 Is fake meat healthy? Well, if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, we live in a time of the most abundant choices of plant-based proteins. Specifically, I'm talking about mock meat, like vegetarian sausages, vegetarian chicken nuggets, vegetarian bacon, the meat alternatives are endless. It's exciting to have so many options right now, but are these new inventions actually healthy? Well, first of all, I enjoy looking at the ingredients of these vegan or vegetarian options. And one of the things that you'll frequently discover is the presence of gluten in a great number of these alternative foods. If not in the meat fiber itself, certainly in the breading. And as you've learned in gut check, 100% of my patients with an autoimmune disease and leaky gut or intestinal permeability have antibodies to the various forms of gluten that occur in wheat, rye, and barley. So that's a no starter right there. But what about these wildly popular Beyond Meat and Impossible Burgers? Surely those are okay. Well, I see them on the menu everywhere. But we need to take a closer look. Let's start with Beyond Meat. So what's in it? Well, there are a few ingredients of the dozen or so like vinegar and lemon juice that are great. But those are the very last two ingredients on the list. So let's take a look at the top four main ingredients besides water. Number one, pea protein. What is it? Well, it's protein that has been extracted from peas. They actually break peas down and just take the protein out of the peas. Now, most peas in the United States are sprayed with glyphosate, better known as Roundup. Why do they do that? Because even though peas are not genetically modified, it is much easier to harvest peas or soybeans if they are dead and dried. It turns out harvesting a dead plant is much more efficient than harvesting a living plant because the water weight is decreased. Now, why pea protein? Believe it or not, pea protein is dirt cheap. It is one of the cheapest sources of protein there is. Gee, do you think maybe they decided to use pea protein not because of its health benefits? But because it's cheap, hmm, I wonder. Now, why do you want to avoid it? Peas are part of the legume family and lectins are proteins and the lectins are present in pea protein. And a large number of my patients with leaky gut, with autoimmune diseases, react to the protein, and collectin in peas. That's why you want to avoid it. Are there other thoughts about why you might want to avoid it? Well, here's number one. Anytime you take a whole food and break it apart into its individual amino acids or sugars or fats, you've predigested that food so that you now, believe it or not, have a ultra-processed food. So just because beyond meat or beyond beef looks like a whole food, looks like a burger, in fact, it's as ultra-processed as anything else. So the next time you think you're eating healthy and a non-processed food, think again, you're eating an ultra-processed food. Now, number two ingredient is expeller press canola oil. Now, it doesn't say non-GMO canola oil, does it? That's because almost all canola oil in the United States is sprayed with Roundup and is genetically modified. So there's another no-no. Now, don't get me wrong. In my books, I allow organic canola oil. If you can find it, why? Because canola oil is loaded with a short chain omega-3 fat, alpha-linolenic acid, ALA, which has dramatic health benefits. But the vast majority of canola oil doesn't carry that health benefit because it's been sprayed with Roundup. Number three, refined coconut oil. Now, what does it mean refined? Believe it or not, what they've done is taken away all the polyphenols in coconut oil. Now, even coconut oil actually has polyphenols. Fun fact, the polyphenol content of regular coconut oil is only about a tenth of the polyphenol content of olive oil. So there's not very much, but refining the oil means it's been chemically treated and usually heated to remove these compounds, not exactly what you want to do to an oil. Number four, rice protein. Well, what's this? Well, same thing. They've taken rice and broken it down into its individual components of amino acids. And just remember, particularly if it says brown rice protein, brown rice, the lectins are primarily in the hall, which makes it brown. So once again, you're getting a potential lectin in your rice protein, but more importantly, you're no longer getting a whole food that's actually going to take time for you to digest. Instead, you're getting an ultra-processed food made to look like a natural food. Buyer, beware. Are there potential interesting benefits? Well, it depends. For instance, there was a 2020 study funded by Beyond Meat at Stanford University, and they compared the Beyond Burger with Animal Meat. And they looked at 36 people who alternated between eating the Beyond Meat versus eating Animal Meat. Now, as you probably expected, Beyond Meat led to less saturated fat and more fiber in their diet. But interestingly enough, their people's protein and sodium levels stayed exactly the same. The TMAO, which I've talked about, is a controversial substance that our gut microbiome can make from animal protein and animal fat. The TMAO levels in these people was lower in the Beyond Meat than the meat. But interestingly enough, the microbiome analysis showed absolutely no difference between the two groups. So long story short, if you're interested in lowering saturated fat, and I'm not sure why, unless you're an apoE4 person, you'd be interested in that. And interested in more fiber, there's certainly a whole lot easier ways to get fiber than Beyond