Heme and Impossible Burgers 

Is heme just an innocent bystander in the link between meat intake and breast cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure?

In an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the chair of nutrition at Harvard pointed out that many plant-based meats, such as burgers made by Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, can be high in sodium. An issue specific to the Impossible burger is the “heme (an iron-containing molecule) from soy plants added to the burger patty to enhance the product’s meaty flavor and appearance.” Safety analyses have failed to find any toxicity risk specific to the soy heme churned out by yeast, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has agreed that it is safe, both for use…