In 2024, I wrote an informal explainer on alternative proteins, antimicrobial resistance, and zoonotic spillovers. Zoonotic spillovers involve the transmission of pathogens from nonhuman animals to humans, and beyond any ethical or climate change concerns relating to farmed animal agriculture, farmed animal agriculture necessitates contact between humans and nonhuman animals, and thus increases the chance of zoonotic spillovers. Spillover events can be quite dangerous: they may be the culprit of "every viral pandemic that's occurred since the start of the twentieth century," as some scientists put it in a comment in Nature.
Moreover, modern animal agriculture necessitates feeding animals copious amounts of antibiotics. Again, even putting aside ethical concerns, these methods lead to increased antimicrobial resistance, which, in plain language, is when our antibiotics become less and less effective at combating microorganisms.
I am personally a vegetarian (of three years), and I'm moving in the direction of veganism, too. (I stopped purchasing eggs and yogurt this year. I still sometimes consume animal products when I'm dining out, though I aim to minimize such consumption.) However, I do enjoy the taste and texture of meat. So I consume plenty of alternative proteins when given the chance.
Alternative proteins, in this context, are meat substitutes, often created from plants: Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, Gardein, and Morningstar Farms are some of the biggest, most well-known brands in the United States right now. I'm no foodie. In fact, many of my friends often make fun of my taste. But I think most meat substitutes are quite decent these days.
How do they stack up to meat nutritionally? I like hitting the gym; I care about protein consumption. In fact, this is almost everyone's first question to me when they hear about my diet: how do I hit my protein targets? Animal meats contain about 30-40 grams of protein per 200 calories; as it turns out, there are some alternative protein products that reach these numbers. The question is less, then, strictly about protein, but also about the disadvantages of these alternatives—namely, that they are high in sodium and saturated fat.
Below, I've plotted over 100 alternative protein products from the four aforementioned brands by every combination of the following four nutrients: protein, sodium, saturated fat, and fiber. I've marked which products are Pareto optimal along each pair of axes. A product can be said to be Pareto optimal for protein and sodium if there is no other product that is better along both the protein and sodium axes: that is, there is no other product that has more protein and less sodium than that product. So there can be many Pareto optimal products for any pair. For example, Morningstar Farms Chik'n Strips, with 34g protein and 529mg sodium per 200 calories, and Beyond Steak, with 25g protein and 353mg sodium per 200 calories, are both Pareto optimal.
You can click on any of the dots to get the full nutritional information. Personally, before this project, I'd buy Morningstar Buffalo Chik'n Nuggets from my local Star Market; I'm likely going to look into other options now, though!