Some plant-based foods are high in calories and sodium content. Photo by Shutterstock
You may want to reconsider a plant-based diet if your motivation is health. When it comes to resolutions, many opt for getting healthy, cutting out drinking or starting a new hobby. These days, vegan magazines and organizations are pushing plant-based diets — calling it the “ultimate new year’s resolution.”
But plant-based meats are often high in sodium, ultra-processed and not any healthier than the meat they imitate. Meanwhile, nearly half of the consumers think they are more nutritious. So if your resolution is related to health, you may want to reconsider switching to a plant-based diet.
The Impossible Burger, for example, is an impressive meat-free mix of soy, potato proteins, coconut and sunflower oils. It even bleeds like the real thing. At the same time its calorie count and saturated fat levels mirror a McDonald’s quarter-pounder, and it has six times more sodium.
The global market for plant-based meat is projected to explode to US$85 billion in 2030. And grocery stores are taking note, featuring an array of burgers, sausages, nuggets, ground meat and seafood options all without any trace of animal products.
What’s the Nutritional Benefit?
According to one recent study, the nutritional benefit of plant-based foods is minimal. Researchers from the Singapore Institute for Food and Biotechnology Innovation modelled the outcome of replacing bacon, chicken, beef burgers and ice cream with animal-free versions.
Diets that substituted animal products with the plant-based alternative were below the daily recommendations for vitamin B12, calcium, potassium, zinc and magnesium, and higher in sodium, sugar and saturated fat.
Even with added vitamins and minerals, these products are not nutritionally interchangeable, says Stephan van Vliet, a postdoctoral associate at the Duke Molecular Physiology Institute. “Meat made from plants isn’t meat made from cows and meat made from cows isn’t meat made from plants,” he says.
Animal sources like meat, milk and eggs are complete proteins, meaning they contain enough of the nine essential amino acids we must get from our diets every day. Plant-based foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and grains often lack one or more of these amino acids and need to be eaten in combination.
Plant-based meat manufacturers argue their products contain similar amounts of protein that are comparable in quality to animal protein. But focusing on protein is too “simplistic,” says van Vliet. “Foods contain hundreds to thousands of compounds that are capable of impacting human metabolism and health.”
Van Vliet and colleagues compared 190 molecules in plant-based meat alternatives with grass-fed ground beef and found that 90 per cent of them were different. Plant-based meat alternatives lacked certain amino acids and derivatives, like creatine, taurine and anserine, “which can all have an impact on our health and potentially brain function as well as muscle function,” he says.
Other metabolites like polyphenols and antioxidants were found in greater quantities or exclusively in plant-based meats. He sees plant and animal source foods as complementary in our diet, where some nutrients are better obtained from animal sources and others from plants.
The Term “Plant-Based”
“People opt for a plant-based burger for a variety of reasons,” says Rosie Schwartz, a Toronto-based consulting dietitian, “including reducing meat intake.” But she argues that consumers should rethink their reasoning if it’s because of health.
“To substitute something plant-based as a substitute because it’s called plant-based is really steering us in the wrong direction,” says Schwartz.
According to nutrition scientists and Canada’s Food Guide, plant-based is the recommended way we should be eating. Fill half your plate with vegetables and fruits, and the other half with whole grains and proteins.
But “plant-based” also refers to anything from meat to paint to pillowcases, as long as they were made mostly or completely of plants, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
Just because it’s made from plants, doesn’t mean it’s healthy. “I do think it’s very confusing for the consumer,” says van Vliet. “It’s probably not the chicken, but everything else that comes with the chicken nugget that is probably detrimental to our health.”
The Future of Plant-Based Meats
Up until this point, plant-based meat companies focused on the taste, texture and appearance of its products. These companies targeted meat eaters by creating plant-based marvels meant to look, taste and feel like the real thing.
Impossible Foods, the creator of the Impossible Burger, says 90 per cent of their customers are still meat eaters. It isn’t in the business of converting salad and tempeh-eating veggie lovers into fake meat consumers.
“The whole mission of Impossible Foods is to create plant-based products that compete directly against animal meat,” said Esther Cohn, communications manager at Impossible Foods. “If you eat five beef burgers a week, we want you to swap, even just try swapping one out for an Impossible Burger.”
With a booming market and new animal-free proteins made from cells in a lab or fungi in fermentation tanks, the options are endless. Can they be adapted to be healthier as well? We’ll have to wait and see.
CREDIT: PETER AND MARIA HOEY -Plant-based meats claim to offer the sensory experience of real meat at a fraction of the environmental cost. Are they really as green as they say?
