Meati’s nutrition: Protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and more

Meati provides people of all dietary preferences a complete-protein, nature-to-table, Earth-friendly, and best-of-all-worlds food that is rich in fiber, vitamins, minerals, kindness, and deliciousness.

Despite the clear connection between the food we eat and our well-being, many Americans struggle to achieve a healthy diet. Only 5 percent or so of U.S. adults and children get adequate fiber, an ingredient critical to managing sugar levels, inflammation, and cholesterol. Less than 3 percent of adults get sufficient potassium, which helps with muscle contraction, blood pressure, and more. Some studies show people struggling to acquire enough zinc, a nutrient important to their immune systems, metabolism, and other bodily functions. Almost 10 percent of Americans have some kind of nutritional deficiency.

The causes of these dietary challenges are complex, encompassing the geographic availability of healthy foods, the costs of nutritious options, cultural norms, and other factors. There is no silver bullet solution, and the best choice often comes down to making sure to eat a wide variety of foods. However, it is impractical if not impossible for many Americans — constrained by time, money, available choices, or all of those and other factors — to assemble a perfect diet. They look for shortcuts, and it’s true that not all foods are created equal. Some options pack more nutritional punch than others, and they’ve earned a nickname: superfoods.

Superfoods are rich in antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals, and may also provide significant fiber, flavonoids, and healthy fats. They include avocado, berries, beets, spinach, lentils, and others.

As you might expect, we’d like to add an item to the superfood menu that is delicious, convenient, affordable, and appealing to both meat eaters and vegetable-first folks: Meati.

We promise we aren’t patting our own backs. Meati’s nutritional profile makes it a natural member of the superfood club. Our founders took years to discover and gently perfect a process straight from Mother Nature’s toolbox that provisions a food with superior nutrition, texture, and taste, but without animals and unsustainable environmental costs. That’s the magic of mushroom root, our star ingredient. Protein-rich food, no concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) required? Check. Fiber and other good stuff from vegetables, with better taste and texture? Check. Health, happiness, planet, kindness? Check, check, check, and check.

To dive deeper into the details of Meati’s nutritional profile, we’ll examine a serving (105 grams, or about 3.7 ounces) of the Meati Classic Cutlet.

17 Grams of Complete Protein

Let’s start with a big and well-known part of the good-diet equation: protein. This macronutrient captures much of our health-oriented attention for good reason. Muscle formation, nutrient movement through our bodies, tissue repair, and other critical biological functions depend on it.

For those of you in a hurry, all you need to know is that Meati is a complete-protein food. For those of you wondering what “complete-protein” means, say hello to amino acids.

Human beings need 20 amino acids, the molecules used to build proteins that are essential to life. Of those 20, there are an “essential” nine that cannot be made by our bodies: phenylalanine, valine, threonine, tryptophan, methionine, leucine, isoleucine, lysine, and histidine. We must acquire them from the foods we eat. All nine are present in meat, dairy, eggs, poultry, and seafood. As a result, they’re considered complete-protein foods.

Plants are a different story. Though rich in fiber, they face a few more challenges in individually providing all of the amino acids in the amounts we need. That means people focused on an animal-free diet often need to mix and match greens, grains, and other sources containing different levels of different amino acids. Nowadays, they can also use ultra-processed mashes of various plants and binding agents, though these often come with detrimental nutritional aspects.

If the inconvenience of complex shopping lists or the unappealing processing levels of “Frankenfoods” leaves you desperate for an alternative, Meati offers a remarkable complete-protein choice.

How nutrient-dense is it? Our 3.7-ounce Classic Cutlet provides 17 grams of complete protein — 33 percent of the daily recommended value.

It does all of that with just a few ingredients that require no excessive processing. It does it while protecting and preserving our land, water, and air. It also provides many other nutritional benefits, making it an impressive overall “protein package.”

And did you know that Meati gets a protein digestibility-corrected amino acid score (PDCAAS) of 1? The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization use PDCAAS to measure the quality of a food’s protein. A top score of 1 means Meati provides 100 percent of those nine essential amino acids we need to find in our diets, after the protein gets digested. Other foods accomplishing this include cow’s milk, eggs, soy, and whey.

8 Grams of Fiber

Less heralded but also important to a healthy diet, fiber can be found in abundance in Meati, thanks to the filamentous fantasticness of its core ingredient, mushroom root. One Classic Cutlet 3.7-ounce serving provides 8 grams of fiber — 29 percent of the daily recommended value. It provides about 3X as much fiber as an equivalent serving of spinach or blueberries.

Whether you call it “roughage” or “bulk,” this part of food that your body can’t digest has been noted to have a big positive impact. Some of the ways experts have said it could help your health include:

• controlling blood sugar levels, which assists with everything from diabetes to sugar rushes (and crashes);
• reducing “bad” cholesterol levels, protecting your arteries from plaque build-up and also lowering your blood pressure in the process;
• improving bowel function, possibly reducing the risk of diverticular disease and colorectal cancer;
• giving a full feeling after eating, making it easier to control how much you’re consuming and manage your weight.

