Plant-based meat analogues weaken gastrointestinal digestive function in mice

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.2c04246

by johntfella • 4 years ago

60 62 4 years ago

tluyben23• 4 years ago

In mice. No one thinks it applies to humans when it’s promising medicine, so why would this mean anything? It is a question, not trying to say it’s not worth discussing!

Wondering what exactly causes this effects in plant based meats as I notice that eating plants (fruits and veg and nuts), at least for me, seems to make my digestive function a lot happier than eating real meat. But I guess happier doesn’t say much about what’s actually going on down there.

hammyhavoc• 4 years ago

Came here to say that my digestive function is also much happier with Quorn et al. Never miss meat.

FollowingTheDao6• 4 years ago

amylase trypsin inhibitors might be part of the problem. They are only found in plant-based foods.

https://rupress.org/jem/article/209/13/2395/40998

ElCheapo3• 4 years ago

That's not what the abstract says.

They're specifically talking about foods which are claimed to be meat replacements.

If you have an all-encompassing and well varied vegan diet then this study doesn't really say anything about your situation

eej71• 4 years ago

I enjoyed your earlier typo that misused the word - taunted - when you probably meant touted. In a sense your typo is right! They are taunted as a meat replacement.

tluyben23• 4 years ago

That's not what the abstract says.

What is not? I started my second paragraph asking what in plant based meat, in that regard, is causing the difference vs eating plants…

ravio64• 4 years ago

Since I started mainly eating vegan diet (my partner is vegan so we eat so at home) my digestive functions are functioning a lot happier. :)

FollowingTheDao6• 4 years ago

I was vegan for three years and vegetarian for 15. My cholesterol kept rising in my gut was horrible.

I do not eat beef, but I do eat venison and bison but mostly seafood. I feel much better now.

cies• 4 years ago

Same here. I first went vegetarian for 10+ years, still eating lots of dairy. When I made the step to "when possible not burden animals with my behavior" I noticed my digestion improved, my random all-year-round running noses disappeared and my skin cleared up significantly.

myth_drannon• 4 years ago

Meat replacements are highly processed food with so many additives to make it taste like meat.

sfeng• 4 years ago

Couldn't you also interpret these results as: meat is hard to digest and requires a lot of work on the part of the gastric system. When you don't eat it, the gastric system is able to down-regulate.

BlargMcLarg3• 4 years ago

No, you can't. Plant-based meat != meat. If you want to argue against meat, test with meat.

To put it more blunt: article is testing vegan/vegetarian junkfood. That says something about vegan/vegetarian junkfood. Not meat. Not unprocessed vegetables.

drooby4• 4 years ago

Haha right… my next question was going to be.. okay so our gut produces less XYZ…. Is that a bad thing? High consumptions of red meat is positively associated with all cause mortality - while high veggies diet is opposite.

FollowingTheDao6• 4 years ago

High consumptions of red meat is positively associated with all cause mortality

For who? Everyone?

ElCheapo3• 4 years ago

correlation is not causation, unless you have an agenda

_3u10• 4 years ago

And yet when studies are done where people eat the same except for red meat the correlation disappears.

Here’s the thing eating red meat is normal, vegetarians are generally more concerned with their health and do a lot of other healthy things.

FollowingTheDao6• 4 years ago

Where is your scientific evidence That meat is hard to digest? What does it mean that it’s “hard to digest”? I mean vegetable fiber is totally undigestible and passes right through a system. So shouldn’t fiber being impossible to digest to be even worse than meat?

The protein and fat and meet may take longer to digest, but that doesn’t mean it’s “harder” to digest. Saying it is harder to digest implies that this is a problem. It’s not a problem, it’s just different.

ajross• 4 years ago

That's what I'm thinking too. These are all digestive responses they're measuring: stuff the body does to get whatever it ate digested. Producing less of this stuff means, presumably, that less of it was needed.

This is like running a study on safety equipment and concluding that "Elbow Pads inhibit inflammation response in Skateboarders" (because they don't skin their elbows!).

Meh. I'll wait for more real science here. But this seems incredibly spun, especially given the researcher's employer identities.

henearkr• 4 years ago

Yes. And we also know that vegetarian people's digestive tract becomes longer after switching from a meat diet, and the reverse also happens if they go back to meat.

So there is definitely adaptation going on, and it's not at all necessarily pathological, but very likely beneficial.

wzdd• 4 years ago

Author affiliations are as follows:

Key Laboratory of Meat Processing and Quality Control, MOE, Key Laboratory of Meat Processing, MARA, Jiangsu Innovative Center of Meat Production, Processing and Quality Control, College of Food Science and Technology, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China

I'm not saying the study is wrong. It's likely right! I just think it's going to be an interesting decade as meat producers apparently now recognise meat alternatives as an existential threat.

verisimi• 4 years ago

It's a threat, because meat replacement is so heavily promoted, no doubt with government mandates coming.

