• Meat replacements made from plants have become more popular.
• Research is ongoing about the potential benefits of consuming plant-based meat alternatives.
• Data from a systematic review and meta-analysis suggests that short-term use of plant-based meat alternatives may help lower ‘bad’ cholesterol, total cholesterol, and weight.

Plant-based meat alternatives mimic aspects of meat but are made of plants. A systematic review and meta-analysis published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition examined how plant-based meat alternatives impact aspects of cardiometabolic health.

The findings suggest that switching out meat for plant-based meat alternatives for 8 weeks or less may help lower total cholesterol by approximately 6% and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, also known as “bad” cholesterol, by approximately 12% in adults without cardiovascular disease.

The authors conclude that using plant-based meat alternatives might help people transition to plant-based diets but that researchers need to conduct long-term studies to truly examine the cardiometabolic effects of plant-based meat alternatives.

Recent data suggest that consuming more plant and less animal protein could help lower the risk for cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease.

The current review notes that there has been recent interest in eating less meat and switching to more plant-based foods for health and environmental reasons. As this research notes, plant-based meat alternatives “are designed to mimic the appearance, aroma, flavor, texture, and other eating experiences of meat and meat products.”

Plant-based meat alternatives have varying nutritional value; many are considered ultra-processed foods. However, this label can also be applied to many meat products.

For this analysis, researchers wanted to focus on data from randomized controlled trials to look at the impact of plant-based meat alternatives on cardiometabolic parameters in adults without cardiovascular diseases.

Researchers used several databases to identify relevant studies. They excluded studies that focused on traditional plant-based meat alternatives like tofu, which are minimally processed meat replacements and “not designed to resemble meat.”

They also excluded studies that used insect-based meat alternatives or cultured meat. They did include mycoprotein products, a meat alternative derived from high-protein fungi.

Researchers assessed the studies for risk of bias in five different domains. The final review included data from eight publications covering seven randomized controlled trials. In all, they were able to look at data from 369 adults.

The studies compared diets with plant-based meat alternatives to typical diets with animal-based meat consumption. Researchers conducted meta-analyses when four or more studies examined the same health outcome.

Researchers identified three factors primarily affected by plant-based meat alternative consumption: total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and weight. LDL cholesterol is often called “bad” cholesterol, as it can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.

The results suggest that switching out meat for plant-based meat alternatives for eight weeks or less may help lower cholesterol by 6.6% and LDL cholesterol by 12.1%.

Overall, the intervention of plant-based meat alternatives only reduced weight by 1%, so it did not reach a level of clinically significant weight loss.

Additionally, the weight loss reductions were only observed in two randomized controlled trials that had overweight participants. Researchers did not observe a difference in weight among participants who had normal body mass indexes.

Researchers did not observe effects on HDL “good” cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, or concentrations of fasting blood sugar.