Is plant-based meat ultra-processed and unhealthy?

The objection

“It’s ultra-processed in a factory with a list of ingredients you can’t pronounce. Going vegan just swaps processed meat for processed fake meat, so where’s the health gain?”

The answer

Most of it is ultra-processed, and nobody should pretend otherwise. The term comes from the NOVA system, which sorts foods into four groups by how much industrial processing they have been through: unprocessed or minimally processed foods such as fresh fruit, vegetables, grains and plain milk; culinary ingredients such as oil, sugar and salt; processed foods such as cheese, simple bread and tinned fish; and ultra-processed foods, industrial formulations such as soft drinks, packaged snacks, reconstituted meat products and ready meals [1]. In a 2026 study from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, more than 88% of popular plant-based meats, milks and yoghurts sold in the UK were ultra-processed, on average across the three [2]. The useful question is how plant meat compares with the meat it replaces.

How does plant-based meat compare with meat?

Like for like, plant-based meat comes out ahead on fibre, calories and saturated fat, though not on sugar or protein. A 2023 University of Warwick analysis of 99 products from five UK supermarkets found the plant-based versions had significantly more fibre, fewer calories and less saturated fat than the meat products they copy, but also more sugar and less protein, with no significant difference in salt, and they cost more [3]. The 2026 London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine study swapped all the processed meat in a basic weekly UK shopping basket for plant-based versions: across the whole basket, fibre rose by about 3 to 6% and saturated fat fell by about 6 to 7%, depending on the product and whether the basket was a man’s or a woman’s, while the cost went up [2]. Not every product was fortified, so plant meats shouldn’t be relied on for B12 or iron, and the label is worth reading [2].

Does eating plant-based meat change your health?

Two randomised trials point in different directions, and neither found that plant meat worsened blood cholesterol. In SWAP-MEAT (2020), 36 generally healthy adults at Stanford ate plant-based meat for eight weeks and animal meat for eight weeks, keeping the rest of their diet as similar as possible [4]. LDL cholesterol averaged 109.9 mg/dL in the plant phase against 120.7 mg/dL in the animal phase, a difference of about 11 mg/dL, and weight was 0.9kg lower [4]. TMAO, a marker linked to heart disease, was lower overall, but only significantly so in the half who ate the plant meat second [4]. Beyond Meat supplied the plant products and gave Stanford an unrestricted research gift towards the study [4]. A 2024 trial in Singapore gave 89 adults at raised risk of diabetes either plant-based meats or the matching animal foods for eight weeks and found no significant difference in LDL or other blood fats [8]. Diastolic blood pressure was lower on the plant products, but blood sugar stayed in the target range more of the time on the animal foods (a median of 94.1% against 86.5%), and the plant group’s intake of fibre, potassium and sodium all rose; the authors concluded that the plant diet “did not show widespread cardiometabolic health benefits” and that nutritional quality is key [8].

Is plant meat as risky as processed meat?

Processed meat is a confirmed cause of bowel cancer; no plant alternative has been found to be one. In 2015 the WHO’s cancer agency, IARC, classed processed meat as carcinogenic to humans on sufficient evidence that it causes colorectal cancer, and its experts concluded that each 50g eaten daily raises that risk by 18% [5]. The classification rates how strong the evidence is, not how likely cancer is at a given amount [6], and IARC said that for an individual the risk remains small [5]. Harvard’s Nutrition Source reports the commonly quoted average as a rise from about 5% to 6% in lifetime risk [7].

The split matters inside plant eating too. In 118,397 UK Biobank adults followed for about nine years, more energy from ultra-processed plant foods was linked to higher risk of heart and circulatory disease, while more from plant foods that were not ultra-processed was linked to lower risk (Rauber et al., 2024) [1]. Each 10 percentage points of daily energy from the second group went with a 7% lower risk, each 10 points from the first with a 5% higher risk, and plant foods taken all together showed no link either way [1]. Diets were recorded in 2009 to 2012, the study grouped all ultra-processed plant foods together rather than testing plant meats, and as an observational study it can’t rule out other explanations, as its authors note [1]. Plant meat makes a fair swap for sausages and bacon, and the Biobank results favour building the rest of the plate from plant foods that aren’t ultra-processed, such as fruit, vegetables and grains.