I'm personally a vegetarian, but I can't stand the government interference in food, I sympathise with meat eaters. I hear of farmers having to keep cows in sheds to protect orchids, and other nonsense. (As if it is a kindness to do this to cows, and feed them grains, etc.) Obviously this is a prelude to making meat a scarce product, cows being dangerous to the environment apparently, so people will be forced to eat artificial, human-designed, frankenfoods.

I don't think we can even conceive of the diseases and behavioural issues that a non-natural diet will cause. They aren't going to be positive though :(

2muchcoffeeman• 4 years ago

Obviously this is a prelude to making meat a scarce product, cows being dangerous to the environment apparently, so people will be forced to eat artificial, human-designed, frankenfoods.

Loads of cultures have good plant based foods and dishes. It’s only when I started living in a western country did I experience the bizarre need to make meat analogues. Just cook vegetables better.

yreg• 4 years ago

I'm personally a vegetarian, but I can't stand the government interference in food

Funny, because I'm a meat eater and I can't stand the government interference in making meat artificially cheap through subsidies when it is clearly the immoral and environment-hurting food option.

snapplebobapple• 4 years ago

It also costs us the much better solution of just making meat production better. There are multiple small projects that appear to be raising meat in a carbon net sequestering manner because doing stuff like intensive but brief with multiweek regrowth phases appears to dump a ton of carbon Into the soil, creating more high quality soil. They really need to be expanding those to the whole meat industry, not getting rid of meat. There is this synergistic spot in ag for meat production that likely increases plant yields while giving animals wonderful living conditions while sequestering carbon in a much less fire prone way than growing trees that we arent even really talking about right now.

seneca• 4 years ago

Obviously this is a prelude to making meat a scarce product, cows being dangerous to the environment apparently, so people will be forced to eat artificial, human-designed, frankenfoods.

It's already beginning. This is what the farmer protests (barely covered in the US) in the Netherlands are about. Their government is forcing thousands of cattle farms out of business.

crayboff• 4 years ago

no doubt with government mandates coming
Obviously this is a prelude to making meat a scarce product, cows being dangerous to the environment apparently, so people will be forced to eat artificial, human-designed, frankenfoods

I've seen this conspiracy mentioned before on the internet, can you give me a good source that led you to believe this?

I can't imagine any reasonable world where there would be any real political will for a government to mandate the replacement of meat.

I could imagine subsides similar to what the meat production industry already receives, but I can't imagine any mandates.

I could also imagine the occasional far left politician call for that some level of reduction in meat production, but I don't believe the US government would ever have the will to force people to eat meat alternatives

jamesrr39• 4 years ago

I hear of farmers having to keep cows in sheds to protect orchids

Sounds more like the government intervention here is actually to protect wild flowers. The farmer in this story has then concluded it's easier/cheaper to do that by keeping the cows in the shed than to fence off the field.

Going for a walk in the countryside near me, you know, in the real world, cows are often outside in fenced fields.

throw827474737• 4 years ago

Wait what Frankenfoods?

At least current processed meat is usually more "Frankenfood" and comes with more unnatural additions then plant-based alternatives like e.g. Beyond Meat?

elif• 4 years ago

The fact that it found two independent results, that digestive response is diminished AND nutrient absorption was diminished, leads me to believe the study's design was to focus on alternative meat deficiencies rather than qualitatively compare the two.

In fact, the way the summary reads to me, it seems like they may just be cleverly restating that real meat is harder to digest.

samatman2• 4 years ago

I find this plausible, but I think it's about powdered proteins generally, or at least many of them.

I tolerate dairy well, although I only drink small amounts of sweet milk and cream, eating mostly yogurt and cheese. I like to make strained yogurt / labneh, and I'll drink the whey by itself (I like pickle and sauerkraut juice as well).

But when I add whey powder to a shake for the gainz, my stomach really doesn't like that as much. It doesn't cause problems or I wouldn't eat it, but it's just a bit gassy and sometimes irritating.

I've noticed much the same thing with the pea-protein based vegan meats. I believe it's difficult to extract proteins without denaturing them somewhat, collagen is an exception but not a vegan one.

I like eating peas just fine, peas don't give me gas and lentils rarely do (that's it for me and pulses these days), but the extracted protein, not so much, doesn't sit right.

kortex• 4 years ago

Huh. I get almost the same thing. It always kinda baffled me, since I tolerate the source food fine, but the powder proteins give me a stomach ache beyond a certain amount.

I've tried to pin it down or at least mitigate it. It seems that emulsifiers + fats help (which is odd, as proteins themselves are often emulsifiers). My two theories are a) there are more free amino acids/oligopeptides, and some are naturally irritating, or b) these protein powders are more likely to crash out in the stomach.

maxerickson• 4 years ago

It can just be the volume of the protein.

Whey has a trace of protein in it (like 1%). Powders are mostly protein.

