The Beyond Burger sits in a nutritional middle ground: better than beef in some ways, worse in others, and firmly in the category of processed food. A single patty delivers about 20 grams of protein and 2 grams of saturated fat in its newest formula, which is a meaningful improvement over both its earlier versions and a standard beef burger. But it’s also high in sodium, made from heavily refined ingredients, and lower in certain minerals your body can actually absorb. Whether it counts as “healthy” depends on what you’re comparing it to and how often it shows up on your plate.
What’s Actually in a Beyond Burger
The primary protein source is pea protein isolate, a concentrated extract from yellow peas. The fat comes from a blend that now features avocado oil as the main fat source. Earlier versions relied on coconut oil, which pushed the saturated fat up to 5 grams per patty. The reformulated version cut that to just 2 grams by swapping in avocado oil, which is predominantly monounsaturated fat.
A single 4-ounce patty contains roughly 350 milligrams of sodium, about 15 percent of the recommended daily limit. That’s not extreme on its own, but once you add a bun, ketchup, and pickles, you’re looking at a sandwich that can easily clear 700 milligrams. For context, the American Heart Association recommends staying under 2,300 milligrams per day, with an ideal target of 1,500 milligrams for most adults.
The Beyond Burger is classified as an ultra-processed food under the NOVA system, the most widely used framework for categorizing food by degree of processing. It’s built from protein isolates, binding agents, colorants, and flavoring agents rather than whole foods. That puts it in the same processing category as hot dogs and frozen chicken nuggets, even though its ingredient profile is plant-based.
How It Compares to a Beef Burger
The most useful comparison is a standard 80/20 ground beef patty, the kind most people actually buy. Here’s where the Beyond Burger has clear advantages: it contains zero cholesterol (beef has about 80 milligrams per patty), significantly less saturated fat in its current formula (2 grams versus roughly 8 grams for beef), and no heme iron, which in high amounts has been linked to colorectal cancer risk.
Beef wins on protein quality. All animal proteins score at or above 1.0 on the PDCAAS scale, the standard measure of how well your body can use the protein you eat. Pea protein isolate scores 0.82. That doesn’t mean the Beyond Burger’s protein is useless, just that gram for gram, your body absorbs and utilizes slightly less of it. If you’re eating a varied diet with multiple protein sources throughout the day, this difference is minor.
Mineral absorption is where beef has a more significant edge. Research comparing plant-based burgers to beef found that zinc uptake from plant-based patties was significantly lower than from beef. Iron bioavailability was comparable in most plant-based burgers tested, but plant-based options consistently delivered less absorbable zinc. On the flip side, plant-based burgers tend to contain higher levels of calcium, copper, and magnesium than beef.
What the Clinical Evidence Shows
The most rigorous study on this question is the SWAP-MEAT trial out of Stanford, which randomly assigned 36 generally healthy adults to eat either plant-based meat (including Beyond products) or animal meat for eight weeks, then switch. The results were notable. During the plant-based phase, participants had LDL cholesterol levels averaging 109.9 mg/dL compared to 120.7 mg/dL during the animal meat phase. That’s roughly a 9 percent reduction, which is clinically meaningful for heart disease risk.
Participants also weighed about 2 pounds less on average during the plant-based phase, and their levels of TMAO, a compound produced during digestion that’s associated with cardiovascular disease, dropped significantly. TMAO is generated when gut bacteria break down certain nutrients found predominantly in red meat, so the reduction wasn’t surprising, but the size of the effect was encouraging.
One important caveat: this was a short study in healthy people. It tells us what happens over eight weeks when you swap one for the other. It doesn’t tell us much about what happens over years, or in people who already have heart disease or metabolic conditions.
The Processing Problem
Large observational studies have consistently linked ultra-processed food consumption to higher rates of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers. The Beyond Burger falls squarely into that category, and this is the tension at the heart of the “is it healthy” question. Its nutrient profile looks reasonable on a label, with decent protein, low saturated fat, and some fiber (about 4 grams when served on a whole grain bun). But the degree of processing is something nutrition labels don’t capture.
That said, not all researchers agree that the ultra-processed label is useful when applied to plant-based meat alternatives. A 2025 paper in the Journal of Food Science argued that the NOVA classification system “fails to appreciate the value” of these products, pointing out that they can help people reduce red meat intake, which carries its own well-documented health risks. The argument is essentially that replacing a beef burger with a Beyond Burger, even though both are processed, still produces better cardiovascular outcomes based on the available clinical data.
Where It Fits in Your Diet
If you’re choosing between a Beyond Burger and a beef burger at a cookout, the Beyond Burger is likely the better pick for your heart. It delivers less saturated fat, no cholesterol, and lower TMAO production. If you’re choosing between a Beyond Burger and a meal built around whole foods like beans, lentils, grains, and vegetables, those whole foods win on nearly every metric: less sodium, no processing, more fiber, and a wider range of micronutrients.
The most practical way to think about it: the Beyond Burger is a reasonable occasional swap for beef, not a health food you should build your diet around. Treating it as a convenient bridge, something that satisfies a burger craving without the cardiovascular downsides of red meat, is where it makes the most sense. Eating one a few times a month is a very different proposition from eating one every day, where the sodium and processing start to add up.