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Vegetarian burger.Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain
If you’re looking to buy plant-based foods, a trip to the supermarket can be confusing.
We have plant-based burgers, sausages, and mince. The fridge is stocked with non-dairy milk, cheese and yogurt. Then there are cans of beans and packs of tofu.
But how much of it is actually healthy?
A nutritional audit of more than 700 plant-based foods sold in Australian supermarkets has just been conducted. published. It turns out that some products are so high in salt and saturated fat that they can hardly be called “healthy.”
we went to the supermarket (several times)
In 2022, we visited two of Melbourne’s four major supermarket retailers to gather information about available plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy.
I took a photo of the product and its nutrition label.
We then analyzed the nutritional information on the packaging of more than 700 of these products. This includes 236 meat substitutes, 169 legumes and legumes, 50 baked beans, 157 dairy substitutes, 52 cheese substitutes, and 40 non-dairy yogurts. Masu.
The plant-based meat was surprisingly salty.
It turns out that there are a variety of plant-based meats available. Therefore, it is not surprising that we found wide variation in nutritional content.
Sodium, which is contained in added salt and causes: high blood pressurethat was our biggest concern.
Sodium content varied from 1 milligram per 100 grams in products such as tofu to 2,000 mg per 100 grams in products such as vegetable mince.
That means you can eat the whole thing. Recommended daily sodium intake Just one bowl of plant-based mince.
Ann audit A study of 66 plant-based meat products sold in Australian supermarkets in 2014 found that the sodium content per 100g ranged from 316mg for legume-based products to 640mg for tofu products. I understand that.in 2019 audit For 137 products, the range was up to 1,200mg per 100g.
In other words, the results of our audit seem to show a consistent trend towards plant-based meat. Becomes salty.
What about plant-based milk?
Approximately 70% of the plant-based milks we audited were fortified with calcium, an important nutrient for health. bone health.
this is good news 2019-2020 Audit We found that out of 115 plant-based milks in Melbourne and Sydney, only 43% were fortified with calcium.
Almost three-quarters (73%) of the fortified milks in our audit contained the following ingredients: Recommended amount of calcium—At least 100 mg per 100 mL.
We also looked at the saturated fat content of plant-based milks.
Coconut-based milks had on average up to six times higher saturated fat content than almond milk, oat milk, or soy milk.
past audits We also found that coconut-based milks were much higher in saturated fat than all other categories of milk.
A first look at cheese and yogurt alternatives
Our audit is the first to identify the range of cheese and yoghurt alternatives available in Australian supermarkets.
Only a third of plant-based yoghurts were labeled with calcium, and only 20% of supermarket products met the recommended calcium level of 100mg per 100g.
For plant-based cheeses, most (92%) were not fortified with calcium. Sodium content ranged from 390mg to 1,400mg per 100g, and saturated fat ranged from 0g to 28g per 100g.
