🟡 Mexican Black Beans • Convenience & Salt

Chefs love salt and so do home cooks like me. Never too much salt. But always Just enough so the meals and main dishes we put on the table taste good.

I like convenience and these Mexican Black Beans work for me. You’ll find a couple of pouches in my pantry so when I need to I can put a meal together quickly. Like the shrimp tacos I make using frozen shrimp. Or a meal of rice and black beans and some leftover chicken. 

The ingredient list reads like what I use for scratch cooking. The degree of processing is just different. Powdered onion and garlic instead of intact aromatics. Seed oil instead of olive oil. Since the product is industrially formulated with 5 or more ingredients, technically it would be classified as ultra-processed. But clean labeled convenience products made with intact ingredients are always acceptable in my kitchen.

I grew up eating Mexican street food and have always liked the taste of beans. Dietitians and food labelers get all hung up in the discussion of VEGGIES vs PROTEIN food groups. Why do they get so hung up? Because one food can’t be present in two groups. As for me, I don’t have that problem. I say beans or pulses can fit in both groups. Then I sit down and enjoy my dinner.

These Mexican black beans have a moderate amount of salt. How do you know if the amount is moderate? Check the label. A low amount of sodium would be 10% DV. A high amount would be 20%. These Mexican bean are right in the middle at 14%. And that’s just the right amount to taste good to me.

The food police folks will argue the product has too much salt. And that’s technically accurate.  To market a food product as “healthy”, the DV should be <10%. As I’ve learned however in my exploration of the disconnect between what the experts tell us to eat & the real food I actually, most of the convenience products that can be labeled “healthy” don’t taste good to me.

Finally for those of you who relate better to numbers than to words, my favorite food app  GoCoCo scores the product 10/10.

🔴 Twinkies – Don’t sweat the small stuff!

I bought a package of Twinkies and snapped this picture prior to the JM Smuckers acquisition in 2023. But comparing the ingredients list back then with what I read on the manufacturer’s website today, the ingredients list is basically the same with a few minor changes.

The brand has had its ups and downs since it was founded in 1930. But the brand is alive and well today. And thriving. That means lots of somebodies out there are buying, eating, and enjoying these iconic snack cakes.

I often refer to the Twinkie as the poster child for UPF.

The ingredients are all refined, compounded, or fragmented. The list includes sugar, enriched wheat flour, oils, salt, baking soda, and multiple cosmetic additives like high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, modified food starch,  soy lecithin, cellulose gum, xanthan gum, artificial & natural flavors, yellow 5, red 40.

There’s no real food in an Twinkie. Even if the FDA allows food labelers to count the refined enriched bleached wheat flour as a grain, it’s not my idea of what a real food should be.

The marketing copy sells indulgence – taming your sweet tooth with creamy, flakey, cakey “goodness”. So where does the “goodness” come from? That is an easy question to answer. The product has way too much sugar, fat, even salt. Sales 101 is and always has been – sell what you have. And all the Twinkie has to offer is sugar plus fat “goodness”.

I used the same picture I took in 2023 because I didn’t want to buy a second box. I ate a couple of Twinkies after snapping the pic and my gut got confused. And a little upset. My gut just isn’t used to dealing with the kind of indulgence Twinkies is selling. Was it the cocktail of cosmetic additive? The fragments or compounds? Or perhaps the preservatives required to keep the Twinkies soft and safe to eat after spending months on the shelf? Or was it the intense sweetness? We just don’t know yet …

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My fellow Americans are becoming increasingly concerned about #UPF. Guaranteed, we’ll all be learning a lot more about ultra-processed over the next couple of years. But good evidence takes time and money. And waiting for good evidence can take a years.

When 70% of the choices on the supermarket shelf are considered UPF, we could starve to death if we wait to make a decision until all the evidence comes in.

So that’s why I’ve put together my own strategy to help navigate the supermarket.

