You don't need salt and spices to make a burger, it can be 100% beef with no additives. A pinch of salt can be like 0.3g/burger and you're fine as well.

I don't eat that these days, my burgers are actually 25% beef and 75% lentil/seasoning. Still under 0.5g/100g

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kleiba 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Let me assure you that you're in the vast minority if you add little or no salt at all to your home-made burger patties.

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iinnPP 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I was going to edit the comment with this but in Canada we have a company called Metro(grocer) and they often sell 4x fresh beef patties for ~$4 which is 1lb(454g) of ground beef and exactly nothing else.

It's good to eat sans salt on bbq with your desired (typically salty) toppings.

I know people salt the patty while cooking, but the topic at hand is Beyond and their patties.

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Jensson 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Still meat is very low sodium, it is weird to say plant based alternatives have less sodium since both have as much salt as you add since there is almost none naturally.

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kleiba 2 hours ago | parent [-]

But then you're comparing apples an oranges: meat is low in sodium in its unprocessed form, but so are all the ingredients of the plant-based alternative before adding salt.

What matters is not so much the natural form, it is how the product is typically consumed.

But of course I see your point that with home made meat-based patties, you are in control of how much salt you want to add, while with factory made patties, you have to take what you get, it's typically not possible to "take away" salt. Mind you, though, the latter argument holds for both plant-based and meat-based factory-made patties.

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iinnPP 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Beyond sells a ground beef substitute which has about 3x as much sodium as lean ground beef.

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kleiba an hour ago | parent [-]

Did you get the point about how you usually season meat (with salt) before you eat it? Beyond Beef has 230mg of sodium per 100g (according to their website), even a pinch of salt you add for seasoning easily contains 10x that amount.

Also, do you expect the vegan alternative to have exactly the same nutritional values as their meat counterparts?

Look, I don't even know why I'm defending Beyond here, I'm certainly not a fan (as a matter of fact, I don't like their beef patties). But I think the arguments you've made are not entirely fair.

	▲	iinnPP 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The sodium content is about 3x higher. It doesn't taste 3x higher. If you're salting your recipe with traditional ground beef, you're doing the same with Beyond. If not, same. I do not expect or even encourage the content of any alternative to match the nutritional value of the real deal. A typical pinch of salt is 300mg. Not 2300mg. When the base product has 3x as much sodium, that is a problem. It doesn't need that much because as you stated, you can add salt during cooking. As a great example, let's take a use case for Beyond which is taco meat. I add taco seasoning (my own which is about 30% sodium compared to a traditional) and now the Beyond version is still roughly 250% the sodium content. I can't remove the sodium they add. It's not a product I like or desire. It's more expensive. It's less healthy (note how often I mention reduced salt) for myself. Also, I have been a strict vegan in life for about 5 years. I still didn't eat Beyond (aside from tasting it) during that period (it was available). I'm not really trying to attack Beyond here, it's all personal preference at the end of the day. I make 95% of my food, from bread to tomato sauce to pickled peppers and hot sauce. When I am reaching for a vegan protein, I reach for lentils.

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edgyquant an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The GP is talking about health conscious folks