Abstract
Massive animal farming for meat production poses major problems in terms of resource
use, environmental impact, and biodiversity. Furthermore, excessive meat consumption
has been associated with multiple deleterious health consequences. However, more and
better-designed randomized trials are needed to increase the level of evidence on
the health impacts of meat. Novel meat alternatives, such as plant- and cell-based
meat, are much less impactful to the environment and might replace traditional animal
meat in the future, but, despite promising early data, the health consequences of
these novel products need further study. This manuscript focuses on the health impacts
of meat over 3 main sections: 1) overview of the evidence highlighting the association
of meat consumption with health; 2) novel alternatives to meat, including plant-based
and cell-based alternatives; and 3) examine the rationale for randomized studies to
evaluate the effects of the novel meat alternatives compared with the standard animal
meat.
Keywords
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: December 11, 2020
Footnotes
Funding: None.
Conflict of Interest: JPF and FZ are the Principal Investigators of the Plant-Based Meat vs Animal "Red" Meat (FOOD-1) trial (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04510324). AS has received support from the FRSQ-Junior 1 clinician scientist award, the Alberta Innovates Health Solution Clinician Scientist fellowship, the European Society of Cardiology Young Investigator research grant, and has received support from Roche Diagnostics, AstraZeneca, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Novartis, Servier, Novo-Nordisk, and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society Bayer Vascular award. FZ reports having no conflicts of interest with regard to the content of this manuscript.
Authorship: The first author drafted the first version and subsequent revisions of the manuscript. The other authors performed critical revisions and edited the manuscript. All authors had access to the data presented in the manuscript.
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
