What is vegan meat made of? 7 brands' ingredients compared

Plant-based meat is built from a protein, such as pea, soy or wheat gluten, plus water, oil or fat, and a binder to hold it together. The Beyond Burger starts from pea protein, the Impossible Burger from soy, Field Roast’s Italian sausage from wheat gluten. The binder is the part to read: Quorn’s Meatless Grounds list egg white second.

A 2021 review of what goes into meat analogues names egg protein and methylcellulose as the main binders in commercial burgers, patties and nuggets, with wheat gluten able to do the same job once it is hydrated. So the ingredient that decides whether a meatless pack is vegan is often the dullest word on it. Beyond, Impossible, Gardein and MorningStar’s Garden Veggie Patties all list methylcellulose. Field Roast leans on the gluten so hard that its FAQ says its sausages have no casing in the usual sense, because the vital wheat gluten is strong enough to hold them together. Quorn’s grounds list egg white, the other binder the review names. For reading any other pack the same way, our guide to checking whether ingredients are vegan covers the names to look for.

How a plant protein becomes meat-like

The protein usually arrives already separated from the plant, and the review notes that most of the ingredients in these products are highly refined. Beyond’s US ingredient list runs water, yellow pea protein, avocado oil, natural flavors, brown rice protein and red lentil protein, with faba bean protein further down. Impossible’s starts with water, soy protein concentrate, sunflower oil and coconut oil. Gardein’s tenders begin with water, enriched wheat flour, soy protein isolate, canola oil and vital wheat gluten.

Meat’s grain comes from processing. Products that copy that fibrous or layered structure are made mainly by extrusion, the review says, and pea protein has been structured into meat-like fibers that way. For chicken- and steak-style pieces, flavor mostly goes in afterward, by marinating, because conditions inside an extruder are hard on flavor compounds.

Fat does the rest. The review describes makers pairing a liquid oil such as sunflower or canola with a solid fat such as coconut or palm, citing the Beyond Burger and the Impossible Burger as examples, and preferring a fat that is solid at room temperature and liquid once the burger heats. Beyond’s current US list names one oil, avocado. Impossible still uses sunflower and coconut, and its page gives 6 g of saturated fat a serving against 9 g in 4 oz of 80/20 ground beef. Beyond’s panel gives 2 g a patty, without stating the patty’s weight.

Impossible adds heme, an ingredient nobody else here uses, and makes it using a yeast genetically engineered with the gene for soy leghemoglobin.

Seven products, read from the maker’s page

All seven were read on the makers’ US pages in October 2026, and the protein and binder columns are our reading of each ingredient list. Recipes change; the pack in your hand outranks this table.

Product	Protein	Fat	What holds it together	Vegan?
Beyond Burger	Pea, rice, lentil, faba bean	Avocado oil	Methylcellulose, potato and pea starch	Sold as vegan
Impossible Burger Patties	Soy	Sunflower, coconut	Methylcellulose, modified starch	No animal ingredients, per Impossible
Field Roast Italian Garlic & Fennel	Wheat gluten	Soybean oil	Wheat gluten	Plant-based facilities
Tofurky Hickory Smoked Deli Slices	Wheat gluten, tofu	Canola oil	Wheat gluten	Vegan badge
Gardein Seven Grain Crispy Tenders	Wheat, soy	Canola oil	Wheat gluten, methylcellulose	“Certified vegan” badge
MorningStar Farms Garden Veggie Patties	Vegetables, soy, wheat gluten	Corn, canola or sunflower oil	Methylcellulose, konjac flour, wheat gluten	Marked vegan
Quorn Meatless Grounds	Mycoprotein	None listed	Egg white	No

Beyond Burger

Water first, then yellow pea protein, and no soy or gluten, which Beyond states on the page. The page title sells it as a vegan burger patty. One line of its page text says 20 g of protein and the nutrition panel says 21 g a patty; trust the panel, and forgive the copywriter. Beyond prints its own warning: peas are legumes, and people with severe legume allergies, peanut included, should be cautious with pea protein. If that’s you, this is not your burger.

