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Swapping animal meat for plant-based meat for eight weeks lowered LDL cholesterol, body weight and the heart-risk marker TMAO, a Stanford trial finds. LDL cholesterol averaged 110 mg/dL on the plant-based meat, against 121 mg/dL on animal meat, and weight was almost 1 kg lower.
Professor Christopher Gardner and colleagues at the Stanford Prevention Research Center ran the randomised crossover trial, known as SWAP-MEAT, with 36 generally healthy adults. Each person ate at least two servings a day of plant-based meat for eight weeks and animal meat for eight weeks, keeping the rest of their diet the same. The results are published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
TMAO was lower overall on the plant-based meat, though the difference was clear only in people who ate the animal meat first. The study was supported by an unrestricted research gift from Beyond Meat, which also supplied the plant-based products, and by the US National Institutes of Health, as the full paper discloses.
The researchers concluded:
Among generally healthy adults, contrasting Plant with Animal intake, while keeping all other dietary components similar, the Plant products improved several cardiovascular disease risk factors, including TMAO; there were no adverse effects on risk factors from the Plant products.
For anyone worried that a plant-based burger is just processed food, that's a reassuring result.
It fits with the Cleveland Clinic trial that found red meat doubles levels of heart-harming TMAO, and comes as plant-based meat sales surged 264% in nine weeks this spring.
Burgers, sausages and ground meat, minus the downsides.