Protein Labels Could Lead to Consumer Confusion

Emma Mortensen is an independent registered dietitian and meat scientists, and she says there are a lot of questions and unknown information. When it comes to lab-grown and plant-based proteins, she says that nonanimal protein labels might look like that of beef, but there are a lot of differences.

“Some research on looking at not just like because on a nutrition label, they have the benefit of formulating that product to whatever they want it to be basically on a nutrition label, so they actually kind of match beef on their nutrition label, they're gonna get it towards about the same amount of protein about the same amount of iron zinc, so they're actually working to match our nutrition label. However, when you look at digestibility bioavailability of those nutrients, there is a difference.”

Mortensen explains there is not a lot of information on cell-cultured meat yet because it is not on the market. However, when it comes to plant-based proteins, there is information on how they compare to animal-based meat. In this case,

beef even with beef versus plant-based proteins, there is a difference and plants contain what are considered anti-nutrients. So phytates, oxalates- different fibers that actually decrease the absorption of like iron and zinc and things like that.

She states that more information will be coming out on dietary values on animal versus non-animal sources of protein as research results become more readily available.