7 vegan foods that seem healthy but nutritionists say are basically junk

That’s when I started checking labels on everything. Turns out, a lot of vegan products I’d been treating as health foods were just processed foods wearing a plant-based badge. Higher sugar than expected. More salt than made sense. Ingredient lists that looked like chemistry homework.

The plant-based label had given me permission to stop asking questions. I wasn’t alone in this—nutritionists have been pointing it out for years, but the message gets buried under marketing about saving the planet and eating clean.

1. Plant-based burgers with more sodium than potato chips

Nearly 400mg of sodium per patty. That’s what I found when I finally checked the label on a popular plant-based burger—about as much as a serving of chips.

Many plant-based meat alternatives contain significantly more sodium than ground beef. Some pack 370mg per 4-ounce serving, compared to 75mg in lean beef. The salt creates that savory, meat-like flavor, but if you’re eating these a few times a week, you’re getting close to half your daily sodium limit from what you thought was the healthy option.

2. Vegan cheese that’s mostly oil and starch

The ingredient list on most vegan cheese reads like a chemistry experiment. Refined coconut oil, tapioca starch, modified food starch, natural flavors, lactic acid, xanthan gum, guar gum.

Where’s the nutrition? Many vegan cheeses match or exceed dairy cheese in saturated fat while offering almost none of the protein or calcium. The coconut and palm oils used for texture contain the same saturated fats cardiologists tell you to limit. You’re essentially eating flavored oil that melts.

3. Meat alternatives engineered in labs, not kitchens

A friend who’s a nutritionist once told me to count the ingredients. If it’s more than five or six, it’s probably not food your great-grandmother would recognize.

I counted twenty-three ingredients on a package of plant-based chicken strips. Soy protein isolate, methylcellulose, cultured dextrose, modified food starch, yeast extract, maltodextrin, sunflower lecithin, calcium alginate. These products require industrial processing to mimic the texture, appearance, and taste of meat. While the additives are considered safe, you’re eating something created in a lab, not grown in a field. The protein might be plant-based, but the product is about as far from a bowl of beans as you can get.

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