RULE – There’s no consensus yet on what is and is not #UPF but if something you eat upsets your gut, pay attention. And stop 🛑 eating it.

RULE – Don’t sweat the small stuff. There are big offenders like Twinkies and little offenders like industrially formulated whole grain bread. So for now focus on the big offenders.

🟢 On Passover & Pine Needles.

This Passover menu came together in 2001. My challenge was to make a Sephardic version based on recipes from the Mediterranean – southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The usual version here in the northeast reflects the cultural traditions of Northern Europe.

Researching and planning the menu took weeks. Ingredient sourcing required an additional week and then I needed a day or two for washing, chopping, and other prep tasks to get the grunt work out of the way before I actually started to assemble and cook.

Scratch cooking is time consuming and tedious because most of the ingredients are minimally processed. I used lots of olive oil, seasoned with salt, and sweetened with sugar & honey. I also used a few processed ingredients. Cocoa powder for the cake. The California Cabernet Sauvignon. And of course the matzoh. But no ultra-processed ingredients.

As happens with many celebration meals, we all probably ate a little more than we needed but aside from that, the meal was pretty healthy. Three salad appetizers put lots of vegetables on each plate. The haroset is fruit based and I served fresh pineapple with the cake. There was meat for the omnivores and nuts for the plant based folks. Almond meal in the flourless chocolate cake, walnuts in the Spanish salad, and chopped almonds in the haroset.

A spectacular meal! And a taste sensation that generated accolades and praise from my Jewish friends. Delicious. Enjoyable. Worth all the hard work it too to put it on the table.

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You are probably asking now when I’m going to get to pine needles …

The food police love counting nutrients. And counting nutrients is just like counting pine needles. Intensely focusing on pine needles means more that just missing the trees. It means missing the whole forest. The social act of celebrating with friends. The pleasure and enjoyment of really good freshly prepared food. And the traditions and culture that form our tastes and preferences.

Back to counting pine needles. I didn’t use whole wheat matzoh. I roasted a whole chicken intact then ate, enjoyed, and savored the crispy fatty skin. I used honey in one of the salads and added sugar to the cake.

It’s true the matzoh was not whole wheat, but the meal as a whole had plenty of fiber. It’s also true that chicken skin is mostly fat but the meal as a whole had a favorable fatty acid ratio. And I am definitely guilty of using more grams of added sugar than is currently recommended.

But I know something the food police can’t see. I know that food is more than the sum of its nutrient parts. There’s an unintended consequence of focusing solely on nutrients. The food police are so busy counting pine needles they have lost sight of the meal. 

🟢 Roasted Chickpeas. PlantBased. Fatty. Salty. Tasty.


Food addiction has never made sense to my simplistic mind. I know it’s trendy and fashionable but I just don’t get it. For the record, I took The Yale Food Addiction Scale, a series of questions designed specifically to assess signs of addictive-like eating behavior and I passed with flying colors. I love food. And I love to eat. And that’s what qualifies me on the YFAS tells as addicted!

If however there was ever a food that sort of qualified in my mind or my gut as “addictive” it’s those homemade roasted chickpeas pictured above. Lucky for me it’s really time consuming and tedious to make them myself. And lucky for me too that those convenience branded off the shelf products just don’t cut it. My home made beauties just taste so much better.

The ingredient list for my home made version reads – chickpeas, olive oil, salt. That’s as simple and straightforward as you can get.

Marketeers sell the benefits. And benefits are communicated with as many certification stickers as the designer can fit on package. Check out the healthy section of the supermarket and you’ll see a shout out for health claims and authenticity claims on every package of roasted chickpeas. Gluten Free. Grain Free. Nut Free. Vegan. NonGMO, Dairy Free. High Fiber. Plant-based Protein.

Industrial formulators love flavors. So it’s easy to spot a selection of flavor additives on package roasted chickpea products. I’ve noted cane sugar, natural flavor, citric acid, rosemary extract. And for extra pizazz I’ve seen innovative additions like balsamic vinegar and cracked pepper.