Marketed to meat lovers, plant-based burgers like Impossible and Beyond claim to taste like the real thing and to have far lighter environmental footprints. Here’s what the numbers have to say.
If you’re an environmentally aware meat-eater, you probably carry at least a little guilt to the dinner table. The meat on our plates comes at a significant environmental cost through deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and air and water pollution — an uncomfortable reality, given the world’s urgent need to deal with climate change.
That’s a big reason there’s such a buzz today around a newcomer to supermarket shelves and burger-joint menus: products that look like real meat but are made entirely without animal ingredients. Unlike the bean- or grain-based veggie burgers of past decades, these “plant-based meats,” the best known of which are Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat, are marketed heavily toward traditional meat-eaters. They claim to replicate the taste and texture of real ground meat at a fraction of the environmental cost.
If these newfangled meat alternatives can fill a large part of our demand for meat — and if they’re as green as they claim, which is not easy to verify independently — they might offer carnivores a way to reduce the environmental impact of their dining choices without giving up their favorite recipes.
That could be a game-changer, some think. “People have been educated a long time on the harms of animal agriculture, yet the percentage of vegans and vegetarians generally remains low,” says Elliot Swartz, a scientist with the Good Food Institute, an international nonprofit organization that supports the development of alternatives to meat. “Rather than forcing people to make behavior changes, we think it will be more effective to substitute products into their diets where they don’t have to make a behavior switch.”
There’s no question that today’s meat industry is bad for the planet. Livestock account for about 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions both directly (from methane burped out by cattle and other grazing animals and released by manure from feedlots and pig and chicken barns) and indirectly (largely from fossil fuels used to grow feed crops). Indeed, if the globe’s cattle were a country, their greenhouse gas emissions alone would rank second in the world, trailing only China.
Worse yet, the United Nations projects that global demand for meat will swell by 15 percent by 2031 as the world’s increasing — and increasingly affluent — population seeks more meat on their plates. That means more methane emissions and expansion of pastureland and cropland into formerly forested areas such as the Amazon — deforestation that threatens biodiversity and contributes further to emissions.
Global demand for meat continues to rise with little sign of slowing. Much of the increase comes from middle-income countries, where consumers use their increasing wealth to put more meat on their plates.
Not all kinds of meat animals contribute equally to the problem, however. Grazing animals such as cattle, sheep and goats have a far larger greenhouse gas footprint than non-grazers such as pigs and chickens. In large part that’s because only the former burp methane, which happens as gut microbes digest the cellulose in grasses and other forage.
Pigs and chickens are also much more efficient at converting feed into edible flesh: Chickens need less than two pounds of feed, and pigs need roughly three to five pounds, to put on a pound of body weight. (The rest goes to the energy costs of daily life: circulating blood, moving around, keeping warm, fighting germs and the like.) Compare that to the six to 10 pounds of feed per pound of cow.
As a result, the greenhouse gas emissions of beef cattle per pound of meat are more than six times those of pigs and nearly nine times those of chicken. (Paradoxically, grass-fed cattle — often thought of as a greener alternative to feedlot beef — are actually bigger climate sinners, because grass-fed animals mature more slowly and thus spend more months burping methane.)
Building fake meat
Plant-based meats aim to improve on that dismal environmental performance. Stanford University biochemist Pat Brown, for example, founded Impossible Foods after asking himself what single step he could take to make the biggest difference environmentally. His answer: Replace meat.
Researchers trawled through the scientific literature to find every available study measuring the greenhouse-gas footprint of meats and meat alternatives. Beef is by far the most emissions-heavy option, while plant-based meats and plant foods generally are linked to much lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions for production of a given quantity of protein. In the chart, (n) refers to the number of studies for each category of protein.
To do that, Impossible and its competitors basically deconstruct meat into its component parts, then build an equivalent product from plant-based ingredients. The manufacturers start with plant protein — mostly soy for Impossible, pea for Beyond, and potato, oat or equivalent proteins for others — and add carefully selected ingredients to simulate meat-like qualities. Most include coconut oil for its resemblance to the mouthfeel of animal fats, and yeast extract or other flavorings to add meaty flavors. Impossible even adds a plant-derived version of heme, a protein found in animal blood, to yield an even more meat-like appearance and flavor.
All this requires significant processing, notes William Aimutis, a food protein chemist at North Carolina State University, who wrote about plant-based proteins in the 2022 Annual Review of Food Science and Technology. Soybeans, for example, are typically first milled into flour, and then the oils are removed. The proteins are isolated and concentrated, then pasteurized and spray-dried to yield the relatively pure protein for the final formulation. Every step consumes energy, which raises the question: With all this processing, are these meat alternatives really greener than what they seek to replace?