To recap: Just one serving of a Meati Classic Cutlet gets you 33 percent of the protein you need in a day and 29 percent of the fiber. Remarkable, right? Before you answer, take a look at Meati’s vitamin and mineral profile, too. You may have to upgrade your description to “amazing.”

Minerals and Vitamins

Without consuming a wide range of micronutrients — vitamins and minerals such as niacin and potassium — we would struggle with all kinds of problems, from recovering from wounds to converting food to energy. Blindness, rickets, and scurvy can arise from micronutrient deficiencies.

No single food provides every single vitamin and mineral you need, so a varied, healthy diet is in order. Meati can be an important, efficient, and delicious cornerstone of that nutritional mix. Here are a few comparisons to give you an idea of how well Meati can serve as a staple of your diet:

• Compared to raw spinach, a Meati Classic Cutlet provides 8X the zinc, 6X the riboflavin (vitamin B2), 11X the niacin (vitamin B3), 48X the pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), and infinitely more vitamin B12 (okay, okay, this is because raw spinach has none).
• Compared to light canned tuna fish, a Meati Classic Cutlet provides 2X the calcium, 7X the zinc, 14X the riboflavin (vitamin B2), and 21X the pantothenic acid (vitamin B5).
• Compared to raw blueberries, a Meati Classic Cutlet provides 6X the calcium, 9X the iron, 2X the potassium, 28X the zinc, 27X the riboflavin (vitamin B2), 18X the niacin (vitamin B3), 25X the pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), and 23X the folate (vitamin B9).
• Compared to lean ground beef, a Meati Classic Cutlet provides 4X the calcium, 7X the riboflavin (vitamin B2), 5X the pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), and 28X the folate (vitamin B9).
• Compared to chicken breast, a Meati Classic Cutlet provides 6X the calcium, 5X the iron, 5x the zinc, 6X the riboflavin (vitamin B2), 2X the pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), and 3X the vitamin B12.

Here’s a detailed look at the minerals in a Meati Classic Cutlet:

• 40 milligrams of calcium (4 percent of recommended daily value, or about 1/8 of a small glass of milk), a mineral widely known to be important to strong bones and teeth.
• 0.36 milligrams of copper (40 percent of recommended daily value), an essential mineral useful to all kinds of physiological processes.
• 2.7 milligrams of iron (15 percent of recommended daily value, and about 11.5 percent more than provided by a similarly sized serving of ground beef); iron helps us avoid fatigue and lightheadedness by keeping our blood healthy.
• 30 milligrams of magnesium (8 percent of recommended daily value), which helps people’s heart, bones, muscles, nerves, and other parts of the body run well.
• 200 milligrams of potassium (4 percent of recommended daily value, or about half a banana’s worth), which helps with cellular fluid levels, muscle contraction, and blood pressure.
• 4.7 milligrams of zinc (45 percent of recommended daily value), which is needed for a healthy immune system.

And here are the vitamins you’ll get in a Classic Cutlet:

• 1.17 milligrams of riboflavin (90 percent of recommended daily value), which is also known as vitamin B2 and helps with cell growth, making energy, and breaking down fats, steroids, and medications.
• 8.1 milligrams of niacin (50 percent of recommended daily value), which is also known as vitamin B3 and helps convert nutrients into energy.
• 3.3 milligrams of pantothenic acid (70 percent of recommended daily value), which is also referred to as vitamin B5 and helps the body break down fats.
• 145 micrograms of folate (35 percent of recommended daily value), which is also known as folic acid or vitamin B9; red blood cells need it, and it is important when the body is growing quickly.
• 0.54 micrograms of vitamin B12 (25 percent of recommended daily value), which is also known as cobalamin and is important to brain and nerve cells.

While it’s wonderful to have all of these nutrients coursing through Meati, sometimes what isn’t there is just as important.

We’ll Be Having None of That

There are plenty of things in Meati to feel good about: protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals galore. You can also feel good about what isn’t there. Meati has zero saturated fat, zero trans fats, zero cholesterol, and zero sugar.

When it comes to sodium – important to health, though it should not be overdone — we can’t claim zero. Still, a Classic Cutlet has just 240 milligrams, which is how much you would find in roughly 1/10 of a teaspoon of salt. It also has 110 calories and 8 grams of carbohydrates (3 percent of daily recommended value).

The Star of the Nutrition Show

Meati’s nutritional profile is made possible by its star ingredient, mushroom root. This network of fantastic fungi fibers has been part of people’s diets for centuries. We’ve taken this remarkable technology of Mother Nature, gotten to know it top to bottom, and created a process to guide it to become a version that is perfect for people. With the right mixture of temperature, water, nutrients, and glucose, our mushroom root grows into an incredible source of nourishment while protecting and preserving our planet’s water, land, and air.

Superfood, indeed.