The advantage of course to the package product is convenience. Opening a package and gobbling it down is neither time consuming or tedious.

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There are so many certification stickers on some of the brands there’s hardly room for anything else. I’m assuming manufacturers put certifications on their products to promote sales. But have you ever wondered why certifications sell? The question has puzzled me for some time because I’m not attracted by a certification. But I think I may have finally figured out why.

I’m used to food categories and nutrients because I been food obsessed since birth and I used to be a dietitian. Imagine however how different the food world looks if you’ve grown up in a food culture that provided no hands on experience with food or access to nutrition education.

Suppose you don’t already know that a chickpea and a garbanzo bean are two different names for the same plant seed. Or if you’ve never realized that chickpeas can be sold in different stages of processing? Dried, packaged, and minimally processed. Processed and canned with salt. Or ultra-processed, roasted, packaged, and marketed in brightly colored packaged covered with certifications.

I already know that all chickpeas no matter the degree of processing are gluten free, dairy free, nut free, vegan, plant based, and a food source of fiber. For me it’s just common sense. But what I’ve come to appreciate is that there is a sizable number of my fellow Americans who are not as food literate as I am.

🟢 Turkish Yogurt Cake. Tasty. Tart. Sweet.

Here’s a picture of the yogurt cake I baked to celebrate the first day of Spring last year. The recipe comes from a beautiful book of Mediterranean recipes by Claudia Roden. The flavor profile balances tartness from lemon and yogurt against sweetness from cane sugar. This cake doesn’t fit the usual American profile for sweetness despite what looks to be a lot of sugar on the Nutrition Label. And based on the reaction of my guests, it’s okay as a dessert but as my daughter put it “It’s just not a real dessert Mom”.

The recipe is made with a squeaky clean list of ingredients – plain whole milk Greek yogurt, eggs, turbinado sugar, lemon juice, wheat flour, lemon zest. Quality ingredients don’t count for much these days because the primary focus is nutrients or food groups as carriers for nutrient dense composition. Our friendly food police dismisses the yogurt I use on the basis of too many grams of saturated fat. And they dismiss the sweetener on the basis of too many grams of added sugar. So it’s not surprising that food focused people like me have a hard time communicating with nutrient focused food scientists and dietitians who do the research and write the labels.

I always like to make the case that moderation is preferable to excess. But given the austere nutrient focused approach to sugar and “unhealthy” fat recommended by our dietary guidelines, moderation is no healthier than excess. This logic puts both my daughter’s ultra sweet “real dessert” and my yogurt cake with a balance between tart and sweet in the same not-healthy bucket.

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I’m thinking it’s time to redefine healthy and I’m going to start with a couple of common sense observations.

• Food counts. Whole, intact, real, natural, substantial, seasonal, regional, minimally processed, freshly prepared …

• Nutrients count. Cellular nutrients are the nutrient still intact within the cell structure of the food as opposed to nutrients that have been extracted or isolated or manufactured.

• Tradition counts. The yogurt cake honors a traditional eastern Mediterranean formulation. The recipe grew out of a culture that has integrated fermented milk products into the food culture for generations. And naturally fermented yogurt has always been made with whole milk because the industrial technology to process lower fat dairy products was not available.

Our current approach to healthy has been nutrient focused now for almost 50 years. Shifting the balance back to include food is long overdue.

🔴 Naan Pizza. Convenience comes at a cost.


Ingredients count. Those ingredients assembled above are the ones I use when I make naan pizza. It’s really tasty. And it doesn’t take a lot of time to assemble and cook. But sourcing the right ingredients is crucial. From left to right going counter clockwise, here’s what I need to assemble:

Red onion. Easy to pick up in most supermarkets.

Fresh Mozzarella. If you don’t live near a market or grocer that makes fresh mozzarella, you’re out of luck. Unless you’re willing to make your own which I’ve been told is pretty easy to do. I lucked out because both in the city and where I live in the Hudson Valley we have good sources.

