Recent health concerns over veggie sausages and burgers have focused on the fact they are highly processed foods, with long lists of ingredients not found in the average kitchen.
Now there’s a new worry: eating too many of such meat substitutes could potentially harm your health because they contain toxins usually found only in foods in hot countries.
These “mycotoxins” develop mainly in tropical or subtropical regions, when mould starts growing on crops like grains, nuts, beans and fruit.
But mycotoxins were found contaminating all 212 plant-based meat substitutes sold in British supermarkets, according to a recent investigation funded by the EU’s Horizon science programme. It was published in the journal, Food Control.
The toxins were at very low levels, and are likely to only be a possible danger for people who eat a lot of the products, such as vegans and vegetarians, said Dr Andrea Patriarca, a food scientist at Cranfield University.