Meat. OK, so let's take a closer look at the bleeding plant burger or the impossible burger. Now, besides water, here are some of the main ingredients. Number one, soy protein concentrate. Here we go again. First of all, almost all soy in the United States is genetically modified and is sprayed with Roundup. Oops. Number two, you're not taking a soybean that potentially could be beneficial because if you took it and fermented it and made it tempeh, you could denature the lectins in that and make it an acceptable food that millions of people around the world use. But when you take soy and break it apart, you once again have an ultra-processed food. Number two, sunflower oil. Now, this is a once again seed oil that is primarily alpha-linna-lake acid, a rather nasty omega-6 fat, not a friendly omega-3 fat. Plus, most sunflower oil is heated and refined, becoming a toxic compound. All right, number three, coconut oil. OK, it's not refined coconut oil. Finally, we actually have a good ingredient. It's number three. Now, just a word of warning. If you carry the Apple E4 gene, which 30% of people do, coconut oil is probably not your best choice. Number four, thickener, INS46D1. What the heck is that? Well, it's most likely methylcellulose. Methylcellulose is basically wood. So if you like chewing on wood to give that mouth feel, go ahead. But you're not a termite. OK, let's skip down to check out the last one. This is my favorite, soy-leg hemoglobin, genetically modified. Now, this is what makes this burger bleed. Soy has been genetically modified to have the hemoglobin molecule. But spoiler alert, there's never been any testing to decide if this compound is actually safe to eat. It's just never been done. So if you like the idea of being healthy and avoiding genetically modified food, dig in. It's right there on the label, genetically modified. And the ingredient that's not listed on either of these and is probably the most harmful is, of course, glyphosate. Now, why didn't they put glyphosate on the label? Because the USDA and the FDA have decided that glyphosate is harmless to humans. Even though the environmental working group, multiple European agencies have banned glyphosate because of its very strong association with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma development and other leukemias. In fact, if you're paying attention to the news, Bayer, which bought Monsanto, is paying out a large amount of money in lawsuits because of this association. So if you think it's a good idea to have your healthy plant alternative burgers, you're eating glyphosate, and it doesn't have to show up on the label. Please stay away from these things. But all is not lost. Now, I think there are actually some very healthy mock meat substitutes. First of all, one of my favorite is a company called Quorn, and people hear the word corn. It's not. It's Q-U-O-R-N. This uses simplistically mushroom roots, mycelium, that's combined with a tiny bit of egg white to make two of my favorite mock meats. One is called crumbles, which is exactly like it sounds. It looks and tastes like ground turkey. And the other is chicken pieces or meat pieces, and they look like it sounds like little pieces of cut-up chicken or cut-up beef. Please avoid most of them that are coated with breading because they contain gluten. A great number of stores have this in the vegetarian freezer aisle. Look for it. You can even go to their website and put in your zip code and you can find it. I have no relationship with them. I just think it's been a real useful thing for my patients. I've even fooled friends who have come over for tacos in cassava flour tortillas, and they thought they were having turkey tacos, but it was quorn. Hilary's root burger, if you can find it, is good. There are jackfruit-based products, but please avoid the sugar-soaked ones. Now, when I was at Loma Linda, a great number of the foods, the mystery meats, as we used to call them, were made from T-V-P, capital T, capital V, capital P, as in Paul. That's texturized vegetable protein. Now, what that is, is de-fatted soy meal that's been extruded under high pressure and high temperature to make a fake meat. And you can make just about anything fake from this. The great news about it is because of the high pressure and the high heat, it doesn't contain any lectins. And this is available. You can usually find it in a BPA-free can. And go ahead and do it. Also, we're beginning to see more and more in certain stores, mushroom-based mock meats. And for the most part, they have good ingredients. Be careful, a lot of them are breaded, but if you want to, just make a Portobello mushroom pizza like we have in the Plant Paradox book, and you'll get all the benefits of mushrooms and a burger-like consistency without any muscle fills. All right, so whenever you're looking at these plant-based alternatives, look out for soy proteins, look out for pea proteins, word to the wise. If it says protein isolate, the lectins have been removed. But word to the wise, that's also a processed food. So buy or be aware. Many of these products have gluten, particularly the breading. One product that I won't mention starts with a G, sounds like garden, uses vital wheat gluten in most of their products. That's the last thing. Now, if you're not a vegan or vegetarian, opt for wild fish or pasture-raised poultry or wild shellfish, and those will be great for you. More amazing episodes just like this one, watch now. In our epidemic of anxiety and depression is the fact that glyphosate, which has now been around for 50 years, is destroying the very bacteria that make feel-good hormones.