To answer that question, environmental scientists conduct what’s known as a life cycle analysis. This involves taking each ingredient in the final product — soy protein, coconut oil, heme and so forth — and tracing it back to its origin, logging all the environmental costs involved. In the case of soy protein, for example, the life cycle analysis would include the fossil fuels, water and land needed to grow the soybeans, including fossil fuel emissions from the fertilizer, pesticides and transportation to the processing plant. Then it would add the energy and water consumed in milling, defatting, protein extraction and drying.
Similar calculations would apply to all the other ingredients, and to the final process of assembly and packaging. Put it all together, and you end up with an estimate of the total environmental footprint of the product.
Plant-based meats are highly processed products in which proteins, fats, starches, thickeners, flavoring agents and other ingredients are mixed and formed into foods that resemble traditional meat products such as burgers, hot dogs and chicken nuggets.
Unfortunately, not all those numbers are readily available. For many products, especially unique ones like the new generation of plant-based meats, product details are secrets closely held by the companies involved. “They will know how much energy they use and where they get their fat and protein from, but they will not disclose that to the general public,” says Ricardo San Martin, a chemical engineer who codirects the Alternative Meats Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. As a result, most life cycle analyses of plant-based meat products have been commissioned by the companies themselves, including both Beyond and Impossible. Outsiders have little way of independently verifying them.
Even so, those analyses suggest that plant-based meats offer clear environmental advantages over their animal-based equivalents. Impossible’s burger, for example, causes just 11 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions that would come from an equivalent amount of beef burger, according to a study the company commissioned from the sustainability consulting firm Quantis. Beyond’s life cycle analysis, conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, found their burger’s greenhouse gas emissions were 10 percent of those of real beef.
Indeed, when independent researchers at Johns Hopkins University decided to get the best estimates they could by combing through the published literature, they found that in the 11 life cycle analyses they turned up, the average greenhouse gas footprint from plant-based meats was just 7 percent of beef for an equivalent amount of protein. The plant-based products were also more climate-friendly than pork or chicken — although less strikingly so, with greenhouse gas emissions just 37 percent and 57 percent, respectively, of those for the actual meats.
Similarly, the Hopkins team found that producing plant-based meats used less water: 23 percent that of beef, 11 percent that of pork and 24 percent that of chicken for the same amount of protein. There were big savings, too, for land, with the plant-based products using 2 percent that of beef, 18 percent that of pork and 23 percent that of chicken for a given amount of protein. The saving of land is important because, if plant-based meats end up claiming a significant market share, the surplus land could be allowed to revert to forest or other natural vegetation; these store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and contribute to biodiversity conservation. Other studies show that plant-based milks offer similar environmental benefits over cow’s milk (see Box).
Researchers compared the amount of land needed to produce a given amount of protein for meat, plant-based meat and plant foods. Once again, beef towers above the rest, largely because grazing animals need a lot of land to forage. Plant foods are shown to require more land than plant-based meats, but this difference is not meaningful because the estimates for plant foods include crops grown in low-yielding countries, while plant-based meats rely on ingredients grown under high-yield conditions.
A caution on cultivation methods
Of course, how green plant-based meats actually are depends on the farming practices that underlie them. (The same is true for meat itself — the greenhouse gas emissions generated by a pound of beef can vary more than tenfold from the most efficient producers to the least.) Plant-based ingredients such as palm oil grown in plantations that used to be rainforest, or heavily irrigated crops grown in arid regions, cause much more damage than more sustainably raised crops. And cultivation of soybeans, an important ingredient for some plant-based meats, is a major contributor to Amazon deforestation.
However, for most ingredients it seems likely that even poorly produced plant-based meats are better, environmentally, than meat from well-raised livestock. Plant-based meats need much less soy than would be fed to actual livestock, notes Matin Qaim, an agricultural economist at the University of Bonn, Germany, who wrote about meat and sustainability in the 2022 Annual Review of Resource Economics. “The reason we’re seeing deforestation in the Amazon,” he explains, “is because the demand for food and feed is growing. When we move away from meat and more toward plant-based diets, we need less area in total, and the soybeans don’t necessarily have to grow in the Amazon.”
But green as they are, plant-based meats have a few hurdles to clear before they can hope to replace meat. For one thing, plant-based meats currently cost an average of 43 percent more than the products they hope to replace, according to the Good Food Institute. That helps to explain why plant-based meats account for less than 1 percent of meat sales in the US. Advocates are optimistic that the price will come down as the market develops, but it hasn’t happened yet. And achieving those economies of scale will take a lot of work: Even growing to a mere 6 percent of the market will require a $27 billion investment in new facilities, says Swartz.
