Whole Foods CEO Explains Why Eating Plant-Based Meats Are Awful For Your Health

Are vegetarian meatless fast food burgers such as Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat more healthy than traditional hamburgers?

iStockphoto / Sebastian Alcover


Meatless meat is so en vogue right now and there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight.

Plant-based patties like Impossible Burger are now available at 9,000 locations nationwide, and chains like Red Robin and White Castle are already reporting shortages of the cell-based burgers. Impossible Foods told Yahoo Finance in June that it’s seen 50% sales growth since the launch of its new 2.0 burger in January and sales in Asia have skyrocket by four times in a three month span alone.

Chrissy Teigen called the Impossible Burger “more flavorful than meat” and celebrities like Katy Perry, Serena Williams, Jay-Z and Trevor Noah were all part of the latest $300 million round of funding for the fast-growing plant-based burger company.

John Mackey, CEO and cofounder of Whole Foods, isn’t as bullish over the meatless meat craze.

Mackey told CNBC on Wednesday that plant-based meat substitutes are good for the environment but not for your health, which is the reason a reported 76% of consumers eat plant based foods.

“If you look at the ingredients, they are super-highly processed foods. I don’t think eating highly processed foods is healthy. I think people thrive on eating whole foods.”

“As for health, I will not endorse that, and that is about as big a criticism that I will do in public.”

Mackey’s criticism of the plant-based products has been supported by many dieticians and nutritionists as of late. A group called the Center for Consumer Freedom ran a series of full-page ads in the New York Post and Wall Street Journal exposing the chemical additives in alternative meat products while employing the slogan “Fake Meat, Real Chemicals.”

Consumer Freedom also released a short video demonstrating the plethora of ingredients that go into making plant-based burgers, which is pretty eye-opening.

If this wasn’t reason enough for you to reconsider what you know about plant-based products, please let this WHACKO explain to you how they are part of a satanic plot to change human DNA.

I guess I’ll have the sausage scrapple please.

[h/t Business Insider]

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Matt’s love of writing was born during a sixth grade assembly when it was announced that his essay titled “Why Drugs Are Bad” had taken first prize in D.A.R.E.’s grade-wide contest. The anti-drug people gave him a $50 savings bond for his brave contribution to crime-fighting, and upon the bond’s maturity 10 years later, he used it to buy his very first bag of marijuana.