ArticleNutrients2021
Unintended Consequences: Nutritional Impact and Potential Pitfalls of Switching from Animal- to Plant-Based Foods.
Article in Nutrients, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 74 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
74 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Reducing meat and/or dairy consumption in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis of effects on protein intake, anthropometric values, and body composition.Nutrition reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Acceptability and impact on health-related markers of a sustainable dietary pattern: results from a pilot randomized controlled cross-over study.European journal of nutrition · 2026Trial
- Dietary patterns and mortality in clinical obesity: comparative risks of meat-based, pescatarian, and vegetarian diets.Nutrition journal · 2026Article
- Understanding preferences regarding protein-enriched plant-based products of patients with lived experience of (risk of) malnutrition - a grounded theory study.BMC nutrition · 2026Article
- What Is the Role of Plant-Based Alternatives to Animal Foods in the Great Food Transformation: A Narrative Review.The Journal of nutrition · 2026Review
- Co-benefits and trade-offs between environmental impact and diet quality: insights from observational dietary data in a Swedish population.European journal of nutrition · 2026Article
- Improving the protein quality of New Zealand vegan diets: an optimisation modelling approach incorporating energy constraints and diet acceptability.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Article
- Fatty acid composition of ground-beef products and their plant-based meat substitutes available in Hungary.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Article
- Nutrient Equivalence of Plant-Based and Cultured Meat: Gaps, Bioavailability, and Health Perspectives.Nutrients · 2025Review
- The need and strategies for increasing whole-grain intake: a narrative review focused on the UK and Ireland.The British journal of nutrition · 2025Review
- Diet Quality and Comparison of Plant-Based Versus Omnivore Diets in Identical Twins: A Secondary Analysis of the Twins Nutrition Study (TwiNS).Current developments in nutrition · 2025Article
- Perspectives in the Scientific Literature on the Barriers and Benefits of the Transition to a Plant-Based Diet: A Bibliometric Analysis.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Hemp-Based Meat Analogs: An Updated Review on Extraction Technologies, Nutritional Excellence, Functional Innovation, and Sustainable Processing Technologies.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Vegetarianísh-How "Flexitarian" Eating Patterns Are Defined and Their Role in Global Food-Based Dietary Guidance.Nutrients · 2025Review
- Optimization of Protein Extraction from Sunflower Meal Using Taguchi Design and Regression Modeling for Human Nutrition Applications.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The Biological Value of Proteins for Pediatric Growth and Development: A Narrative Review.Nutrients · 2025Review
- Effect of Ultrasound Time on Structural and Gelling Properties of Pea, Lupin, and Rice Proteins.Gels (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Drivers and Barriers for Plant-Based Cheese Alternatives Adoption: Insights from Diverse Consumer Clusters.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Nova fails to appreciate the value of plant-based meat and dairy alternatives in the diet.Journal of food science · 2025Review
- Zinc as a Mechanism-Based Strategy for Mitigation of Metals Toxicity.Current environmental health reports · 2025Review
14 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Consumers are shifting towards plant-based diets, driven by both environmental and health reasons. This has led to the development of new plant-based meat alternatives (PBMAs) that are marketed as being sustainable and good for health. However, it remains unclear whether these novel PBMAs to replace animal foods carry the same established nutritional benefits as traditional plant-based diets based on pulses, legumes and vegetables. We modelled a reference omnivore diet using NHANES 2017-2018 data and compared it to diets that substituted animal products in the reference diet with either traditional or novel plant-based foods to create flexitarian, vegetarian and vegan diets matched for calories and macronutrients. With the exception of the traditional vegan diet, all diets with traditional plant-based substitutes met daily requirements for calcium, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, iron and Vitamin B12 and were lower in saturated fat, sodium and sugar than the reference diet. Diets based on novel plant-based substitutes were below daily requirements for calcium, potassium, magnesium, zinc and Vitamin B12 and exceeded the reference diet for saturated fat, sodium and sugar. Much of the recent focus has been on protein quality and quantity, but our case study highlights the risk of unintentionally increasing undesirable nutrients while reducing the overall nutrient density of the diet when less healthy plant-based substitutes are selected. Opportunities exist for PBMA producers to enhance the nutrient profile and diversify the format of future plant-based foods that are marketed as healthy, sustainable alternatives to animal-based products.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.