As vegans, it’s always fun to try new meat alternatives when we see them at our local grocery store. They allow us to savor meaty flavors and textures while still supporting animal welfare, our health, and the environment.
Eat Meati™ is a relatively new brand offering vegan “steaks” and “chicken” cutlets made from mushroom mycelium. For this Meati review, I tried their steak out for myself and compiled my thoughts on the flavor, appearance, cooking process, price, nutrition profile, and potential health benefits to help you decide whether or not it’s right for you.
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Brief overview: Eat Meati™
Eat Meati™ is an innovative brand offering plant-based alternatives to steak and chicken made from mushroom mycelium. Their product line includes:
- Classic Steaks
- Carne Asada Steaks
- Classic Cutlets
- Crispy Cutlets
What is mycelium? You can think about mycelium as the “root” of various fungi. It’s the fibrous, thread-like material found under the soil or growing on rotting tree trunks.
In contrast, mushrooms are the “fruiting body” of fungi. Mushroom mycelium isn’t a mushroom itself; rather, they’re different parts of the same fungus.
Mycelium could be a valuable, nutrient-dense addition to plant-based diets. As a unique source of high-quality protein, it can help vegans (especially those with soy or gluten allergies) add variety to their diet.
Is Meati vegan?
Rest assured that all Meati products are 100% vegan and plant-based. This is clearly indicated on their website:
“Meati is vegan! All our cuts are animal-free, made with no animal products or byproducts.”
It was also confirmed by customer service in my email correspondence with them. The mycelium used to make Meati products is grown using sugar, which I was concerned may be filtered through animal bone char as conventional cane sugar often is in the United States. Fortunately, this isn’t the case. I received this reply in response to my email:
“I checked with our Product Team and they did confirm that we do not use bone char sugar in our production process.”
Meati review: Carne Asada Steaks
As a native Texan and lover of Mexican food, I had to try the Carne Asada Mushroom Root Steaks.
I followed the preparation instructions exactly as written to get the best results. To judge the flavor and consistency, I tried the steak on its own as well as in tacos topped with cilantro, onion, lime juice, avocado, and salsa verde on corn tortillas.
Ease of preparation
The cooking process was simple and straightforward. You can cook it frozen or thawed. I cooked mine from frozen, following the directions to cook it on a skillet for 13 minutes.
The only inconvenient thing about cooking the steak was the instructions to flip it every two minutes, which made it a little more difficult to prep the rest of my ingredients while it cooked.
That said, it came out nicely browned on both sides without becoming burnt and was warm all the way through when I cut into it. However, it didn’t hold the heat very well and had cooled off by the time I prepared my tacos.
You may need to cook Meati for a few additional minutes. I have a feeling the temperature might be better when cooking it thawed instead of frozen.
Appearance
I thought the steak looked very appetizing once cooked. Even when taking it out of the package frozen, I liked seeing how many spices were packed on.
The steak was browned nicely on both sides and looked delicious in tacos. It would also look great served as a whole steak with sides.
I will say that because of the soft texture, I had to slice it very carefully with a serrated knife even after allowing the steak to sit for a few minutes after cooking. It didn’t slice as smoothly as I had hoped, so some of the slices were a bit messy looking.
Taste
I thought the flavor was on point! When trying the steak on its own, I could definitely taste the spices and picked up hints of lime as well. It was noticeably spicy, about medium heat, which I loved.
The flavor also complemented the avocado, cilantro, onion, and salsa well.
Texture
This is where I felt Meati could use the most improvement. While the texture wasn’t off-putting by any means, it’s definitely much softer than most other meat alternatives (and real steak, for that matter).
It still provided enough of a bite to be pleasant in tacos, though, so the texture wouldn’t prevent me from buying it again. Just some room for improvement.
Satiation
I did find that Meati was pretty light in terms of how filling it was, even with the high fiber content. This may have been due to a combination of the soft texture and the low fat content.
I would definitely recommend including it within a well-balanced meal that includes some fat and complex carbohydrates. Using tacos as an example, I would include avocado for the fat, perhaps a side of roasted peppers, and maybe even a side of seasoned black beans.