Steak hasn’t yet been well done
In addition, all of today’s plant-based meats seek to replace ground-meat products like burgers and chicken nuggets. Whole-muscle meats like steak or chicken breast have a more complex, fibrous structure that the alt-meat companies have not yet managed to mimic outside the lab.
Part of the problem is that most plant proteins are globular in shape, while real muscle proteins tend to form long fibers. To form a textured meat-like product, scientists essentially have to turn golf balls into string, says David Julian McClements, a food scientist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an editor of the Annual Review of Food Science and Technology. There are ways to do that, often involving high-pressure extrusion or other complex technology, but so far no one has a whole-muscle product ready for market. (A fungal product, sold for decades in some countries as Quorn, is naturally fibrous, but its sales have never taken off in the US. Other companies are also working on meat substitutes based on fungal proteins.)
The environmental impact of the two leading plant-based burgers, from Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, is much less than a comparable beef burger, according to detailed studies commissioned by the two companies. Other experts note that these studies are difficult to verify independently because they rely on proprietary information from the companies.
McClements is experimenting with another approach to make plant-based bacon: creating separate plant-based analogs of muscle and fat, then 3D-printing the distinctive marbling of the bacon. “I think we’ve got all the elements to put it together,” he says.
Some critics also note that a shift toward plant-based meat may reinforce the industrialization of global food systems in an undesirable way. Most alternative meat products are formulated in factories, and their demand for plant proteins and other ingredients favors Big Agriculture, with its well-documented problems of monoculture, pesticide use, soil erosion and water pollution from fertilizer runoff. Plant-based meats will reduce the impact of these unsustainable farming practices, but they won’t eliminate them unless current farming practices change substantially.
Of course, all the to-do about alternative meats overlooks another dietary option, one with the lowest environmental footprint of all: Simply eat less meat and more beans, grains and vegetables. The additional processing involved in plant-based meats means that they generate 4.6 times more greenhouse gas than beans, and seven times more than peas, per unit of protein, according to the Hopkins researchers. Even traditional, minimally processed plant protein such as tofu beats plant-based meats when it comes to greenhouse gas. Moreover, most people in wealthy countries eat far more protein than they need, so they can simply cut back on their protein consumption without seeking out a replacement.
But that option may not appeal to the meat-eating majority today, which makes alternative meats a useful stopgap. “Would I prefer that people were eating beans and grains and tofu, and lots of fruits and vegetables? Yes,” says Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy organization supporting healthy eating.
“But there are a lot of people who enjoy the taste of meat and are probably not going to be won over by tofu. If you can win them over with Beyond Meat, and that helps reduce climate change, I’m all for it.”
To the uninitiated, a professional cook and a chef may look similar. They both wear chef’s coats, work in a kitchen, and prepare food. But the day-to-day responsibilities of these two roles are vastly different. One is a skilled tradesperson, while the other is a leader—and often a visionary.
Discover the important distinctions between these two kitchen roles and the skills necessary for success in each. Keep reading to explore the main differences between a professional cook and chef!
A Professional cooks are skilled technicians who prepare and make food. Most of their work is hands-on, transforming ingredients from their whole states into finished dishes. There are many different types of cooks, each with varying responsibilities. A prep cook, for example, does supporting work like chopping vegetables, pre-portioning cuts of protein, and concocting sauces or dressings. Line cooks, on the other hand, are responsible for the cooking, plating, and completing dishes for service.
Professional cooks are also sometimes defined by their work stations. A fry cook runs the fryer for a steady supply of hot, fresh french fries and other crispy snacks. A grill cook is in charge of grilled items like burgers, chicken, steaks, and some vegetables.
A professional chef is a trained, experienced culinarian who has worked in a professional kitchen setting and usually occupies a more managerial role, either running a single-person department or leading a team of cooks. Chefs have a higher degree of responsibility than cooks and must be leaders as well as culinary experts. This means that they also must possess a high skill level of problem solving while under high pressure — being able to assess situations and create solutions quickly is imperative.
A chef often spends a great deal of their time supervising and managing the rest of the crew, rather than cooking. They must be able to jump into any position when needed and mentor other team members. But they may also get to create their own recipes and menus, influencing the restaurant’s reputation and helping shape its concepts. Therefore, while they have greater responsibility than cooks, they also receive more credit when a kitchen performs well.
