The Best and Worst Meat Alternatives: Findings of a New Study on the Health, Environment, and Wallet Impact

It is by now well established that meat and dairy are at least partially responsible for the climate crisis. And without giving up our addiction to animal products, we will not be able to avoid dangerous levels of global warming. What’s less obvious is what to replace your burger and cheese with. What’s best for your health and the planet? And what about your wallet? These are the questions I tried to answer in a new study. I conducted a joint evaluation of meat and milk alternatives comparing their nutritional profile, health benefits, environmental impact and cost. These plant-based options included traditional products like tofu and tempeh, processed options like veggie burgers and plant milks, products still under development like lab-grown beef, and unprocessed foods like soybeans and peas.
The assessment featured several ways to compare foods, including calories per serving, and substituting one’s own or one’s current intake of meat and dairy. Beans win The findings show that unprocessed plant-based foods, such as soybeans, peas and beans, are best suited to replace meat and dairy. Choosing legumes over meat and milk would halve the nutritional imbalance – the total gap between current and recommended intakes of nutrients – in high-income countries such as the UK, the US and across Europe. And it would reduce the number of people dying by one tenth, especially from diet-related diseases like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes.
The amount of land and water required to grow our food, and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions, would be more than halved, and the cost of food would be reduced by more than a third. Veggie Burgers and Plant Milk in Second Processed plant-based foods like veggie burgers and plant milk still provide substantial benefits for anyone looking to replace meat and dairy. But emissions reductions and health improvements were one-fifth to one-third less than with unprocessed beans, and the cost to the consumer was more than one-tenth that of the current diet.
For both processed and unprocessed options, most of the improvements in nutrition and disease risk come from increases in fiber (although processed options contain less), potassium and polyunsaturated fatty acids, and cholesterol, saturated fat, and animal-based (haem) iron. Both processed and unprocessed plant-based alternatives had a lower environmental impact than meat and milk, as they produce fewer emissions and consume less land and water to make.
For example, making veggie burgers and plant milks requires energy to process food, which typically increases costs and emissions. However it does not have the environmental benefits compared to meat and dairy. This means that processed options are generally priced higher than unprocessed options. Therefore, unprocessed legumes like peas and beans were the clear winners in the study. They performed well from all perspectives including nutrition, health, environment and cost.
But a surprise runner-up was tempeh, a traditional Indonesian food made from fermented soybeans, which retains most of the nutritional properties of soybeans without much processing or additives. This, and its relatively low cost, gave it an edge over more processed options such as veggie burgers. Lab-grown meat is in last place. Another surprising discovery concerns lab-grown meat. Despite the difficulty in evaluating a product that is not yet on the market, existing data suggests that it will not be competitive with meat alternatives, nor with meat derived from slaughter.
Using current technology, which consumes a lot of energy to grow animal tissue in the laboratory, the emissions of cultured meat could be as high as a beef burger while the cost could be up to 40,000 times higher. By mimicking beef, the health effects of lab-grown meat are equally bad. Although costs and emissions could decline as production processes become more efficient, this will require substantial investment and technological progress.
Public investment in both lab-grown meat and ultra-processed plant-based replacements may not be justified given their relative impacts. Readily available options are economical and do not require new technologies or product development. However, what is needed are sensible public policies that help everyone eat healthily and sustainably.
It’s worth saying that the best replacements for meat and dairy are not just whole foods, but complete meals. Why not try cooking bean chili, chickpea curry, or tempeh stir-fry? Or, how about some crushed peas on dark bread? Replacing your average fast-food meal with a mix of legumes, vegetables and whole grains not only provides a more balanced dose of nutrients, but also reduces your environmental footprint at equal or less cost to your wallet.