Price
At $9.99 for two servings, these steaks are a bit pricey in my mind. You’ll always end up paying for convenience and novelty, so the higher price isn’t completely unexpected, but it does mean that these would only be an occasional purchase for me.
Hopefully, the price will go down in the future once mycelium-based foods become more popular and the production process becomes more streamlined.
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Nutrition analysis
While vegan meat alternatives aren’t always created to be the healthiest foods, I like having options that I feel good about including in my diet frequently.
I usually reach for meat alternatives when I’m pressed for time or need more variety in my diet when weightlifting, so it’s nice to have nutritious options on hand. Let’s see how Meati stacks up!
Nutrition facts
To get a feel for the nutrition content of Meati, let’s compare one Mushroom Root steak to a standard 3-ounce serving of skirt steak commonly used for carne asada:
| Meati Carne Asada MushroomRoot Steak (1 steak) | Skirt steak (3 ounces) | |
| Calories | 130 | 200 |
| Carbohydrates | 13 g | 0 g |
| -Dietary Fiber | 10 g | 0 g |
| Fat | 1.5 g | 11 g |
| -Saturated Fat | 0 g | 4 g |
| Protein | 17 g | 26 g |
| Sodium | 490 mg | 52 mg |
| Iron | 2.6 mg | 2 mg |
| Zinc | 5 mg | 7 mg |
| Riboflavin | 1.2 mg | 0.3 mg |
| Niacin | 6 mg | 5.5 mg |
| Folate | 200 mcg | 6 mcg |
| Pantothenic acid | 1.8 mg | 0.6 mg |
| Vitamin B12 | 0 mcg | 2 mcg |
| Magnesium | 37 mg | 20 mg |
| Copper | 0.3 mg | 0.09 mg |
| Choline | 85 mg | 51 mg |
As you can see, the Carne Asada Meati steak is a lean source of protein with no saturated fat. With 17 grams of protein, it’s much higher in protein than whole mushrooms. It’s also a good source of iron, zinc, B vitamins, and copper and provides small amounts of magnesium and choline.
One thing I love about the nutrition profile of this product is the fiber content. One steak has 10 grams of fiber, about the same amount as a half-cup of lentils.
Unlike some other vegan products meant to imitate meat, Meati isn’t fortified with vitamin B12, so you’ll need to make sure you’re getting enough from other fortified foods (nutritional yeast, fortified non-dairy milk) or a supplement.
A potential disadvantage is the sodium content. Meati is high in sodium with 21% of the daily recommended amount of sodium in one steak. You may need to be careful with how much additional sodium you have the rest of the day, but there’s no reason it can’t fit within a balanced diet.
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Ingredients
The ingredient list includes:
Mushroom Root (mycelium), less than 2% of: Salt, Natural Flavor, Fruit Juice for Color, Oat Fiber, Vegetable Juice for Color, Lycopene for Color, Seasoning Blend (Dehydrated garlic, Salt, Sugar, Spices, Paprika, Dehydrated Onion, Olive Oil, Natural Flavors, Extractives of Paprika.
These steaks are made with about 95% mycelium flavored with spices and herbs typically used in a carne asada marinade and a few additional food additives:
- Natural flavor: Flavors that can be derived from animal or plant sources; according to Meati, this flavor is plant-based
- Oat fiber: May help with moisture retention
- Lycopene: An orange-red carotenoid found naturally in tomatoes
- Extractives of paprika: A mixture of oils and carotenoids taken from sweet peppers; provides flavor and color to foods
I love that these steaks contain so much mycelium, as this adds a lot of nutritional value. This is a great example of a food that is actually quite nutrient-dense despite being processed.
Health benefits of mycelium
As a dietitian, I couldn’t write a review without getting into some of the potential health benefits of Meati products!
May help control blood sugar
According to a 2023 review article1, eating mycelium in the form of a whole food (as opposed to mycelium extracts) may help with blood sugar management. Mycelium was also shown to improve insulin sensitivity when compared to eating similar amounts of chicken.
