Not too long ago, I wrote about how eating processed veggie meats isn’t necessarily better for the environment than eating meat. Now, Kiera Butler at Mother Jones reports that eating processed veggie meats might not be so good for your health either — because many of them are made with a neurotoxin.

That neurotoxin’s hexane, a chemical used to pull the fat out of soybeans to make the end products seem healthier to the would-be vegetarian. Unfortunately, hexane’s also considered an air pollutant and neurotoxin by the EPA. Yet a chemical process involving hexane is used to create many popular veggie burger brands, like Gardenburger, Boca Burger, and Morningstar!

Get a bigger list of veggie burger brands made with this hexane process — and a markedly shorter list of hexane-free veggie burger brands — at Mother Jones. The Cornucopia Institute, whose study of the soy foods industry Kiera drew her veggie burger concerns from, has an even larger list of soy foods companies, ranked from one to five beans.

The Cornucopia Institute’s study points out yet another reason to eat organic. All organic veggie burgers are hexane-free, though burgers labeled “made with organic ingredients” may still contain non-organic ingredients that contain hexane. Of course, you can avoid both hexane and headaches worrying about the hexane issue by making your own veggie burgers — like I do. They’re surprisingly easy to cook up!

Earlier: Shop, cook, and eat to avoid health risks: Get scared into dining well

Top photo by Andy on Flickr; bottom photo by Siel

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