according to a clinical study. Vegans are most at risk. By the way, what I did when I— this is based on one study, and then I have another study that goes through very similar data. So this wasn't just one study I pulled, this was multiple studies.

Vegans are at the lowest risk of vitamin B12, omega-3 fatty acids, calcium, zinc, iron, iodine, Selenium, and also, uh, many, many other compounds. Specifically, amino acids is another big one. Several amino acids, uh, that vegans tend to be deficient in. Here are some of the health risks of a vegan diet.

Now, I do want to mention, and I want to be fair here, um, if you're a vegan and you're eating a diet that's very high in real food— real, not processed at all, real food— You can avoid many of the deficiencies here, but in terms of the studies, multiple studies I pulled, here were the biggest risk factors. And you can see here, I wanna, I wanna show you this picture.

Uh, if you are watching here on YouTube, if you're listening online, you could go watch on YouTube. If not, I'll, I'll just explain it to you. But, uh, you know, omega-3 fatty acids and zinc deficiencies have been linked to depression and anxiety. By the way, so is vitamin B6 and many other nutrients that you might be deficient in. Hypothyroidism— that tends to be an iodine deficiency.

Also, in Chinese medicine, it's known as a qi and yang deficiency, which the foods that are most building of that are going to be meat-based products, especially red meat. Sarcopenia— inadequate high-quality protein intake. It's not just protein, it's high-quality protein that your body can utilize to build muscle, which is important for anti-aging. Hair loss.

We know protein, zinc, and iron deficiencies are associated with that. Dermatitis. Again, any skin issues, zinc and protein deficiencies. Anemia. Iron and vitamin B12. This is probably the most common issue that vegans have is basically blood deficiency. And then osteoporosis, bone fractures due to vitamin D and calcium deficiencies are very common. As well. Um, I want to say this, okay?

So, uh, I have taken care of a lot of people on different diets that really felt committed to their diet. In fact, one time I had a patient came in, I remember they were a fruititarian, and at first I thought they were kidding because I, I'm pretty up on things, but I had not heard of this yet. And they literally only ate like 80% of their diet was fruit and they ate a few vegetables.

Now, this person was a long-distance runner. And they were in their 20s, so they did okay with it. But I'm sure long-term they weren't able to. By the way, they came in because they kept passing out because they felt so lightheaded.

And so I ended up encouraging them to get some more protein and fat in their diet and to, to help maintain healthier blood sugar levels, cuz they were really getting almost no fat or protein. And, and that was the, that was really the issue there causing their, their lightheadedness. But here's the solution. The, here's, let me give you the ideal solution.

One, eat organic, 100% grass-fed meat products like pastured chicken, pastured eggs, grass-fed beef, wild-caught animal like venison, bison, wild-caught fish like salmon.

That's the ideal to get those products along with eating a diet that's very high in vegetables and things like, you know, certain fruits that are low glycemic, like berries and other healthy fats like avocado and coconut and, you know, And olives. Okay, that's the ideal for most people. Now, if you're very committed to being on a vegan diet, what I would recommend is don't eat a Beyond Burger.

Don't eat a Beyond Burger. Don't eat those sort of products because they're highly processed and they're not healthy. Okay, that's the thing is they're not healthy. And so if you are a vegan, and by the way, I wanna give you an example of a friend of mine who does this very well. And it's Carrie Underwood.

Carrie Underwood has followed a more— she's not vegan, but she's followed a vegetarian diet for many years. And I do believe maybe on occasion she might get— and by the way, I don't know this, so I'm not quoting her on this, uh, but I do believe at times and points in her life, I know, uh, she's likely done collagen.

She's likely done, um, some wild organic, uh, um, you know, animal-based products. Um, and so, but she does it really well. Like when I look at her diet, she's got a greenhouse, she's got her own garden. If she does shop at Whole Foods or those sort of grocery stores, she's She's eating almost all plants.

In fact, if you follow Carrie on her Instagram page, you'll see it's like tomatoes and celery and cucumbers and beans and oatmeal and mushrooms and nuts and seeds. And, and she does some eggs as well. And she does, you know, some, like, you know, some, some dairy products, like highly, like organic, you know, raw or like organic dairy products.

And so, you know, she, she's getting some of these, these, these products, but she does it the right way in terms of, When she's followed a vegetarian diet. However, a lot of people today that are vegans are consuming mostly processed food. And again, Beyond Burger, it's not healthy. So if you are a vegan, listen to what I mentioned with Carrie. Okay?

You wanna make sure you're getting as much protein as possible from protein-rich plants such as beans and nuts and seeds and mushrooms. You wanna be getting, again, lots of vegetables, Lots of berries that are low glycemic can keep your blood sugar balanced, and and that's that's really a big part of what you want to focus on.

I do also want to say here that one of the things that comes up, and I want to I want to read this actually. I'm going to jump into this, and I'm going to I want to go this off my computer. I pulled up this article or in in a and because I just I thought it was important for you to hear this. One of the biggest arguments I tend to hear.

When it comes to why somebody should be a vegan, by the way, I had a very close friend of mine, a couple friends of mine, and they were vegan.