These benefits are likely due to the dietary fiber found in mycelium, which helps prevent excessive blood sugar spikes. It could also have something to do with the lower saturated fat content in mycelium considering the link between saturated fat and insulin resistance2.
Overall, foods made from mycelium could be helpful for people with type 2 diabetes who struggle to manage their blood sugar.
May help build and maintain muscle
The body requires significantly more protein than usual when trying to build muscle. This is also true if you’re trying to maintain muscle while losing weight. The International Society of Sports Nutrition3 (ISSN) recommends the following protein goals:
- To build muscle: 1.4-2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight
- To maintain muscle in a calorie deficit: 2.3-3 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight
In these instances, it’s extra important to include good sources of protein throughout the day and at each meal.
One Meati steak provides 17 grams of high-quality protein. The general recommendation when building muscle is to get 20-40 grams of protein per meal, plus snacks as needed to meet your total protein goal.
One Meati steak alone falls a bit short of this recommendation, but you can easily get a few more grams of protein by pairing it with a side of beans, tortillas, whole grains, pasta, chickpea-based rice, or broccoli.
Like soy, mycelium contains optimal amounts of all nine essential amino acids and is considered a high-quality, “complete” protein. While vegans don’t need to obsess over getting “complete” protein sources at every meal, doing so can provide extra benefits when your goal is to gain muscle since each essential amino acid is needed to build new muscle tissue.
Mycelium is also high in leucine, a branched-chain amino acid that acts as a particularly powerful trigger for muscle protein synthesis, the process that kick-starts muscle building. One steak has 1,273 milligrams of leucine, falling well within the 700-3,000 milligram dose recommended by the ISSN.
May reduce inflammation
Mycelium is rich in bioactive compounds that provide health benefits. It’s especially high in ergothioneine, a compound with anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties. Low levels of ergothioneine in the body have been associated with an increased risk of chronic and neurodegenerative diseases as we age.
While more research is needed, it’s possible that regularly eating foods made from mycelium could help reduce the chronic inflammation that contributes to the development of diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or dementia.
Fiber is also anti-inflammatory, calming inflammation in the gut and supporting a healthy gut microbiome. As we saw earlier, Meati steaks are excellent sources of fiber.
May help lower cholesterol
In previous research, people with high cholesterol had significantly lower total and LDL cholesterol levels when taking 190 or 130 grams of mycelium compared to control groups receiving equal amounts of non-mycelium (animal) protein1.
These effects were likely due to the high fiber content of mycelium, particularly a unique fiber called beta-glucan. Beta-glucan is what gives oats their powerful cholesterol-lowering properties.
These studies used a different species of fungi than the one used to make Meati, so we’ll need more research before we can say for sure how Meati products affect cholesterol.
Meati review summary
Overall, I could definitely see myself purchasing Meati products again. The carne asada flavor was spicy and delicious and the steak looked really appealing once cooked. I also loved what a great source of protein, fiber, and micronutrients it is.
It’s high in sodium, so you’ll need to watch your overall sodium intake for the day especially if you have high blood pressure. The texture was also softer than I would have liked.
Even given these shortcomings, the Meati carne asada steak is one of the most nutrient-dense and flavorful meat alternatives that I’ve come across and would be a tasty, convenient source of protein to keep on hand in the freezer.
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The scientific information in this article was accurate at the time of publishing but may change over time as new research becomes available.
References
- Holt RR, Munafo JP Jr, Salmen J, et al. Mycelium: A Nutrient-Dense Food To Help Address World Hunger, Promote Health, and Support a Regenerative Food System. J Agric Food Chem. 2024;72(5):2697-2707. doi:10.1021/acs.jafc.3c03307
- Imamura F, Micha R, Wu JH, et al. Effects of Saturated Fat, Polyunsaturated Fat, Monounsaturated Fat, and Carbohydrate on Glucose-Insulin Homeostasis: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomised Controlled Feeding Trials. PLoS Med. 2016;13(7):e1002087. Published 2016 Jul 19. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002087
- Jäger R, Kerksick CM, Campbell BI, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: protein and exercise. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2017;14:20. Published 2017 Jun 20. doi:10.1186/s12970-017-0177-8
