Are Plant-Based Foods Ultraprocessed? Big Meat’s “Disinformation War”

I saw it many years ago, long before I tried plant-based alternatives for the first time—or even thought much about food at all. But it's one of those turns of phrase that burrowed itself into my mind and stayed there. I think it’s the idea of food having a sort of aura or quality; something that goes beyond the nutrients, the grams of fat or sugar or salt. Something that can’t be captured on a list of ingredients. An infusion of emotion, agency, and meaning.

When KFC first rolled out their partnership with Beyond Meat, I paid them my first-ever adult visit to try the plant-based nuggets. It wasn’t just the menu item I was excited about—it was everything the new menu item represented. Massive restaurant chains were starting to believe in the future of plant-based alternatives—enough to invest in them on a nationwide scale! To me, each crispy “chicken” nugget was more than an indulgent bite. It was proof that people power could shift the decisions of major corporations. It was proof that the status quo could change.

But as plant-based foods keep popping up on more and more menus—from KFC’s Beyond Meat nuggets to Burger King’s Impossible Whopper—they haven’t been met without pushback. The main critique? That the foods themselves are ultraprocessed, unhealthy, and even dangerous.

How did “plant-based”—in many consumers’ minds—become synonymous with “ultraprocessed?” And most importantly, how is this debate distracting us from the real issue at hand: our broken food system?

The growing buzz about ultraprocessed foods

Mental health impacts. Gut issues. An increased risk of cancer. Type 2 diabetes. Cardiovascular disease. The list is terrifying—and, scrolling through news articles, one could easily come to the conclusion that all of these threats can be traced back to a single culprit: ultraprocessed foods (UPFs).

“Those who consume ultra-processed food several times a day are three times more likely to have serious mental health struggles compared to those who rarely or never do,” reads one study, even going as far as to suggest that “a third of the mental health burden might be relieved by a shift away from ultra-processed food consumption.” Some researchers have suggested that this is because they disrupt the gut microbiome, wreaking havoc on everything from our hormones to our mental health.

So, what are ultraprocessed foods?

I won’t lie. I thought I was relatively savvy when it came to food and nutrition. That’s why I was shocked when I tanked this quiz from The New York Times: “Do You Know How to Spot Foods That Are Ultraprocessed?”

Basically, the criteria for “processed” is lower than one might think. A processed food is simply an item that was altered on its journey from the farm to the shelf. That includes canning, drying, pasteurizing. Canned beans? Processed. Dried mango? Processed.

And then there’s ultraprocessed. If you’re anything like me, maybe your mind goes straight to fast food, or packaged cookies—the stuff we already recognize as “junk food.” But you don’t have to visit a drive-thru to find ultraprocessed foods. They’re probably sitting in your pantry right now.

Scientists use a NOVA classification system to identify ultraprocessed foods, assigning them to one of four categories: 1) “unprocessed or minimally processed foods,” 2) foods that contain “culinary ingredients” like oil or sugar, 3) “processed foods,” like the canned beans I mentioned, and 4) ultraprocessed foods “made mostly or entirely from substances derived from foods and additives.”

A good way to identify an ultraprocessed food, scientists suggest, is by questioning whether it’s something you could feasibly make in your home kitchen. If it contains substances you wouldn’t find in the average kitchen, and if it’s wrapped in plastic, you can be pretty sure it’s ultraprocessed.

Harvard Health Publishing offers the following table of examples:

Credit: Harvard Health Publishing

As part of this experiment, I looked into my own pantry. I pulled out some coconut milk, canned chickpeas, and USDA organic granola—all seemingly innocuous foods. I would even go so far as to say healthy foods. The ingredients I found included potassium metabisulfite (a preservative in the coconut milk), disodium EDTA (in the chickpeas), and organic natural flavors (in the granola). In other words, all of these products are ultraprocessed.

It should come as no surprise, then, that nearly 60% of the calories US adults consume today are ultraprocessed. If my coconut milk is any indication, avoiding UPFs isn’t as easy as it would seem. Not only does it take meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking—it also takes poring over every list of ingredients. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time for that.

We should take this research and these concerns very seriously. They reflect the ways that our food system has failed us. They reflect our own power as consumers unwilling to compromise for food that poisons us, rather than nourishing us. And still, here’s why we should take the “ultraprocessed” criticism of plant-based foods with a grain of salt—or, should I say, disodium EDTA.

Big Meat’s “disinformation war” on plant-based alternatives

In my research for this article, I came across an ominous website called fakefoodfacts.com, published by “The Center for Consumer Freedom.” It threatens: “Veggie burgers don’t grow in the ground. They’re made in factories.”*

*The author neglects to add that animal-based burgers are also, essentially, “made in factories”... factory farms. Are we supposed to believe cows grow in the ground?

If you dig deeper into this organization, you’ll start unraveling a murky history. Headed by lobbyist Rick Berman, the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) is really a “front group that represents tobacco, alcohol and meat companies” (to use Bloomberg’s definition). Back in 2005, the group ran $600,000 worth of ads taking aim at researchers concerned about the food industry’s role in the obesity epidemic—prompting Dr. David Ludwig from Children's Hospital in Boston to tell The New York Times: "They stand for food industry freedom, not consumer freedom."

Time and again, when researchers, academics, and nonprofit groups start sounding the alarm about an industry (cough, cough… Big Meat), you can count on the Center to show up with a conveniently timed smear campaign.