The ultimate difference between a cook and a chef is their level of responsibility. A cook completes the tasks assigned to them in order to deliver a chef’s recipe. To do so, they should have the basic skills needed to execute the menu. This can include simple tasks like chopping or mixing, but it can also require more advanced technical skills necessary for complex, multipart recipes.
A chef, on the other hand, is a manager, ultimately responsible for the food that comes out of the kitchen. This title includes the executive chef, who is the top leader of the kitchen and has control over the menu and overall direction of the restaurant’s culinary program.
It can also include additional chef roles. Some kitchens have a chef de cuisine who manages the day-to-day operations. Most have a sous chef who serves as the executive chef or chef de cuisine’s “right hand.” There could also be a pastry chef who creates the desserts and may run a small team of pastry cooks.
Professional chefs usually start out as cooks and earn the title of chef later in their careers. They are often the people in the kitchen with the most culinary education and experience. Chefs may have attended a formal culinary school, or they may have worked in the industry for many years to grasp the necessary skill set. There is no degree or certification that automatically moves a cook into the realm of the chef. Instead, it’s a multi-faceted combination of education, experience, and leadership abilities.
A professional cook’s skill level can vary quite a bit, from entry-level to the most expert cooks at high-end restaurants. Cooks should know the basic cooking functions, like baking, roasting, steaming, broiling, and poaching, and when each is appropriate. They should also know the different kinds of cuts, so that when the chef asks them to chiffonade some basil or julienne a carrot, they’ll know what is being asked of them. Professional cooks should know additional foundational skills, like how to make an emulsion, which knives are appropriate for which tasks, and the basics of seasoning.
Additional skills can vary based on the cook’s position. A line cook must know how to identify “done-ness” in a cut of meat, for example. And a prep cook should be skilled at rapid chopping and pay close attention to labeling and dating their work.
When cooks attend culinary school at Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts, they can graduate with many of these skills in their toolbox. During their hands-on industry externship, which is required in order to graduate, students can work in a professional kitchen where they can practice their skills in a high-speed commercial environment. With this type of preparation, cooks can become ready for their first professional job, where they can then continue to build on their skills and discover new techniques.“A student who graduates from Escoffier can be able to participate in much better culinary conversations and understand a lot more about not just cooking, but how a business is run.”* Escoffier Chef Instructor Jesper Jonsson
A professional chef must have extensive proficiency to earn this title. They should have expertise in every skill that they expect their cooks to employ, so that they can provide precise instruction and guidance. They may also be specialists in a single type of cuisine (like French or Japanese) or a certain cooking style (like barbecue or plant-based cooking).
The responsibilities of a chef go far beyond the food. They should also be skilled in menu planning, since they could be responsible for the final restaurant menu–from appetizers to desserts. They may also be required to create dishes that are both delicious and profitable, keeping labor and food costs in check. They need to be strong leaders, inspiring their employees and keeping them motivated to put out excellent food, day after day.
Some chefs are also independent business owners. For example, private chefs and personal chefs often run their own small businesses. Some chefs are also owners of restaurants and catering companies, so they must manage the business as well as the food.How does a professional chef discover all of this? It can start with enrolling in culinary school. At Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts, associate degree students can begin their culinary education with cooking fundamentals and then move on to explore menus, leadership, communications, foodservice math and accounting, and entrepreneurship. While students do not graduate as chefs, they can start their culinary careers with a great breadth of knowledge to draw on as they progress through their careers.
A credential, like a degree or diploma, or a culinary certification from an industry association, can also help to prove to future employers that the recipient obtained a heightened level of proficiency. And this can demonstrate that the chef is passionate about growing in necessary competencies and in their career overall.
“Every time I was approached by a food blogger or press, I was referred to as chef. I didn’t feel right having that title without the credentials. I was a really good home cook, but I lacked the confidence in my skills in a professional setting. The culinary industry is such a respected field and I wanted to be on an equal playing ground with other chefs that I had an opportunity to work with.”*Nahika Hillery, Escoffier Austin Culinary Arts Graduate & Chef/Owner, Kréyol Korner Caribbean Cuisin
The short answer is no! While many cooks do have the goal of becoming the “boss” of the kitchen, others prefer the life of the cook. A cook must perform to a high standard on each shift, but they are not responsible for the overall success of the kitchen or food service establishment. Some find that this means a lower stress level and better work-life balance. Plus, cooks get to do more hands-on professional cooking. If your culinary dreams involve cooking all day, every day, then a career as a cook may be the right place for you.