I said, "Why are you a vegan?" And they said, "For for animal rights issues, we really feel it's the most ethical way of living." And I also want to say this: If you follow the Judeo-Christian faith, you wouldn't fully believe that because you know in Genesis nine three God says you know you can eat these things.

And so we we know that that's you know if it's that sort of morality, that's not the case. But if there's some another God or another, you know, God of Gaia, the environment, if that's sort of, you know, a God you have. I also want to say that it's not good for— veganism is not good for the environment. It's not good for the environment.

Anything that you're creating that's a processed food to that degree is going to harm the environment. And I want to read something that I think is really telling.

By the way, my— one of my best friends and business partners, Jordan Rubin, by the way, him and I together, we own 4,000 acres of certified organic land where we practice regenerative agriculture, healing the planet, building back topsoil, making the earth and the entire environment healthier, more like a paradise, a Garden of Eden. That's what we're trying to do.

Now, I want to read something here, very similar sentiments he has. I've heard him talk about, but this is by Isabella Tree. And here's what she says. I'm going to read some of the things that she talks about here. She says, natural grazing and Practicing regenerative agriculture actually helps restore soil biodiversity, pollinating insects, water quality, and flood mitigation.

It also guarantees healthy lives for animals, and they in turn produce meat that is healthy for us. In direct contrast to grain-fed and grain-finished meat from these intensive systems, holy pasture fed meat is high in beta-carotene, calcium, selenium, magnesium, potassium, vitamin E, B vitamins, conjugated linoleic acid, and many other nutrients as well.

And these are many of the primary nutrients that vegans are deficient in. Now, they also go on to say much has been made of the methane emissions of livestock, but these are lower in biodiverse pasture systems that include plants such as Angelica and other plants that actually reduce carbon methane emissions by around 70%. Now, in the vegan equation, by contrast, listen to this, okay?

The carbon cost of plowing is, is rarely considered. Since the Industrial Revolution, according to a 2017 report in the science journal Nature, up to 70% of the carbon In our cultivated soils has been lost to the atmosphere. So here's the, here's the big thing why veganism can be so bad for the environment is you are now planting corn and soy and annual crops that have to continually be replaced.

And so what you're doing is you're tilling the soil, you're digging up the soil, you're digging up the plants. That's causing greater emissions than the animals and what they're able to actually restore to the earth. And so, I want you to think about this. Here's what's happened.

Topsoil is very moist, very nutrient-rich, and things our plants can get a lot of nutrients from and animals can get nutrients from. Anytime an animal defecates on the soil, they're building back the topsoil, which then is good for the environment and it's good for us.

When you have to continually, sort of every year, re-dig up the soybeans and corn and other foods, you're You're giving off these emissions, you're also lessening the topsoil. So our actually plants and foods become less nutrient dense, lower in magnesium, lower in zinc, lower in vitamin C, lower in all of these nutrients.

And here's the other thing, when you're planting all of these fields to feed people, you're also displacing animals like wild animals like bison. So it is by far worse for the environment. To be a vegan. Listen, a vegan that is consuming soy pea protein and soy protein and canola oil and corn and all of these things you find in vegan products today.

And so it's just an important thing to understand here when we're looking at the studies. And so I just wanted to share that because that is one of the biggest arguments I hear on a regular basis But the reality is, it's not the reality. That's the reality. In the reality, here's what the ideal looks like. Regenerative agriculture.

When you have animals that are grazing wildly or something called, in New Zealand, they have what's called ultra-high-density grazing method where they can sort of graze and then you put them in a different field and a different field, these animals.

And when animals are just treated well for the majority of their lives, and then we use their their tissue for meat and for us to consume to nourish us. That's really the ideal. And if you can have animals there along with the plants you're growing, what happens is those, you know, the animals like cows, they're able to actually nourish the soil.

Those soil, the healthy soil nourishes the plants that then nourishes us. It's the circle of life. And so I'd love to hear from you in the comment section. What are your thoughts First, about Beyond Burger. Do you think it's healthy? The next thing I want to hear is, what are your thoughts on regenerative agriculture? And what are your thoughts on veganism and vegetarianism?

And hey, do you think there's been a— do you think we'll actually be 100% meatless in the next 15 years? Let me know in the comments section below. By the way, I just, I want to throw out this disclaimer. I am not a— I am not against somebody that is a vegan, okay? I think that I have friends that are vegans and vegetarians, and I have some people that are carnivore. They only eat meat.

So I have all ends of the spectrum. I just want to say this: eating any processed vegan food is not healthy for you, and it's really, really terrible for the planet as well. Versus if you're doing it the right way, where you're doing mostly vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains, nuts and seeds, and mushrooms. That's the right way to do it, that are completely natural, unprocessed.

So again, hey, let me know your thoughts in the comment section below. Would love to hear any thoughts or arguments or things I need to consider here. Then I wanna say, hey, thanks so, so much for tuning into my show here, the Dr. Josh Axe Show, where every week I uncover the science behind how to grow yourself, your health, and take your life to the next level.

Make sure to subscribe if you're not subscribed. Share this with someone who needs to hear it. And I'll see you on the next episode. Bye.