Jarred Pesto. Italian industrial manufacturers have done a credible job with this classic olive oil, basil, parmigiana, pine nut mixture. For me at least. The brand I used depends on what the store I shop in carries. I avoid any brand that contains seed oil, natural flavors, flavor extracts, whey, starch, flours. Why avoid seed oil? Because pesto needs to be made with olive oil to taste good.

Marinara Sauce. As with pesto, the brand depends on the store I shop in. I avoid flavor additives of any kind and I look for whole peeled tomatoes instead of tomato purée.

Naan. The best tasting naan I’ve ever used was an artisan product made on a small scale and carried locally when we lived in New York City. Now that we’ve moved to the Hudson valley, I need to make do with what is available. The naan pictured above is an industrially formulated product made with a predictable set of dough conditioners, commodity seed oils, mold inhibitors, cosmetic additives, and extracts. It’s not as chewy or clean tasting as the naan I used to use but it works and it’s available.

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My naan pizza has two things going for it – taste and convenience. Well except for the time I spend sourcing. But I’m a fanatic when it comes to sourcing. If I could find a chewier, freshly baked tradition naan, I’d track it down too. But my choices are limited to what is reasonably available, so I need to compromise and settle for well crated shelf stable product formulated with a couple of cosmetic additives.

Pizza has many positive attributes going for it, but healthy is not one of them. So we’re already in the territory of comparative unhealthiness. I’m not even sure if the low-fat, low sodium versions meet the austere criteria favored by the food police. On the other hand, my naan pizza has a healthier nutrient profile than commodity brands or popular take out offerings. And because I use good quality ingredients which are flavorful in and of themselves, I don’t need to use as much salt.

🟡Taco Tuesday – Authentic taste. My kind of convenience.

I grew up eating Mexican street food. Just one of the many blessings from my California childhood. I do add my own variation now – local heirloom tomatoes in season and a couple of cocktail tomatoes off season. Adding veggies makes it a meal and if my corn tacos were a product I could probably make a healthy meal claim on the label.

The items above are not product placements and this post is not sponsored by any of the brands pictured above. Instead, it’s an acknowledgement that the tools of modern processing have value – convenience and shelf stability. These tools can and often are used to mass produce and market cheap junk and indulgences. But those same tools can be used to help a dedicated home cook like me.

The refried beans are made with pinto beans, water, onions, safflower and/or sunflower oil, garlic, salt, spices – no added flavors, colors, extracts, sugars, or other enhancements. I found other canned refried beans products on the self, even on made with lard which is the traditional fat for Mexican refried beans. But the refried beans I selected had the simplest cleanest list so that’s the one I selected.

The chipotle sauce is imported from Mexico 🇲🇽 and is just the right level of heat for my kind of palate. Chipotle peppers are ripened jalapeño chiles that have been smoked, dried, and ground and they are an integral part of Mexican cooking. 

My best find was those corn tortillas however. I find commodity brands and hard taco unpalatable. Little to no taste and the wrong texture. Some brands even upset my stomach. The tortillas I remember savoring and enjoying were slightly chewy and with a distinctive taste of corn. And the tortillas above taste exactly like the ones I remember. That’s because they are manufactured with corn masa in accordance with nixtamalization – an ancient fermentation method which respects the corn kernel’s cellular structure.

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Convenience counts. Even for a dedicated home cook like me. And with over 70% of the products on the supermarket shelf nowadays classified as ultra-processed, finding a product I like requires a strategy.

So here’s, what I look for – products that meet my taste expectations, are my kind of clean labeled (no flavors, gums, emulsifiers), made with simple recognizable intact ingredients, and save me time. I avoid cosmetic additives because I prefer to do my own seasoning and flavoring. Do I think cosmetic additives are dangerous? Not necessarily, but I’m okay with adhering to the precautionary principle and avoiding them for now.

