Healthy eating is becoming more fashionable. Many people are sulking today and trying to replace it with other foods.
In this sense, a varied range of vegetarian steaks is expanding in supermarket shelves as an alternative. These steaks look like meat products without containing a gram. They are known to be less fat, less caloric, just as rich in protein and healthier than meat. Are they really good for nutritional balance?
What is a vegetable steak?
They are cakes that look like meat products but are actually made very often soy-based, one of the legumes richest in protein, tempeh or seitan or cereals such as buckwheat, wheat or oats. To these basic ingredients, many additives are added so that the aspect is closer to the steak. They are finally proposed, declined according to different flavors, herbs, tomatoes, cheese, or others, in order to vary the pleasures. The consumer craze for this type of product has meant that even big names in the agri-food industry are offering vegetable steaks in a market that has become juicy.
A serious investigation, startling results!
Popular with consumers, vegetable steaks are flourishing on supermarket shelves. Faced with this trend of consumption, the French magazine 60 million consumers, the equivalent of Test-Achats in Belgium, was interested in these products in collaboration with a dietician, Vanessa Guyot. The results of this study were published in the January 2017 issue. "Whatever its recipe, a vegetable steak will never have the same" profile? than its animal counterpart, "says the article, let's try to understand why these revelations, in more detail!
The disadvantage of processed foods
On the palate, the vegetable steak is doing pretty well. In reality, the more it is tasty, like meat, the more it contains additives such as dyes, flavor enhancers, gelling agents, etc. This substitute also contains thickeners. In addition, about a third of the mass of some brands is made of water. The survey also revealed that the packaging is particularly stingy in data, particularly with regard to the intake of vitamins and minerals.
Little protein and a lot of salt
The results of the study by the magazine 60 million consumers reveal that there is sufficient protein intake only with vegetable steaks based on soy, tempeh or seitan. However, cereal-based products or legumes fail to provide even half the value of an animal steak. Moreover, even when the amounts of protein are similar, the qualities are not identical. A protein of plant origin is not able to bring by itself the nine amino acids essential to the body to manage the functioning of enzymes, antibodies and muscles.
These results also vary enormously according to the brands.
But, in general, these ersatz meat do not meet the nutritional criteria: they contain very few key minerals such as iron and zinc with a high content of salt and additives. The alternative We all want to eat healthy and balanced, but we do not have much time to cook. Yet living in good health is worth the effort. Prepare these vegetable steaks yourself with natural ingredients. On the web, you will find a multitude of tasty recipes: we are never so well served as by ourselves!
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