And that’s exactly what happened. As Jessica Scott-Reid points out for Sentient Media, The Center for Consumer Freedom has been working frantically behind the scenes to sow seeds of discontent—namely, painting plant-based meats as fake, unhealthy, and full of “chemicals.” That included taking out full-page ads in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal bashing “fake meats,” as well as placing a $5 million fear-mongering TV commercial during the 2020 Super Bowl.

Beyond the CCF, Big Meat has shown that it will go to great lengths to avoid facing the growing mountain of evidence that it’s one of the biggest contributors to climate change. Their online MBA program (Masters of Beef Advocacy; you can’t make this stuff up) teaches talking points and “scientific-sounding” narratives about how to respond to rising concerns about the environmental impact of beef.

Not only is this disinformation unethical—it’s outright terrifying. And it’s a carefully orchestrated distraction from the real goal… moving away from the system of factory farming that created a need for plant-based alternatives in the first place.

The ingredients of “real meat”

Most people would identify that a hot dog fits squarely in the ultraprocessed category. But what about a rotisserie chicken? Or a beef burger? After all, if you just look at the list of ingredients, all you’ll see is “beef” or “chicken.”

But there’s much more to it.

The industry would have you believe that chickens breathe fresh air, poke happily around in green grass, and take naps in the sunshine. The truth is very different.

The truth is, a farmed chicken was born in a hatchery with thousands and thousands of other chicks. At just one day old, she was dropped on a conveyor belt. (If she was destined for the egg industry, the male chicks around her would be tossed into a grinder and crushed to death.) But since she was born to be raised as a “broiler” or meat chicken, she was packed into a crate and transported to a “grow-out” facility—a large, windowless shed where she’d spend the entirety of her short life.

Because she was bred to grow unnaturally fast, she suffered constant health issues. Her legs might even have broken from the strain of holding up her unnaturally large body. She sat there in misery, the ammonia burning her skin.

At six or seven weeks old, she was brought to a slaughterhouse. There, her delicate legs were rammed into metal shackles, holding her upside down—terrified and barely able to breathe. Passed through an electrified “stunning bath,” she was stunned before being slit by the throat. Hopefully. If not, she may have been boiled alive—as thousands of chickens are, every single year.

She never saw the light of day. She never breathed fresh air. All she knew was the most extreme suffering and misery.

But guess what? None of that has to go on the list of ingredients.

Scientists’ main piece of advice: Eat more plants

The bottom line is, we shouldn’t let the ultraprocessed debate distract us from the main takeaway that scientists recommend over and over for optimal health, longevity, and happiness. Eat more plants.

Plant-based meats aren’t trying to replace whole fruits and vegetables. They’re trying to replace cheeseburgers, hot dogs, bacon, chicken nuggets—none of which, it’s generally understood, are meant to be eaten on a daily basis. So why are plant-based meats under so much more scrutiny than their meat-based counterparts? We should be comparing a plant-based cheeseburger to a meat-based cheeseburger—not comparing a plant-based cheeseburger to a salad.

Lest we forget, scientists have linked red meat consumption to a higher risk of heart disease. And interestingly, some researchers have proposed that the negative health impacts of UPFs might be a result of their low fiber content. “The act of industrially processing a food can lower its fiber content, which can make one less satiated after eating it,” reads one article in Scientific American. “Fiber also feeds bacteria in the gut, and the absence of this nutrient may explain the link between diet, depression and gut health, too.”

Eating more plants is a great way to get more fiber in your diet, since plants are naturally high in fiber. In fact, one study found that a diet made up of primarily ultra-processed foods can be healthy if—you guessed it—most of them are plant-based.

My coconut milk—which will likely become a curry over rice, with lots of fresh veggies, chickpeas, and cilantro—is ultraprocessed. So are chicken nuggets from a fast-food drive-thru. Are we really going to lump these foods into the same category?

Christopher Gardner, the director of nutrition studies at Stanford University, has the same concern. He fears that if someone hears a jar of spaghetti sauce is ultraprocessed, they’ll throw in the towel and opt for fast food—turning a relatively healthy budget meal into a very unhealthy budget meal. The NOVA system has been criticized by many researchers for this lack of nuance—and, notably, for targeting plant-based foods.

Sure enough, Gardner’s advice for NPR readers? “Focus on eating a diet that's primarily plant-based.”

Beyond the ingredients

Plant-based substitutes are trying to replace, on a massive scale, the cheap, mass-produced, factory-farmed meat that consumers have come to expect and rely on. Kelsey Piper puts it beautifully for Vox: “The backlash to plant-based meat, when you look at it closely, is a backlash against our food system in general—mistakenly directed at one of the more promising efforts to make it a little bit better.”

Maybe it’s time we start thinking about food as more than a list of ingredients. More than “processed” or “low-fat” or all the other labels we’ve tried to package it with. Maybe we think about how food makes us feel, how it makes other people feel, and how it affects the animals with whom we share this one-of-a-kind planet.

Because food affects so much more than just our bodies. It affects the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink. It affects the soil that life on Earth depends on. It affects the people involved in planting, cultivating, and providing it. It affects the animals who suffer on factory farms. Our health is directly connected to the health of our communities, the health of our planet, and the health of animals.

The good news—and how you can help

What does all this say? If Big Meat didn’t see plant-based foods as a credible threat, they wouldn’t be doing any of this. They’re terrified of us, and for good reason.

Want to get started in helping to create a healthier food system? Join thousands of changemakers who are taking back power from factory farms—and building a more compassionate food system from the ground up!