Category Archives: Probably Healthy

Meaningful amounts of food in nutrient dense forms – low sodium, saturated fat, added sugar.

🟢Roasted Cauliflower – eating more plants

The final meeting of our Dietary Guidelines 2025 Advisory Committee meeting was held this past week. The committee members have again concluded that me and my fellow Americans don’t follow the guidelines and we eat poorly. Not much change since the first set of guidelines was published back in 1980.

And that brings me to cauliflower.

October is a great month for eating more cauliflower. It’s peak season for fall vegetables here in the Hudson Valley and that cauliflower pictured above came from a local farm stand. Local, seasonal cauliflower gets to my farm stand a lot faster than commodity cauliflower grown in California or Texas and I can taste the difference. Cauliflower imports from the west coast are welcome during winter and early spring but it’s October so I always opt for local.

By weight and by calories, roasted cauliflower is made with mostly minimally processed ingredients and therefore deserves a NOVA mostly minimally processed green dot 🟢.

Even better, if my roasted cauliflower were a product I could probably use the word “healthy” on the label. I’m not stingy with olive oil and I salt to taste because I want my vegetables to be irresistibly delicious, so I was pleasantly surprised how good the stats looked for sodium and saturated fat. Nutrition stats are pegged to specific FDA reference amounts (85g for vegetables). That’s the serving size gram amounts you’ll see for example on frozen cauliflower in the freezer case. My serving is about twice a big as the reference amount because I love the taste of my roasted cauliflower. But you better believe that I too would use the smaller serving amount if I were marketing a product and could make a “healthy” nutrient content claim.

Now back to eating more plants. Eating more roasted cauliflower is a delicious way to eat more plants / vegetables. And the guidelines are clear that Americans don’t eat enough vegetables. It’s October and cauliflower is in season so joyfully and with great pleasure, I’m only too happy to comply.

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

As per our current dietary guidelines, a healthy eating pattern is based on nutrient-dense plant-based foods. I applaud the plant-based part of the recommendation, but I do have concerns about the nutrient-dense component. Salting to taste means using just enough salt to highlight the flavors of the food, but never so much that salt overpowers the food. Sometime when I run the stats, sodium falls below the “healthy” threshold and sometimes it doesn’t.

Most of my fellow Americans don’t cook on a regular basis anyway. They depend on the food industry. In many ways, the guidelines are as much about setting limits on the food industry as they are about providing individual Americans with the nutrition facts to make informed decisions.

Here’s the dilemma. The food industry wants to sell us what we enjoy eating which as it stand right now is food products that are high in fat, sugar, salt. The dietary guidelines recommend restricting our choices to food products that are low fat, sugar, salt to reduce the risk of chronic disease development. Something gets lost in the battle between high versus low however. And that something is moderation. And that loss concern me.

🔴Cute. Clean. Tasty. Ultra-Processed?

Consider the corn chips pictured above. No doubt about it, they’re tasty. Even more remarkable, the taste of whole corn is the predominant flavor. That’s the taste of my favorite corn tortillas which are made using a tradition processing method for corn – Nixtamalization. That’s when dried kernels of mature corn are cooked and steeped in an alkaline solution, usually water and calcium hydroxide. The processing makes it easier to grind the corn kernels and results in a characteristic taste. The label makes no mention of nixtamalization, but I do recognize a hint of that familiar flavor.

The ingredient list is simple and reads: organic whole ground corn, organic sunflower and/or organic safflower oil, sea salt, lime oil.

Although the FDA has yet to publish a final rule for using the word “healthy” on food product labels, it’s likely the product would be able to use the word because these corn chips meet the qualifications for another FDA nutrient guideline. As a general guide – 5% DV or less per serving is considered low for the three nutrients of concern – sodium, saturated fat, added sugars. And these corn chips check all three of those boxes.

The product also offers multiple certifications for added reassurance. Late July is a manufacturer with an impressive marketing approach. The chips are certified USDA organic, nonGMO, gluten-free, vegan, kosher, and whole grain. The product is designed to honor all lifestyles and make everybody feel comfortable. It’s a brilliant approach. If everyone at the party can feel comfortable with the same snack food despite allergies or lifestyle preferences, you only need to buy one brand of tortilla chip.

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Personally I have a couple of problems labeling chips of any kind “healthy” based solely on a nutrient profile.

First, I like to scrutinize a product by looking through the NOVA lens. Potato chips and tortilla chips both fall into the NOVA Group 4 bucket. Most tortilla chips are made using an extruded. Extrusion is a process that uses heat and pressure to force food which has been reduced to a slurry or semi-solid state through a specifically designed opening to achieve a desired shape. These chips have a more delicate texture. Perhaps they were rolled into very thin sheets then precut into the familiar triangle shape? They also have a more nuanced taste – as noted above a whisper of niximalized whole corn. Still UPF but suggestive of a kinder gently degree of processing. The ingredient list for the product pictured above contains no “cosmetic” additives. Those are the additives that add flavor, color, sweetness, smoothness thus enhancing taste, appearance, or texture. As a result, the label is remarkably clean.

Second there’s a compositional issue. Folks eat food not nutrients.  Chips are served with dips. What dip will end up on the chip? Then there’s the issue of what foods are being displaced because the eater grazed on chips and dips before sitting down to a plate of food.

What makes more sense to my simplistic mind would be to say these tortilla chips are cute, clean, and very, very tasty. But yes, they are ultra-processed, so don’t spoil your dinner by eating too many, especially if what follows is a freshly prepared meals made with minimally processed ingredients like vegetables and meat or fish.