Best Vegan Foods: Plant-Based Meat, Egg & Protein Brands Reviewed

What Counts as Vegan Food — and What This Page Covers

Technically, vegan food is anything made without animal products: no meat, fish, dairy, eggs or honey. That covers an enormous amount of ordinary, brilliant food — beans, lentils, rice, oats, nuts, fruit and vegetables have been vegan since long before anyone thought to put it on a label. Mr. Healthy would like the record to show that a bag of red lentils remains one of the best-value vegan protein foods on earth.

But when most people search for vegan food these days, they are looking for the products: the branded vegan meat alternatives, plant-based eggs and ready-to-cook proteins that make eating this way convenient. That is what this category covers. We review the brands you can actually buy, so you know which ones taste good, which ones are worth the money, and which ones live up to their nutrition claims.

Two quick signposts so you land in the right place. If you want recipes — actual meals to cook — our Healthy Recipes reviews are where to go, and several of the sources there are superb for plant-based cooking. And if you are after dairy alternatives, oat milk and the rest, those live in our Plant-Based Milks hub. This page is the food itself: what goes in the pan.

The Genesis: How Vegan Food Went Mainstream

Vegan convenience food is older than the hype suggests. Meat-free brands have been quietly feeding people since the 1970s and 80s — MorningStar Farms was doing veggie burgers decades before it was cool, Quorn’s mycoprotein arrived in the UK in the mid-1980s, and the first Tofurky roast turned up in the mid-90s as a Thanksgiving joke that stopped being a joke. For years, this was a modest, faintly worthy corner of the freezer.

Then came the boom. Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods launched burgers designed not to be a virtuous substitute but to genuinely fool a meat-eater, landing in mainstream supermarkets and fast-food chains from around 2016. Investment poured in, Beyond Meat’s stock market debut became one of the great financial fireworks displays of 2019, and suddenly new plant-based meat brands seemed to launch every month. Ms. Exercise remembers the era fondly as “the year everyone’s dad tried a Beyond Burger.”

What happened next is the part the marketing tends to skip, and it matters if you are deciding what to buy. The hype outran reality. Prices stayed stubbornly higher than meat, quality was wildly uneven, and consumers grew wary of the ultra-processed reputation. American plant-based retail sales — which had roughly doubled over the preceding decade to around $7.9 billion — dipped slightly in 2025, with meat and seafood alternatives struggling in particular, and more than seventy alternative-protein businesses have merged, been bought or shut down since late 2024. Mr. Healthy calls this the “correction,” and he is insufferable about having predicted it.

But — and this is the encouraging bit — the category has not collapsed. Globally, plant-based meat sales actually rose around 8% in 2025 to roughly $6.6 billion, driven largely by Europe, which is now the world’s biggest market for meat and dairy alternatives. More interestingly, the survivors are changing tack: instead of chasing ever-more-convincing meat mimicry, the smartest brands are pivoting toward high-protein, shorter-ingredient, whole-food-forward products that stand on their own merits. In other words, the vegan food aisle is growing up — which makes now a genuinely good moment to work out which brands deserve your money.

Are Vegan Foods Actually Healthy? An Honest Answer

Here is where we put our cards on the table, because “plant-based” and “healthy” are not synonyms, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.

The good news first. Vegan foods contain no cholesterol, are usually lower in saturated fat than red and processed meat, and often bring fibre to the plate — something most of us are badly short of. Swapping processed meat for a plant-based alternative is, for most people, a sensible trade. And whole plant proteins like tofu, tempeh and beans are outstanding by almost any nutritional measure.

Now the honest caveat. Many branded plant-based meat brands produce genuinely ultra-processed food — long ingredient lists, added oils, binders and flavourings — and some carry surprisingly high sodium, or as much saturated fat as the thing they are replacing, thanks to coconut or palm oil. A vegan sausage is still a sausage. Mr. Healthy’s rule of thumb, which we stand by: turn the packet over. Check the protein per 100g, check the salt, and glance at how long the ingredients list runs. That thirty-second habit will tell you more than any front-of-pack claim.

Two more things worth knowing if you are eating fully plant-based. Protein quality varies — soy-based vegan protein foods like tofu and tempeh offer a complete amino acid profile, while some others benefit from being combined across the day. And vitamin B12 is not reliably available from plants, so anyone eating a fully vegan diet generally needs a fortified food or a supplement; our Best Supplements reviews cover the sensible options. If you have specific medical or dietary needs, a doctor or registered dietitian is the right person to ask — we review products, not prescriptions.

