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. 2022 Apr 26:9:852831.
doi: 10.3389/fnut.2022.852831. eCollection 2022.

Nutritional Quality of Meat Analogues: Results From the Food Labelling of Italian Products (FLIP) Project

Sara Cutroneo  1 , Donato Angelino  2 , Tullia Tedeschi  1 , Nicoletta Pellegrini  3 , Daniela Martini  4 ; SINU Young Working Group
Collaborators, Affiliations

Nutritional Quality of Meat Analogues: Results From the Food Labelling of Italian Products (FLIP) Project

Sara Cutroneo et al. Front Nutr. .

Abstract

Nowadays, the interest in meat substitutes is increasing, and consumers perceive their nutritional quality better than that of the animal products they intend to resemble. Therefore, this work aimed to investigate the overall nutritional quality of these new products. Regulated information [Regulation (EU) 1169/2011], the presence/absence of nutrition or health claim and organic declarations, the gluten-free indication, and the number of ingredients were collected from the food labels of 269 commercial meat analogues currently sold on the Italian market. Nutritional information of reference animal meat products was used to compare the nutrition profile. As an indicator of the nutritional quality, the Nutri-Score of meat analogues and counterparts was also determined. Plant-based steaks showed significantly higher protein, lower energy, fats and salt contents, and better Nutri-Scores than the other analogues. All the meat analogues showed a higher fibre content than meat products, while plant-based burgers and meatballs had lower protein contents than meat counterparts. Ready-sliced meat analogues showed a lower salt content than cured meats. Overall, all these plant-based products showed a longer list of ingredients than animal meat products. Results from this survey highlighted that plant-based steaks, cutlets, and cured meats have some favourable nutritional aspects compared to animal-based products. However, they cannot be considered a "tout-court" alternative to meat products from a nutritional point of view.

Keywords: Nutri-Score; food labelling; food quality; meat analogues; plant-based meat substitutes.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Comparison of nutritional composition—energy (A), total fat (B), saturates (C), and salt (D)—between meat analogue products (in red) and their controls (in blue). In each plot are reported the data of steaks, red meat (1) and white meat (2), burgers (3), meatballs (4), cutlets (5), and cured meats (6). For steaks, 0.5 g of added salt per 100 g of product was considered. The asterisk refers to differences between commercial products of the same category, for which the Mann–Whitney non-parametric test for two independent samples was used (p < 0.05).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Comparison of nutritional composition—total carbohydrates (A), sugars (B), fibre (C), and protein (D)—between meat analogue products (in red) and their controls (in blue). In each plot are reported the data of steaks, red meat (1) and white meat (2), burgers (3), meatballs (4), cutlets (5), and cured meats (6). The asterisk refers to differences between commercial products of the same category, for which the Mann–Whitney non-parametric test for two independent samples was used (p < 0.05).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Nutri-score of plant-based analogues (A–E) and meat controls (F–J). Data are reported as the percentage of products that have a certain score.
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