Meat Substitutes and Health

"Plant-based meat alternatives are not created equal," agrees Mark Hyman, MD, founder of the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Functional Medicine. A whole-food organic mushroom or lentil burger is good for you, he notes, but "a highly processed GMO soy burger with 110 times the glyphosate needed to harm your microbiome? Maybe not."

Not only does the glyphosate used on GMO soy appear to harm the gut microbiome, it's been deemed a likely carcinogen by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer. Research also suggests that glyphosate can trouble our endocrine systems.

Newer meat substitutes contain other dicey ingredients. "[A popular fake burger] contains pea-protein isolate, which is a processed pea protein, so it is stripped of many nutrients," says functional-medicine practitioner Liz Lipski, PhD, CNS, LDN. "The canola oil doesn't state that it's organic, which means it is GMO."