Non-animal-based proteins include vegetable sources, plant-based meat alternatives (PBMAs) and less commonly consumed sources such as algae, insects and cultured meat. Consumer market insights suggest that from 2019 to 2020, as many as 5 million consumers in the United States shifted to avoid meat completely, becoming either vegetarians or vegans. This increased demand for non-animal protein has resulted in more consumers declaring to be “flexitarian” or choosing to reduce meat, dairy and eggs in favour of more plant-based foods to benefit the environment, improve health or both.
Global concerns around the consumption of animal products and their adverse effects on health and the environment have led to significant growth in the plant-based protein space, particularly for new products to replace traditional meat and dairy. Opportunities exist for PBMA producers to enhance the nutrient profile and diversify the format of future plant-based foods that are marketed as healthy, sustainable alternatives to animal-based products. Much of the recent focus has been on protein quality and quantity, but our case study highlights the risk of unintentionally increasing undesirable nutrients while reducing the overall nutrient density of the diet when less healthy plant-based substitutes are selected. Diets based on novel plant-based substitutes were below daily requirements for calcium, potassium, magnesium, zinc and Vitamin B12 and exceeded the reference diet for saturated fat, sodium and sugar. With the exception of the traditional vegan diet, all diets with traditional plant-based substitutes met daily requirements for calcium, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, iron and Vitamin B12 and were lower in saturated fat, sodium and sugar than the reference diet. We modelled a reference omnivore diet using NHANES 2017–2018 data and compared it to diets that substituted animal products in the reference diet with either traditional or novel plant-based foods to create flexitarian, vegetarian and vegan diets matched for calories and macronutrients. However, it remains unclear whether these novel PBMAs to replace animal foods carry the same established nutritional benefits as traditional plant-based diets based on pulses, legumes and vegetables. This has led to the development of new plant-based meat alternatives (PBMAs) that are marketed as being sustainable and good for health. Consumers are shifting towards plant-based diets, driven by both environmental and health reasons.
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