— Maulana Yusuf

It's pretty amazing all the different products nowadays that you can get that are plant-based, that look like a meat product. Um, you know, so from shrimp to oysters, shallots to just steaks, um, you know, like there are very popular in the product or the hamburgers and stuff like that from the beyond and possibles. Um, so all of those are basically produced pretty much everything I just mentioned there are produced by doing some sort of, um, protein extract. Usually it's a pea protein extract, um, to be able to manipulate those into other things. So basically they're highly processed foods, um, usually with, um, you know, food scientists trying to figure out how to emulate, um, an animal product by using a plant product. And that basically means, um, you know, going in at a cellular level to be able to go into some of these foods to be able to recreate the texture and the mouth feel of some of these, but also reproducing, um, heme, which is something that's typically found in meat, um, uh, from an animal product, uh, or from a plant-based product. So, um, is it safe to consume these daily? Um, I wouldn't recommend it. Uh, you know, I would definitely try to stick to more whole ingredients more often, pardon me. Um, but, uh, you know, for somebody who's just converting over to, um, you know, from animal products to, uh, a plant-based diet, it's definitely something that can help people on that journey. Um, now I wouldn't recommend if you're switching from being, you know, a meat eater exclusively to doing plant-based, uh, I wouldn't say like go out and have like a fake steak or a plant-based burger every day. Um, use it in moderation and think about like, you know, ways to be able to eat the plant-based diet more often. And then if you're really craving something like a burger, then go towards that plant-based burger as a replacement. Just remember that they are highly processed and you don't want to, um, eat, you know, a lot of things that are overprocessed.