Whether you want to be a professional cook or move up the ranks to executive chef, a culinary education can be a great place to start. Contact our Admissions Department to explore more about degrees and diplomas from Escoffier and how they can help you achieve your goals.
To discover more about a career as a chef or cook, try these articles next:
Eating a wide variety of healthy foods helps to keep you in good health and protects you against chronic disease. Eating a well-balanced diet means eating a variety of foods from each of the 5 food groups daily, in the recommended amounts. Find out more in the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating
Eating healthy food doesn’t mean giving up your favourite recipes. Some simple swaps and a little bit of planning can help you make life-long, healthy changes to your diet.
Some shopping tips to get you started:
Make a shopping list before you shop and plan what meals you’re going to eat.
Keep the pantry stocked with ingredients that are quick to prepare and easy to cook.
Choose the lower fat versions of a food if possible – for example milk, cheese, yoghurt, salad dressings and gravies.
Choose lean meat cuts and skinless chicken breasts.
Limit fast foods, chips, crisps, processed meats, pastries and pies, which all contain large amounts of fat.
Choose lean meats and reduced-fat dairy products and limit processed foods to minimise hidden fats. Nuts, seeds, fish, soy, olives and avocado are all healthier options because they include the essential long-chain fatty acids and these fats are accompanied by other good nutrients.If you add fats when cooking, use healthier oils such as olive and canola oil. And try these tips to reduce the amount of fat needed in cooking:Cook in liquids (such as stock, wine, lemon juice, fruit juice, vinegar or water) instead of oil.
Use pesto, salsas, chutneys and vinegars in place of sour creams, butter and creamy sauces.
Use reduced fat yoghurt and milks, evaporated skim milk or corn-starch instead of cream in sauces or soups.
Use non-stick cookware to reduce the need for cooking oil.
When browning vegetables, put them in a hot pan then spray with oil, rather than adding the oil first to the pan. This reduces the amount of oil that vegetables absorb during cooking.
As an alternative to browning vegetables by pan-frying, it is good to cook them first in the microwave, then crisp them under the grill for a minute or 2.
Scrub vegetables rather than peel them, as many nutrients are found close to the skin.
Microwave or steam vegetables instead of boiling them.
When boiling vegetables, use a small amount of water and do not overboil them.
Include more stir-fry recipes in your diet. Stir-fried vegetables are cooked quickly to retain their crunch (and associated nutrients).
Salt is hidden in many of our foods, but a high salt diet can contribute to a range of health problems including high blood pressure.
Suggestions to reduce salt include:
Don’t automatically add salt to your food – taste it first.
Add a splash of olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice close to the end of cooking time or to cooked vegetables – it can enhance flavours in the same way as salt.
Choose fresh or frozen vegetables, since canned and pickled vegetables tend to be packaged with salt.
Limit your consumption of salty processed meats such as salami, ham, corned beef, bacon, smoked salmon, frankfurters and chicken loaf.
Iodised salt is best. A major dietary source of iodine is plant foods. Yet there is evidence that Australian soil may be low in iodine and so plants grown in it are also low in iodine. If you eat fish at least once a week, the need for iodised salt is reduced.
Avoid processed foods such as flavoured instant pasta or noodles, canned or dehydrated soup mixes, salty crackers, chips and salted nuts.
Reduce your use of soy sauce, tomato sauce and processed sauces, stock powders and condiments (for example mayonnaise and salad dressings) because they contain high levels of salt.
Long-term health management of metabolic and chronic diseases is the largest cost burden on the U.S. healthcare system. Basys.ai, founded by Amber Nigam and Jie Sun in June 2021, is a “B2B SaaS platform supporting clinical decision-making for doctors at hospitals” by using deep learning algorithms. Currently, the startup has been bootstrapped since inception. Basys is based in Cambridge, MA.
The startup has six employees. Basys’s main competition are firms like Omada Health, Virta Health and Innovaccer. Their business model is tailored to meet the needs of B2B customers such as providers and payors by selling access to their software. John L. Brooks III, Founder of Insulet and a Basys.ai advisor, says, “Diabetes remains a global crisis, despite the many advances in new therapeutics and smart devices.
AI is poised to deliver a profound impact in the treatment of diabetes. The surge in relevant healthcare data can now be harnessed to provide insights and clinical decision support recommendations that enable individuals and their clinical team to optimize their treatment. basys.ai is strongly positioned to lead this effort, given their strong team and robust AI platform, and they have already achieved great traction in a short time.”
Frederick Daso: What drives the significant share of diseases caused by metabolic health issues?