That’s not how I feel about preservatives however. Why? Because I’m not okay with food poisoning. Or molds. For example, those beautiful corn tortillas don’t contain any chemical preservatives. If they stay on the shelf too long, they get moldy. So I store them in the freezer.

🟢Steel Cut Oats. Warm, chewy, sweet, and healthy.


A bowl of oatmeal made with steel cut oats is one of my favorite breakfasts. Especially appreciated when it’s cold outside and I want something warm inside my gut.

Steel cut oats are the closest version to oats in their whole, unprocessed form. Those unprocessed oats are called oat groats. Making oatmeal with steel cut oats is a time intensive process so it’s understandable why most of my fellow Americans prefer the option of quick cooked oats. But nothing can match the flavor of a well cooked soft, chewy, deliciously nutty consistency bowl of steel cut oatmeal.

The ingredient I use to make a bowl of oatmeal reads clean and un-trafficked: water, steel cut oats, blueberries, strawberries, pecans, turbinado sugar, butter, salt. You can see the pecans if you look closely for brown edges peaking out from time to time between oats and fruits. The ingredients I use are mostly minimally processed except for the culinary processed ingredients – sugar, butter, salt.

In one of those rare moments of consensus what tastes delicious to me actually matches what the friendly food police would allow me to label healthy. Whole Grains, Fruit, Protein (pecans are now protein foods) qualify my bowl of oatmeal as food. And as long as I limit my serving size to one cup, those nutrients of concern (added sugar, sodium, saturated fat) comply with current “healthy” thresholds.

In today’s food marketplace, oatmeals come in different degrees of processing. At one extreme is my bowl of steel cut oatmeal – time consuming to make and labor intensive to source and prep. At the other extreme is off the shelf instant oatmeal – boil in a cup, just add water, no added sugar made with novel or artificial sweeteners, often fortified with folate, and definitively #UPF ultra-processed.

And that brings me to the food matrix and cellular / acellular nutrition.

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The USDA defines “food matrix” as the nutrient and non-nutrient components of foods and their molecular relationships to each other. In other words the food matrix is the cell’s molecular structure.

There’s a complementary concept floating in and out of certain European research studies that focuses on cellular nutrients. The logic goes something like this – nutrients that remain within the cell structure – cellular nutrients – take longer to metabolize and by extension are considered healthier than nutrients that have been extracted then added back in.

Here in the US, both enrichment and fortification are common practice. And both processes require adding isolated nutrients back into a food product. Both are examples of acellular nutrients. Acellular nutrients are rapidly and completely digested in the stomach and small intestines.

Does the body care are whether nutrients arrive in a cellular structure or if these nutrients are acellular? Here in the US, the answer is pretty consistently that it makes no difference. Moreover, folate fortification has good research data to support a clear health benefit.

What can be said with certainty however is that our gut evolved over the millennia to metabolism cellular nutrients, not acellular nutrients.

🟢Green Split Pea Soup. Too much salt.

Winter is soup weather. The colder it get outside, and trust me here in New York’s Hudson Valley it can get pretty chilly, the more I appreciate a bowl of steaming hot soup. Warms me up from the inside out.

My ingredient list is simple. Green split peas, water, mirepoix (onion, carrot, fennel), olive oil, salt. It’s a tradition recipes made from scratch with no assistance from any processed or ultra-processed products so the recipes gets a green 🟢 dot.

I think I just heard someone ask what is a mirepoix? Mirepoix is a French word and it’s the basic flavor enhancement made for much of classic French cuisine. The French version consists of onion, carrot, celery. But the concept is global, infinitely mutable, and every traditional culinary cuisines uses some form of aromatic vegetable flavor base. It’s how cooks and chefs enhanced flavor prior to the industrial food era.

The taste of home made split pea soup can’t be captured in any canned or instant soup I’ve ever tasted. Cleaner. Fresher. More robust fully developed flavors. I’m not a food scientist so I can’t tell you why however. What I do know is the best quality ingredients make the most flavorful soup.

