Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health.

Today we're talking about meat alternatives.

It's well known that many of us should reduce our red meat intake, and chances are a lot of you already have.

However, the cravings for that meaty flavor, the desire to sink your teeth into a nice juicy burger, can still linger.

It's no surprise then that supermarket shelves are now stopped with a growing variety of fake meat products.

However, are these meat alternatives actually any healthier?

I'm joined by Professor Chris Gardner,

whose randomized control trial compared the health effect of red meat

against its plant-based counterparts.

So help us understand what these new meat alternatives are, like what's in them?

So the two ones that I'm most familiar with are beyond and impossible.

I know there's many others.

The idea is taking some kind of bean, Beyond uses P and Impossible uses soy.

And instead of making a soy burger or a bean burger, extracting the protein in, and I don't know

the exact process. I think sometimes it's called an extrusion. They're taking the proteins

and through heat and pressure, they're unfolding and refolding them away in some ways.

Like food engineers are doing this,

so that when you bite into it,

it feels mussely and sinewy, like sinews of muscles.

So it replicates the feel of this.

So one is that mouth taste. Interestingly, I was years ago present at one of the

design kitchens for these, and they said, you're welcome to have a tasting here, and they were

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