Amber Nigam and Jie Sun: It starts with the food that we eat here in the U.S. American-style diet doesn’t help as people gorge on burgers, fries, and soda. Diabetes is one factor that drives a significant share of diseases as it is usually concurrent with other chronic diseases like cardiovascular diseases and chronic kidney diseases.
Daso: What impact are these metabolic health issues impacting the greater U.S. healthcare system?
Nigam and Sun: At a macro level, metabolic health issues burden the U.S. healthcare system. Also, the doctors and hospitals are swamped with avoidable work, and patients have long queues to be treated, directly contributing to bad patient outcomes. The total spending on metabolic health issues (including chronic conditions and mental health) is 90% of the total spending on US healthcare. At a micro level, patients and their caregivers do not have personalized guidelines. So, they face anxiety and stress managing their or their loved ones’ diseases.
Daso: How do doctors and hospitals leverage AI-based solutions in their standard of care for patients today?
Nigam and Sun: There are legacy Electronic Health Record (EHR) companies that provide some boilerplate services. Although, doctors and hospitals are increasingly becoming more aware of the importance of data. Many hospitals we work with have been proactively searching for AI collaboration and accounted for that in their annual budgets. Interventions at the providers’ side, or ‘prescriptive analytics,’ is the key to this paradigm shift in managing metabolic health.
On another note, we should also remember that payors are indispensable players in this paradigm shift. Payors will benefit greatly from AI-based solutions, especially those derived from a large amount of clinically-validated data—the insights from both EHR data and claims data complete a patient’s profile. We understand individual patients’ progression patterns better by adding longitudinal depth to their health history.
Daso: Specifically, how much money is spent annually through insurance or out-of-pocket costs for treating metabolic diseases such as diabetes?
Nigam and Sun: The annual cost of diabetes in the US is $327 billion. Most of that cost is borne by payors in the US, which means a great unmet need for more cost-effective solutions based on prescriptive analytics. The solution will come from combining insights from the EHR data with the claims data, i.e., we understand individual patients’ progression patterns better by adding longitudinal depth to their health history.
Daso: How have you built Basys to seamlessly integrate with providers’ existing workflows and processes to treat patients suffering from metabolic diseases?
Nigam and Sun: We have been conscious that our service can be used with/without EHRs, given the long wait time for integrating with traditional incumbent EHRs. We have a scalable and interoperable platform that can integrate with any hospital and payor system.
Daso: What are the challenges in validating Basys’s deep learning algorithms concerning how a patient’s metabolic health evolves with proper treatment?
Nigam and Sun: The first adoption of good habits – although to derisk it, we are partnering with the changemakers, the doctors, and the insurance. The second is gathering microdata like food and exercise – one derisking strategy is partnering with device and hardware companies, although food is still a tough entity to measure. Our access to the largest and most clinically validated healthcare datasets gives us an essential competitive moat.
Besides, the founders’ backgrounds in health Data Science from Harvard and their work experience in the health ecosystem of Boston is a strong value add too. Last, we have attracted some of the best people in healthcare, including business leaders who have led the largest diabetes institute globally and have founded multi-billion dollar startups. All these factors help drive down the challenges and risks typically associated with the slow and regulated nature of the healthcare industry.
Daso: For Basys’ company culture, how will the startup maintain its flat hierarchy and autonomy-driven environment while scaling up to address the needs of a heavily-regulated and structured industry?
Nigam and Sun: We have a hiring policy that places integrity and ethics on top. In addition, the passion for innovating and creating an impact in healthcare is crucial. It is about teaming up with the right people and providing them with the right platform to shine.
We spent significant time with our team members in building their capacity and being aligned. The vision is to forge a resilient company culture, fearless of challenges, and always on the forefront of creating excellent solutions. Most importantly, we are united by our commitment to making healthcare better for everyone.
I write extensively on college students’ triumphs and failures in their journeys in entrepreneurship. I graduated from MIT with my Bachelor’s and Master’s in
Imagine standing on a ledge with your eyes closed, not knowing if your next step forward is to go plummeting downwards or continue climbing up a wall. That is what it is like to have insulin-requiring diabetes and monitor your blood sugar levels just 4 times per day. Insulin is one of the most powerful medications we use, yet is subject to more variation in response than almost any other treatment.
Inject too much, exercise more than usual, or eat too little and blood sugar levels can fall fast and hard, at times to the point of a loss of consciousness. Too much carbohydrate causes glucose levels to skyrocket back up. Any patient taking insulin will tell you that it is tough being a surrogate pancreas. An emerging technology called continuous glucose monitoring is making life a little easier.
