Processed meat alternatives including meat-free burgers, sausages and mince conceal high levels of salt which make a mockery of their “health halo” status, according to new research.
Action on Salt (AOS), which studied 154 supermarket meat alternative products, found 28% of products were higher in salt than the maximum salt targets set by government health chiefs.
On average meat-free burgers from leading supermarkets including Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda contained more salt than real meat burgers (0.89g/serve vs 0.75g/serve).
AOS also found the saltiest products in the survey - Tofurky’s Hickory Smoked Deli Slices and Tesco’s Meat Free Bacon Style Rashers - both contained much more salt per 100g than seawater (3.5g/100g and 3.2g/100g respectively).
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The highest average salt content per 100g was found in meat-free bacon (2.03g/100g) and meat-free sliced meat (1.56g/100g).
Meanwhile on average vegetarian kievs were the saltiest (1.03g) - saltier than a large portion of McDonald’s fries - followed by meat-free sausages (0.96g) and plain meat-free pieces and fillets (0.87g), which came in at the equivalent of three portions of salted peanuts.
AOS last surveyed vegetarian alternatives in 2008 and said that while the average salt content per 100g has decreased for both meat-free sausages and meat-free burgers, the average salt content per portion of meat-free burgers had increased from 0.80g to 0.89g.
The survey found 32 of the 154 (20%) products included in the survey had no front-of-pack colour-coded labelling including Linda McCartney’s entire product range, whilst only three of all products surveyed were low in salt with 0.3g per 100g or less.
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AOS said around a fifth (18%) of products also had no portion size marked, making it hard for consumers to judge how much of a product they should eat and gauge their daily salt intake.
It said the results showed the urgent need for Public Health England (PHE) to reinvigorate the UK’s salt reduction strategy, which it claimed had gone awry because the voluntary targets suffered a “complete lack of monitoring and guidance from PHE”.
“Research has highlighted that we must reduce the amount of meat we eat to reduce the negative impact of climate change,” said Mhairi Brown, nutritionist at Action on Salt. “The food industry has also ensured greater availability of meat-free alternatives, but now they must do more to ensure that meat-free alternatives contain far less salt - at the very least lower than their meat equivalents.
“This survey drives home the urgent need for PHE to reinvigorate the UK’s salt reduction strategy.”
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