Impossible Burger Patties

Soy protein concentrate, two oils, methylcellulose and the yeast-made heme. Impossible’s own page titled “Are Impossible products vegan?” never answers yes; it says they are made without any animal ingredients, and made for people who love eating meat. Its page lists 19 g of protein and 6 g of saturated fat a serving. Skip it if an ingredient made with genetically engineered yeast is a line for you, or if you avoid soy.

Field Roast Italian Garlic & Fennel

The list here that reads most like a recipe: water, wheat gluten, soybean oil, eggplant, onions, wheat protein isolate and garlic lead it, with red wine and fennel seed in the small print. Field Roast’s FAQ says every product made in its facilities is 100% plant-based. Wheat is the whole structure, so anyone avoiding gluten should leave it on the shelf.

Tofurky Hickory Smoked Deli Slices

Vital wheat gluten and tofu, the tofu set with magnesium chloride and calcium chloride, with soy sauce and canola oil behind them. The page carries Vegan and Non-GMO Verified badges and says the slices are ready to eat cold. Not for anyone avoiding soy or wheat, which it contains both of.

Gardein Seven Grain Crispy Tenders

A breaded tender, so the first ingredient after water is enriched wheat flour, then soy protein isolate, canola oil and vital wheat gluten. Gardein’s page shows a “Certified vegan” badge without naming the certifier. The SmartLabel gives 10 g of protein in 3 pieces, 77 g, about 13 g per 100 g by our arithmetic. Skip it if you want a protein centerpiece rather than a breaded snack.

MorningStar Farms Garden Veggie Patties

The one product here that starts with vegetables: carrots and onions come before the soy protein concentrate. Methylcellulose and konjac flour do the binding. The certification line reads “KOSHER DAIRY, VEGAN”, and the ingredient list has no milk in it; the page doesn’t say why the dairy mark is there. Read the exact pack on this shelf, because MorningStar’s Grillers Original, in the same veggie-burger range, lists egg whites and calcium caseinate.

Quorn Meatless Grounds

The one to put back. Mycoprotein is 91% of it, and Quorn’s page describes mycoprotein as a mold, a member of the fungi family. The second ingredient is egg white, and the allergen line says “Contains Egg”. It isn’t alone. Quorn US titles one page its “Vegan & Vegetarian Frozen Range”, and every one of the nine product pages linked from it lists egg white, five of them milk or cheese as well (our count, October 2026). Skip it if you are vegan.

Is vegan meat ultra-processed?

By the NOVA system’s own test, at least four of these seven are. Its authors’ practical rule is that a food is ultra-processed if its ingredient list contains at least one item characteristic of the group, which includes classes of additives such as flavors, colors, emulsifiers and thickeners. Beyond lists natural flavors and vegetable juice color, and Impossible, Gardein and Tofurky all list natural flavors (our reading of their lists against that rule).

What that means for health depends on what the burger replaces. A UK Biobank analysis of 126,842 adults found that each extra 10 percentage points of energy from plant-sourced ultra-processed foods went with a 5% higher risk of cardiovascular disease, while the same increase from less processed plant foods went with a 7% lower risk. Those results are for plant-sourced ultra-processed food as a group, not for meat substitutes alone. The SWAP-MEAT trial asked the narrower question: 36 adults ate at least two servings a day of plant-based meat or animal meat for 8 weeks each, and their LDL cholesterol averaged 109.9 mg/dL in the plant phase against 120.7 in the animal phase. Beyond Meat funded the trial and supplied the plant-based products, and the main analysis was run by a third party with no role in the study design. The cohort looked at how processed people’s plant foods were; the trial swapped Beyond Meat’s plant-based meats in for animal meat, using the recipes of the time. If your diet has questions beyond the label, a doctor or registered dietitian is the one to ask.

Reading the binder on any pack

Find the words that hold the thing together. Egg white and milk ingredients are the animal ones that turn up in this aisle, and on the pages we read they came with an allergen line saying so. Methylcellulose is made from plant cellulose and konjac flour from the konjac root. Then check what the brand actually claims. “Meatless” describes what isn’t in it, and MorningStar’s Grillers Original is marked vegetarian while listing egg whites and milk ingredients.

If the extruder isn’t the point and you just want the protein, seitan and tempeh are compared with the rest in our guide to what vegans eat instead of meat, with the same skip lines.