Patients insert a small sensor under the skin which beams an infrared signal to a receiver where the blood sugar levels are displayed. The pager-like receiver reveals what the blood sugar level is and in which direction it is going. A “normal” blood glucose level of 100 mg/dL that is rising quickly requires a different action than a blood glucose level of 100 mg/dL that is falling quickly. More importantly, these devices alarm at night, alerting patients to potential hypoglycemic reactions.
However, all advances come with a price, which includes taking the time to learn and understand this device. Continuous glucose monitoring suddenly provides up to 1440 daily blood glucose values and it might not reduce A1C levels, because both rates of highs and lows are reduced, leaving the average blood sugar the same. But this technology is worth the price of learning.
It is new, imperfect, and somewhat cumbersome, yet it stands to help patients with diabetes lead less precarious lives. And ultimately it may evolve into a true “closed loop” system that will make the guesswork of insulin administration a thing of the past. That’s my opinion. I’m Dr. Anne Peters, Professor of Medicine at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine.
From the Pizza Principle to the Waffle House Index, fast food can reveal surprising things about our behaviour and hidden changes in the market.
What is an economist’s favourite food? Burgers, chips and pizza might not immediately come to mind – but the consumption of meals like these can signal changes in people’s economic behaviour. Knowing the price of pizza in New York or the cost of a Big Mac in Beirut can tell market-watchers how the world’s cogs are turning.
The Pizza Principle
In 1980, a New Yorker called Eric Bram noticed that the price of a slice of pizza had matched the cost of a subway ride in the city for nearly 20 years. More recently, commentators have noticed that as the cost of pizza goes up, transit fares often follow. In 2014, data scientist Jared Lander investigated the principle and found that it remains in place. Why is this so? Nobody knows.
The Big Mac and KFC Indices
The price of a Big Mac says a lot about “purchasing power parity” – whether exchange rates mean that a product costs the same in different countries. Credit: Getty Images.
How much will a Big Mac cost you in Lima? Or Abu Dhabi? The answers can tell you a lot about “purchasing power parity (PPP)” – whether exchange rates mean that a product costs the same in different countries. A tool to make this theory more “digestible” was launched by The Economist in 1986.
It allows comparison of several base currencies to others around the world. As they wrote this month: “A Big Mac currently costs $5.06 in America but just 10.75 lira ($2.75) in Turkey, implying that the lira is undervalued.”
Since McDonald’s restaurants aren’t so common in Africa, the market research firm Sagaci Research invented the supplementary “KFC index” to analyse PPP there.
Mars Bars
In 1932, a factory in Slough produced the world’s first Mars bar. Fifty years later, Financial Times writer Nico Colchester pointed out that the price of the confectionary in Britain was neatly correlated with the buying power of pound sterling. By measuring the cost of things in Mars Bars, Colechester noted how graduate salaries had improved slightly in 40 years. Meanwhile, train fares had become cheaper but roast beef dinners in pubs had gone up by more than 60 percent.
Baked Beans and Popcorn
Higher sales of popcorn in cinemas was taken as a sign of economic recovery in Britain following the financial crisis of 2008. Credit: Getty Images.
When financial experts are trying to determine whether an economy is generally in good health, they often look to food products. In 2009, the Odeon cinema company announced an “Odeon Popcorn Index” that it claimed showed higher sales and therefore signs of economic recovery in Britain following the financial crisis of 2008.
And analysts have also scrutinised sales of baked beans, popular when times are tough, as an indicator of how people are responding to periods of economic decline. When baked bean sales fell in 2013, some took it as a sign that the UK economy was in rude health.
French Fries
A fascinating article in the Oregonian in 1998 observed that sales of French fries could be a helpful indicator of trade between America and Asia. This food “leads US industries into foreign markets” wrote Richard Read, thanks to the fact that America exports so many of them (something that remains true today).
And he added that consumption of French fries was also an indicator of how well-developed an Asian economy had become. This meant that when economic trouble in Asia was brewing in the late ’90s, farmers in the US were hit hard.
Waffle House Index
US authorities have used the length of the Waffle House menu to see if supplies at the restaurant are low after hurricanes. Credit: Flickr/Steve Snodgrass.
How bad was that hurricane? The length of a fast-food restaurant’s menu can be a quick guide, it seems. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the United States keeps a check on the length of the menu at Waffle House outlets in the aftermath of natural disasters. If customers are being offered a limited menu, food supplies at the restaurant may be low and it might only have generator power. If the restaurant is closed? “That’s really bad,” FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate once said.
Some plant-based foods are high in calories and sodium content. Photo by Shutterstock
