(Iowa News Service)  Ames, IA — Going into 2020, there’s continued excitement for alternative meat products and their benefits. But an Iowa-based expert says consumers should learn more about them. Over the past year, the food world buzzed over marketed items such as plant-based hamburgers, which are designed to taste like meat but don’t come at the cost of hurting the environment because of how they’re produced. There’s also the perception that they are healthier to eat.

Ruth Litchfield is a professor of food science and human nutrition at Iowa State University. She says the environmental benefits are there, but not necessarily the health benefits. “My biggest concern about some of these products is not what the constituents are for, so it’s not the ingredients that are of concern to me, but it’s the consumer perception that these are going to be nutritionally very similar to the traditional product. ”

For example, Litchfield says some plant-based burgers on the market are higher in saturated fat and sodium. She says they also have less protein and a lower-quality protein. She says a lot of the perception mirrors what happened when many different styles of milk hit the market in recent years.

The Impossible Foods company recently unveiled plans for an alternative form of pork. That has some worried about how this might harm producers in Iowa, which is the leading pork-producing state in the U.S. But Litchfield says it’s too early to say how this might affect them. “It really could go either way, and it’s really going to depend on the consumer demand and the acceptance of these products.”

Despite some of the hype and popularity surrounding alternative meat products, research has shown the U.S. consumption of traditional meats has rebounded in recent years.