Is vegan junk food healthy?

The objection

“Chips are vegan, and so are crisps, cola, white bread and plenty of biscuits. Half of what vegans eat is ultra-processed, from the oat milk to the fake meat and the vegan cheese, and the studies that make them look healthy are of health-conscious people who’d do well on any diet. A vegan living on chips is no healthier than a meat-eater who cooks.”

The answer

The objection is right about the label. Vegan describes what a food leaves out and says nothing about its nutrition, so a diet of chips, white bread, sweets and fizzy drinks can be entirely vegan and still be a poor diet for anyone. Nutrition researchers now split plant-based diets into healthful and unhealthful kinds for exactly this reason. In three long-running US cohorts of more than 200,000 nurses and other health professionals, followed for over 20 years, Satija and colleagues (2017) scored each person’s diet for how plant-based it was in three ways, all of which gave credit for eating fewer animal foods [1]. The top tenth on a healthful score, which rewarded whole grains, fruit, vegetables, nuts, legumes, vegetable oils, tea and coffee, had a 25% lower risk of coronary heart disease than the bottom tenth (hazard ratio 0.75, 95% CI 0.68 to 0.83) [1]. The top tenth on an unhealthful score, which rewarded refined grains, potatoes (chips and crisps among them), sweets, fruit juice and sugary drinks, had a 32% higher risk (1.32, 1.20 to 1.46) [1]. An overall score that counted every plant food alike was linked to only a slightly lower risk (0.92, 0.83 to 1.01), a result that could not rule out no difference at all [1].

These were mostly not vegans. Even the most plant-based tenth on the overall score ate about three servings of animal food a day, against five to six in the least plant-based tenth, and everyone reported their diet on food questionnaires [1]. The results held after allowing for smoking, exercise, alcohol, body weight and other differences, but the authors point out that in observational data some confounding can remain [1]. A version of the healthful score that also gave credit for fish, eggs and dairy other than ice cream did almost as well (0.78, 0.71 to 0.86), which the authors read as a sign that the smaller amount of animal food in the healthful pattern can largely come from eating less of the less healthy kinds, such as red and processed meat [1]. The paper pools relative risks only, so it gives no single absolute difference. A 2024 meta-analysis of nine studies, with up to 359,740 people, found the same pattern when it measured each score per standard deviation rather than between extremes: each step up the healthful score went with a 6% lower risk of cardiovascular disease (hazard ratio 0.94, 0.91 to 0.98), and each step up the unhealthful score with a 3% higher one (1.03, 1.01 to 1.06), though the healthful result varied widely between studies [9].

The same split shows up for diabetes. In the same three cohorts (2016), once body weight was allowed for, the top tenth on the healthful score had a 34% lower risk of type 2 diabetes than the bottom tenth (0.66, 0.61 to 0.72), and the top tenth on the unhealthful score a 16% higher risk (1.16, 1.08 to 1.25) [2]. A 2019 meta-analysis that pooled those three cohorts with six other prospective studies, 307,099 people in all, found a 23% lower risk of type 2 diabetes in those with the most plant-based diets (relative risk 0.77, 0.71 to 0.84), and a 30% lower risk where the score favoured healthful plant foods (0.70, 0.62 to 0.79) [3].

Do vegans eat more ultra-processed food than meat-eaters?

Vegans got more of their calories from ultra-processed food than meat-eaters did in a French study (2021), and a share not clearly different in a British one (2024), where they also ate far more fibre per calorie and less saturated fat. In the French NutriNet-Santé cohort, which recorded what 21,212 adults, 254 of them vegan, ate on repeated 24-hour food records, ultra-processed food supplied 39.5% of the energy in vegans’ diets against 33.0% in meat-eaters’ (2021) [4]. The vegans did score higher on a healthful plant-based diet index, 67.9 against 53.5 [4], but indices of this kind give credit for eating fewer animal foods, up to a third of the points in the original version, so vegans score well on them partly by definition [1]. Among those who avoided meat, people who had changed their diet more recently, or at a younger age, ate more ultra-processed food [4].

In UK Biobank (2024), the 159 vegans got 22.7% of the weight of their food from ultra-processed products, against 24.2% for people who ate red or processed meat more than once a week, and after allowing for age, income and other differences the vegans were 1.2 percentage points higher, a difference that was not statistically significant (95% CI −0.7 to 3.2), while vegetarians ate significantly more (1.3 points, 0.9 to 1.7) and vegans ate 3.2 points more minimally processed food (1.0 to 5.5) [5]. Counted by calories, the average share of ultra-processed food ranged from 46.4% in pescatarians to 51.7% in vegetarians, with no evidence of a difference between vegans and regular red-meat eaters [5]. By that measure the objection’s “half” is roughly true of everyone in the cohort, meat-eaters included. The vegans did drink far more plant milk, 4.9% of their food by weight against 0.4%, and ate more meat alternatives, 1.5% against 0.03%, and counted in grams a day they ate 81.9 g more ultra-processed food [5]. Both studies were snapshots of a single period with few vegans (254 in France [4], 159 in Britain [5]), and UK Biobank volunteers are not typical of the country, eating less ultra-processed food than the UK average [5].

Measure	Meat-eaters	Vegans
Share of calories from ultra-processed food, France (2021) [4]	33.0%	39.5%
Share of food weight from ultra-processed food, UK (2024) [5]	24.2%	22.7%
Fibre, g per 1,000 kcal, UK (2024) [5]	11.8	20.9
Saturated fat, share of calories, UK (2024) [5]	11.1%	6.7%
Free sugars, share of calories, UK (2024) [5]	13.9%	13.3%

The UK meat-eaters are those who ate red or processed meat more than once a week, and the UK figures are unadjusted averages [5]. Free sugars were high in every group, at more than 13% of energy [5].