How to Choose the Best Vegan Foods

With hundreds of products competing for shelf space, a few questions cut through the noise fast.

Start with the job you want it to do. Replacing a weeknight bolognese is a different task from building a high-protein lunch, and the right product differs accordingly. Then check the protein, which is the first thing Ms. Exercise looks at — if you train, a plant-based product that delivers under ten grams a serving is a snack, not a meal. Next, scan the sodium and ingredients, as we described above; shorter, more recognisable lists tend to signal less processing.

After that, the practical trio. Taste and texture matter more than anything else, because the healthiest product in the world is useless if it sits in your freezer forever. Price is a real factor, since most plant-based products still cost more than the meat they replace — one of the biggest barriers the whole industry faces. And availability counts: a brand you cannot buy locally is a brand you will not eat. Finally, think about where you want to sit on the processing spectrum — some of the best vegan brands are the plainest ones, making tofu and tempeh rather than convincing bacon. Our reviews below weigh every brand against exactly these points.

How Vegan Foods Fit the Rest of Your Nutrition

Very few people eat exclusively from one aisle, and vegan products work best as part of a wider plan rather than the whole strategy — a point Mr. Healthy makes roughly once a week.

If you are building a genuine routine around plant-based eating, our Healthy Meal Plans reviews help you turn good intentions into an organised week, and our Healthy Recipes hub is full of sources that cook brilliantly without meat. Prefer to skip the shopping entirely? Plenty of the services in our Best Meal Kit Delivery and Prepared Meal Delivery reviews now run strong vegan lines, which is an easy way to try vegan meat alternatives without committing to a freezer full of them.

And for the snacking and training side of things — Ms. Exercise’s department — our Best Protein Bars reviews flag the plant-based options worth carrying in a gym bag, while Plant-Based Milks covers everything you pour. The brands below are the foundation; these are what you build on top of them.

Explore Our Best Vegan Food Brand Reviews

This is where the page earns its keep. We have worked through the best vegan food brands on the market — looking at taste, nutrition, ingredients, price and who each one really suits. They fall into four clear groups, which makes choosing much simpler. A quick reminder before you dive in: the biggest name is not automatically among the best vegan brands for your plate, so read with your own goals in mind.

The big-name plant-based meats. The household names among plant-based meat brands, and the ones you are most likely to find in your local supermarket. Explore our reviews of Beyond Meat, its great rival Impossible Foods, the mycoprotein pioneer Quorn (note that Quorn runs both vegetarian and vegan ranges, so check the pack), the long-established MorningStar Farms, and the freezer-aisle staple Gardein.

Specialist meat and seafood alternatives. Where the category gets genuinely interesting, and home to some of the most inventive vegan meat alternatives on the market — brands doing chicken, seafood, deli and Mediterranean-style products with real character. See our reviews of the artisan Field Roast, Spain’s Heura Foods, the protein-focused Abbot’s Foods, the chicken specialists at Daring Foods, the veteran Tofurky, the jackfruit-based Jack & Annie’s, the seafood-and-bacon range from Beleaf Vegan, and the pantry-friendly Unmeat.

Tofu, tempeh and whole-food proteins. Mr. Healthy’s favourite corner of the shop: the least processed vegan protein foods on this page, high in protein and usually the best value of the lot. Explore our reviews of the UK favourite Tofoo & Co, the organic, chef-loved Hodo Foods, and the long-standing SoyBoy. If you want the nutritional wins without the ultra-processed question mark, start here.

Plant-based eggs. The newest frontier, and modern plant-based eggs are far better than you would expect. See our reviews of the mung-bean pioneer Eat Just, the remarkable whole-egg lookalikes from WunderEggs, the shelf-stable Acremade, and the cook-and-bake-friendly Zero Egg.

Whether you want the best vegan foods for a first meat-free Monday or a full freezer restock, each review answers one question: is this brand worth buying for you?

Final Words

Vegan food has grown out of its awkward phase. The early years gave us a lot of hype and a few genuinely rubbery burgers; what is left standing now is a category with real quality in it — and, if you know what to look for, some of the best-value protein in the shop. You do not have to be vegan to benefit either. Most of the people buying these products are simply eating a bit less meat, which is a perfectly good reason to browse.

So take a look through our best vegan food brands reviews, pick a couple of the best vegan brands that fit your taste and your budget, and turn the packet over before you buy. Lean on our recipes and meal plans to build them into actual meals, and remember that a bag of lentils is still undefeated on value. Eat more plants, enjoy it, and ignore anyone who tells you it has to be all or nothing. — Mr. Healthy & Ms. Exercise