Beyond Sausage is a reasonable option if you’re looking to cut out animal meat, but it’s not a whole food and comes with trade-offs worth understanding. It delivers solid protein from peas and rice, uses heart-friendlier fats than traditional sausage, and has a lower glycemic impact than you might expect. But it’s also a processed product with 410 mg of sodium per link, which is about 18% of your recommended daily limit.
What’s Actually in It
The current formulation is built around pea protein and brown rice protein, with avocado oil as the primary fat source. That’s a notable shift from earlier versions, which relied on coconut oil and canola oil. Avocado oil is predominantly monounsaturated fat, the same type found in olive oil, which is consistently linked to better cardiovascular outcomes.
The rest of the ingredient list includes sodium alginate for the casing, various flavoring agents, and minerals like potassium chloride. It’s not a short ingredient list, and if your definition of “healthy” means eating whole, minimally processed foods, Beyond Sausage doesn’t qualify. But compared to a conventional pork sausage, the ingredient profile avoids cholesterol entirely and sidesteps the compounds in red and processed meat that raise colorectal cancer risk.
Protein and Carbs at a Glance
Each link provides a meaningful amount of plant protein from two complementary sources. Pea protein is rich in lysine but lower in methionine, while rice protein fills that gap, so the combination delivers a more complete amino acid profile than either would alone. The product also contains roughly 8 grams of carbohydrates and about 3 grams of fiber per serving, giving it a low estimated glycemic load. If you’re managing blood sugar or eating lower-carb, that’s a useful number to know.
How It Affects Heart Health
The most rigorous data comes from a Stanford crossover trial called SWAP-MEAT, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Researchers had 36 generally healthy adults eat either plant-based meat products (including Beyond Meat) or animal meat for eight weeks, then switch. During the plant-based phase, LDL cholesterol averaged about 110 mg/dL compared to 121 mg/dL during the animal meat phase. Participants also weighed about 2 pounds less on average during the plant-based stretch.
The study also measured TMAO, a compound produced in the gut when you eat certain nutrients concentrated in animal products. Higher TMAO levels are associated with increased cardiovascular risk. Overall, TMAO was significantly lower during the plant-based phase (2.7 vs. 4.7 units), though the effect was stronger in participants who ate the animal meat first and then switched to plant-based, suggesting the gut microbiome may need time to shift.
These results are encouraging but come with context. The comparison was against conventional animal meat, not against whole plant foods like beans or lentils, which would likely perform even better on these markers.
The Sodium Question
At 410 mg per link, sodium is the most legitimate health concern with Beyond Sausage. Eat two links at breakfast and you’ve already consumed over a third of the 2,300 mg daily cap recommended by most guidelines. For comparison, a typical pork breakfast sausage link contains around 300 to 400 mg of sodium, so Beyond Sausage doesn’t offer a meaningful advantage here.
If you’re watching blood pressure or have been told to limit sodium, this matters. The sodium content is driven by flavor engineering. Plant proteins don’t naturally taste like sausage, so salt and other flavor compounds do heavy lifting. This is a common trade-off across the entire plant-based meat category, not unique to Beyond.
Vitamins and Minerals
Beyond Sausage is an excellent source of naturally occurring iron, largely thanks to pea protein, which is naturally iron-rich. That’s a genuine plus, especially for people eating plant-based diets who need to be intentional about iron intake. Plant-based iron (non-heme) isn’t absorbed as efficiently as the iron in meat, but pairing it with vitamin C from fruits or vegetables at the same meal improves absorption significantly.
The product does not appear to be fortified with vitamin B12 or zinc, two nutrients that people avoiding animal products need to get elsewhere. If Beyond Sausage is part of a fully plant-based diet, you’ll still want a B12 supplement or other fortified foods to cover that gap.
The Saturated Fat Picture
Earlier versions of Beyond Sausage contained coconut oil, which is high in saturated fat. The USDA’s nutrition evidence review found moderate-quality evidence that replacing plant sources high in saturated fat (like coconut oil) with oils higher in unsaturated fat lowers LDL cholesterol. The reformulation to avocado oil aligns with that finding. However, there isn’t enough evidence to say definitively whether saturated fat from coconut oil is better or worse for your heart than saturated fat from dairy or meat. The science simply hasn’t settled that comparison yet.
The switch to avocado oil makes the current product a better choice on paper than the older coconut oil version, at least from a cardiovascular standpoint.
Who Benefits Most
Beyond Sausage makes the most sense as a replacement for conventional sausage, not as a replacement for whole plant foods. If you’re someone who eats pork or beef sausage regularly and wants to reduce your intake of animal products, swapping in Beyond Sausage can lower your LDL cholesterol and TMAO levels while eliminating your exposure to the processed meat compounds linked to cancer risk. That’s a meaningful upgrade.
If you already eat a whole-foods plant-based diet rich in legumes, vegetables, and grains, adding Beyond Sausage doesn’t improve your nutritional profile. It adds sodium and processing without offering nutrients you can’t get more cleanly from a bowl of lentils. It does, however, offer convenience and a familiar taste, which for many people is what keeps a dietary change sustainable over the long term. That practical value shouldn’t be dismissed.