Is plant-based junk food as bad as any other junk?

In what its authors describe as the first large cohort study to split plant foods by how processed they were, ultra-processed plant foods went with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, much as ultra-processed food in general did, while plant foods that were not ultra-processed went with a lower one. In UK Biobank (2024), 118,397 adults were followed for a median of nine years and 7,806 of them developed cardiovascular disease [6]. Each extra tenth of daily calories from ultra-processed plant foods went with a 5% higher risk (hazard ratio 1.05, 1.03 to 1.07), against 6% for ultra-processed food of any kind (1.06, 1.04 to 1.08), while each extra tenth from plant foods that were not ultra-processed went with a 7% lower risk (0.93, 0.91 to 0.95) [6]. Plant foods taken all together showed no link either way (0.99, 0.97 to 1.02) [6]. The largest sources of ultra-processed plant food in that cohort were packaged bread, then pastries, buns and cakes, then biscuits, and meat alternatives supplied 0.2% of calories on average [6], so the study says little about plant-based burgers and sausages, which are covered on the page about plant-based meat. The diets came from 24-hour recalls, and the authors say confounding can’t be ruled out [6].

Other large cohorts find that ultra-processed plant foods do not all behave alike. In EPIC, which followed 266,666 people in seven European countries for a median of 11.2 years (2023), ultra-processed breads and cereals (hazard ratio 0.97, 0.94 to 1.00) and plant-based alternatives (0.97, 0.91 to 1.02) were not linked to developing two or more of cancer, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, while ultra-processed animal products (1.09, 1.05 to 1.12) and sweetened drinks (1.09, 1.06 to 1.12) were [11]. In the same three US health-worker cohorts as above (2023), the fifth of people eating the most ultra-processed food had a 46% higher risk of type 2 diabetes than the fifth eating the least (1.46, 1.39 to 1.54), but the kinds split: cereals, dark and wholegrain breads, packaged sweet and savoury snacks, fruit-based products and yoghurt went with a lower risk, and refined breads, sauces and spreads, sweetened drinks, animal-based products and ready-made mixed dishes with a higher one [12].

Two feeding trials suggest that processing itself can change how much people eat and weigh. In a 2019 trial at the US National Institutes of Health, 20 adults living on a metabolic ward ate as much as they liked of an ultra-processed diet for two weeks and an unprocessed one for two weeks, in random order, with the meals offered matched for calories, sugar, fat, fibre and salt [7]. On the ultra-processed diet they ate 508 kcal a day more and gained 0.9 kg, and on the unprocessed diet they lost 0.9 kg [7]. Volunteers on vegetarian or vegan diets were excluded, and the trial was small and short [7]. A longer trial in England (2025) gave 55 adults with overweight or obesity, who usually got at least half their calories from ultra-processed food, eight weeks on each of two diets that both followed the UK’s Eatwell Guide, one minimally processed and one ultra-processed, in random order [10]. Among the 50 analysed, they lost 2.06% of their body weight on the minimally processed diet against 1.05% on the ultra-processed one [10]. Vegans and vegetarians were excluded from it too, it was funded by a medical charity and a non-governmental organisation, and one of its authors receives royalties for a book on ultra-processed food [10].

The UK’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (2023) called the links between ultra-processed food and ill health concerning, but said that limits in the NOVA classification, possible confounding and the chance that existing UK dietary advice already covers them mean the evidence should be treated with caution [14]. A 2026 scientific statement from the American College of Cardiology concluded that current evidence supports eating patterns centred on minimally processed plant foods, with ultra-processed foods limited, particularly sugary drinks and processed meats [13].

How do you eat vegan without living on junk?

The NHS sets out a healthy vegan diet in a few lines: at least five portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables a day, meals based on potatoes, bread, rice, pasta or other starchy foods (wholegrain where possible), some fortified dairy alternatives such as soya drinks and yoghurts, some beans, pulses and other proteins, nuts and seeds rich in omega-3 such as walnuts every day, and fortified foods or supplements for vitamin D, vitamin B12, iodine, selenium and calcium [8]. Foods and drinks high in fat, salt or sugar are for less often and in small amounts [8]. With good planning, it says, a vegan diet gives you all the nutrients you need, and without it you could miss out on calcium, iron, B12, iodine and selenium [8]. The same page has a section for vegans who are pregnant or breastfeeding, who need to make sure they get enough vitamins and minerals for the baby to develop healthily, and says the Eatwell Guide it builds on is not suitable for children under 2 [8]. This site’s case for going vegan is about the animals, but a vegan diet built this way leans on the whole grains, fruit, vegetables, nuts and pulses that the healthful score rewarded [1][8].

If you take medicine for cholesterol, blood pressure or diabetes, speak to your GP before making big changes to how you eat, and don’t change or stop any medicine without their advice. If worry about eating “clean” or cutting out foods has started to take over, a GP or an eating-disorder charity can help: Beat in the UK (beateatingdisorders.org.uk), Bodywhys in Ireland (bodywhys.ie), ANAD in the US (anad.org), NEDIC in Canada (nedic.ca) and the Butterfly Foundation in Australia (butterfly.org.au), while in New Zealand EDANZ (ed.org.nz) supports families and carers.