Unprocessed peas are around 5% protein, meat substitutes are more like 50%.

samatman2• 4 years ago

It's not strictly volume of protein, no.

I can and do eat six eggs, or a 300gm steak, or a half liter of yogurt, in one sitting.

All of these are readily digested. They also have fat, and buffing a yogurt shake with whey protein pushes the balance toward protein, sure. But strictly volume of protein doesn't hold up.

uup• 4 years ago

Stuff like yogurt and cheese can often be tolerated by those with lactose intolerance, especially cheeses with lower lactose levels. For whey, I would verify that you're eating the same amount of whey in both cases. Obviously, powdered whey protein has the protein extracted and dried so the same amount of whey protein will weigh substantially less than whey you separate yourself.

Regarding peas and lentils: they have a ton of fiber when eaten whole. That makes a big difference.

ReptileMan• 4 years ago

Couple of things come to mind - probably working together:

The human body changes at slower pace than our diet in the last 60 years. Transforming food by cooking, curing, salting, smoking, grinding and fermenting has been around for thousands of years and we have adapted to it.

Eating food deconstructed and isolated is somewhat new invention.

And the second is - with processed and refined stuff it is easier to OD. 20 grams of whey protein is probably the amount of protein you get from couple of liters of milk or a kilogram of milk. And we usually have consumed both casein and whey together.

kaczordon• 4 years ago

Unfortunately plant proteins are not as digestible as animal proteins. I believe you get roughly 60% of the protein uptake from pea protein as compared to meat. This is due to the profile of specific amino acids(leucine, methionine) limiting its uptake.

drooby4• 4 years ago

It believe it depends. Plant protein isolates have comprobable digestibility to animal (90%+)

Peanut is very high too.

johncearls• 4 years ago

A fellow fan of Peter Attia I see. His latest podcast had a protein expert on that went into great depth about the virtues and drawbacks of different protein sources. Highly recommend to people who are interested in the topic.

https://peterattiamd.com/donlayman/

j_m_b• 4 years ago

I love that people now explicitly state that studies are in mice. That "InMice" Twitter account did a great service to mankind!

api• 4 years ago

Anything just in mice should be taken with a grain of mouse. Lots of stuff in mice does not replicate in humans. I’m sure the inverse is true too.

I really learned this following life extension research. It’s never been a better time to be an aging mouse but for humans the progress is much slower.

mytailorisrich• 4 years ago

Plant-based meat replacements tend to be highly processed food, which may neither be good for us nor the environment. Really, they are first a foremost exploiting a gap in the market at the moment.

jasonhansel• 4 years ago

I think that this really just shows that the digestive system changes and adapts to a plant-based diet. They haven't shown that there are any disadvantages to such changes; for all we know, this is actually beneficial.

open-source-ux• 4 years ago

I was surprised to learn recently that meat alternatives are classified as "ultra-processed" foods (dairy milk substitutes are also classified as ultra-processed as well).

From: What is ultra-processed food? https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/what_is_ultra-processed_...

Ultra-processed foods usually contain ingredients that you wouldn’t add when cooking homemade food. You may not recognise the names of these ingredients as many will be chemicals, colourings, sweeteners and preservatives.
More surprising to some will be...“other ultra-processed foods”. This includes baked beans, tinned soups, meat alternatives, soy and drinks used as dairy milk substitutes.
It can be tricky to identify food that has been ultra-processed because in some cases the same type of food could be minimally processed, processed or ultra-processed, depending on how it’s been made. For example: Bread made from wheat flour, water, salt and yeast is processed, but add emulsifiers or colourings and it becomes ultra-processed.

(My emphasis)

throwaway22032• 4 years ago

I love the whole debate about vegetarianism because it's just so obviously solvable.

When >50% of Olympic athletes with their optimised fitness plans are vegetarian/vegan, then you'll know it makes sense.

BlargMcLarg3• 4 years ago

The discussion is ridiculous to begin with. Nutritional sciences can't find any consensus within itself, but somehow a bunch of upper middle class people are enlightened when they decide to give half a damn about their diets and where their food is coming from, disregarding any notion of their current position in life to boot. Let alone extensive experimentation.

Meanwhile the statistics are all over the place.

ceejayoz2• 4 years ago

That’s like saying only tech used by Formula 1 racing is useful in consumer cars. Olympic athletes are edge cases with unusual requirements.

hrbf• 4 years ago

Unless I’m misunderstanding it, what this study apparently shows is that when a mouse eats unhealthy foods for some time, digestive function changes. An eye-opening result indeed.

forgotmypw17• 4 years ago

I think this is an example of the myriad evolved biological Chesterton's fences we're only beginning to discover in our bodies.

I've personally done as much "de-modernization" as possible in my life and tried to revert to as close of a pre-industrial lifestyle and inputs as I can.

Plant-based meat analogues weaken gastrointestinal digestive function in mice

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