Industrially formulated soups will sometimes use combinations of aromatic vegetables but today it’s also common to use artificial or natural flavors. Industrial processors find it easier and cheaper to pick and choose from the myriad of flavorings now available.

Whether you are an home cook like me or an industrial manufacturer, the problem with soup is the same. Too much salt. Soup is notorious for being high in sodium. My home made version uses less than commercial brands do, but it’s still a lot. And for sure when it comes to using the word “healthy” on a product label, “healthy” is the Kiss of Death ☠️.

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Within our regulatory framework, there are multiple perspectives on how to evaluate salt and health outcomes. The health problem with salt is the relationship between sodium and blood pressure in some people. And the problem with high blood pressure is it can increase the risk for cardiovascular vascular disease. It’s at this point regulatory guidelines can get messy. Using the example of my homemade soup, let’s take a look at just how messy …

❌ The Nutrition Facts Label reflect a high sodium value. High means a cup provided more than 20% of the DV (Daily Value). The Dietary Guidelines has set the value for sodium at 2300mg per day using CDRR (Chronic Disease Risk Reduction) methodology.

✅ The FDA has established a Voluntary Sodium Reduction program for food processors and restaurants. This program evaluates sodium using grams per 100 for shelf stable soup. Without boring you with calculations, my homemade spite pea soup is already below target for all three categories – restaurant, frozen, and shelf stable soups.

It’s a dilemma and a bit of a kerfuffle. Is the food police going to come after me because when I salt to taste, I increase my risk for cardio vascular problems? Or should I get a standing ovation because I’m doing better than most of my fellow Americans because I my split pea soup is homemade?

🟢Walnut, Raisin, Rolled Oat Cookies. Too much sugar.

Cookies are scrumptious little bundles of calorie dense fat and sugar. And yes, there’s no way to argue than a good cookie is nutrient dense. Even a good cookie with made with whole grains and lots of walnuts and raisins like my home baked cookies pictured above.

So my little home baked beauties pictured above don’t stand a chance. I do use good ingredients so the list is NOVA friendly 🟢. The ingredient list includes minimally processed (rolled oats, walnuts, raisins, whole wheat flour, egg), some processed culinary (butter, sugar, salt), and only one ultra-processed (vanilla). But do NOVA friendly ingredients make my cookies nutrient dense?

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) considers a food product healthy if two conditions are met. First there must be a “meaningful amount” of food from at least one of the five food groups. Second, nutrient dense as determined by the amount of sodium, saturated fat, added sugars per serving.

Do my carefully sourced ingredients constitute a “meaningful amount”? No problem here. But that’s also true for a comparable premium branded product. How about those nutrient thresholds? Comparing my cookies by weight to a comparable branded product, both the percentage DVs are virtually the same. Both are equally “unhealthy” and both equally tasty.

Could a manufacturer engineer a “healthy” fat free sugar free oatmeal raisin cookie? Absolutely yes I’m convinced it could be done.  If there’s customer demand for it, food manufacturers will find a way to make it happen by substituting novel or artificial sweeteners for sugar.

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Here’s my take on sugar and sugar substitutes. The best approach is to develop a taste for less sweet things. The next best approach is to be mindful of the options:

• Novel. These are sweeteners derived from natural plant sources. They are called novel because unlike cane sugar they have not been part of our usual American dietary pattern until recently.   Allulose, Monk fruit, Stevia, Agave, and Tagatose are the most common.

• Artificial. These sweeteners are laboratory engineered and manufactured. The list includes Aspartame, Saccharin, Sucralose, and Various Sugar Alcohols.

• Traditional. These are sweeteners we recognize. Besides cane or beet sugar, the list includes honey, dates, maple syrup, molasses.

My personal choice is traditional sweeteners because I like the taste. But I don’t have much of a sweet tooth so I’m not at risk for developing an addiction. And I’m not diabetic.