Beyond the label
CEO Commentary by Mike McMorris
The human digestive system is complex but there is some truth to the old adage “you are what you eat”. At our recent symposium, Dr Michael Rogers, Professor in the Food Science Department at the University of Guelph, presented results of a study looking at the digestion of A&W Beyond Beef and real burgers.
Simply looking at the labels for these two products, you would see that they are similar in protein and fat and so you might conclude they are essentially the same. That would be wrong!
Plant-based “meat” is an ultra-processed product that combines proteins and fats from different sources. Fats within real meat are bound to the protein and are released slowly while the fat in a plant based “meat” basically explodes out upon digestion. This burst of fats has many implications, including changes to the gut microbiome, and not in a positive way.
Clearly, we need to consider what we eat but we must start to look beyond the label.
