Aren't vegan diets just ultra-processed junk (fake meats)?

The objection

“Going vegan just means swapping processed meat for ultra-processed fake meat. Where’s the health point?”

The answer

Partly deserved, so concede it fully: a diet of vegan junk food is not a health food. Many mock meats have long ingredient lists and high salt.

But the objection treats veganism and fake meat as the same thing, and they aren’t. The ideal of plant-based eating is whole foods: beans, lentils, whole grains, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds. That’s the diet behind essentially every favourable health finding in the large cohorts. Mock meats are a transitional convenience, optional thereafter, and largely absent from the plates of long-term vegans. Judging veganism by its processed novelties is like judging an omnivorous diet by frozen ready-meals.

Then there’s the comparison the objection invites and loses. Take the ultra-processed mock meats at their worst and set them like-for-like against the processed meats they replace, and they come out ahead. A nutritional analysis (Coffey et al., 2023) found plant-based alternatives averaged around 15% less saturated fat, more fibre and fewer calories than their meat equivalents. Swapping processed meat for these across a whole diet has been estimated to raise fibre intake by 4–6% and cut saturated fat by 6–7%. And unlike processed meat, no plant alternative carries an IARC Group 1 carcinogen classification.

Honest caveats: some mock meats are high in salt, and not all are fortified with iron or B12. Read the label, treat them as occasional foods, and don’t rely on them for micronutrients. Ultra-processing is a genuine concern on either side of the aisle.

So “vegan junk exists” is true and beside the point. The strongest version of a plant-based diet is built on whole foods, and even the weakest version, the processed mimic, beats the processed meat it stands in for. Taken seriously, the fake-meat critique argues for better plant-based eating rather than a return to the bacon.