Tag Archives: fibers

Fibers are non-digestible carbohydrates and are plant based. Fiber is most beneficial when it is cellular – intact within the cell structure.

Cooking with fresh minimally processed ingredients is an excellent way to put more fibers on the plate.

🟡Actual Veggies Burger.


Veggie burgers were born during the 1980s. The rational was simple – concentrate or extract the protein component of a plant instead of using muscle meat. Next enhance using texture modifiers, colors, flavors to form a flattened, rounded patty that resembled a ground beef paddy. These original veggie burgers were clearly ultra-processed. 

An alternative method was to use an intact food like black beans or mushrooms. Since I am partial to the intact food approach, I have always favored for black bean version. So when I found a new black bean burger “chef crafted with caramelized onion”, I decided to give Actual Veggies Black Bean Burger a try.

Like every other veggie burger in the freezer unit of an American supermarket, Actual Veggies meet the criteria for an UPF – an industrially formulated mass produced food product with considerably more than 5 ingredients.

There are good reasons to be cautious with UPF. A decade of research, most of which has been done outside the US, has established significant correlation between percentage of ultra processed food products in the dietary pattern and negative health outcomes. On the other hand, avoiding UPF means systematically avoiding convenience products and about 70% of the food currently sold in our supermarkets.

Not an easy decision especially if you’re a working mom or dad and depend on convenience to feed the family. Even tough for folks like me who prefer the taste of freshly prepared but welcome a break from the daily grind of scratch cooking. So the question then becomes, where do we draw the line between acceptable convenience and frivolous indulgence.

The best place to start thinking about making a decision is to start with an ingredient list.

The Actual Veggies burger list reads as follows: Black Bean, Carrot, Parsnip, Oat, Yellow Onion, Red Onion, Red Pepper, Chickpea Flour, Lemon, Spice Blend (Ovata Seed, Kosher Salt, Garlic Powder, Paprika, Chili Powder, Cumin, Black Pepper).

There are no added colors, no added artificial or natural flavors, and no texture modifying agents like xanthan gum or lecithin or methylcellulose. On visual inspection, I can see the black beans are intact and I can see small flecks of red pepper. The rest of those vegetables however have lost their individuality and become part of the puréed mass that holds the burger together.

I do see one “unfamiliar” ingredients I don’t keep in my kitchen cabinet – ovata seed. In fact I’d never heard of ovata seed until I read the ingredient list. Here’s what came back from a Google search. Plantago ovata is a common medicinal plant widely cultivated in tropical regions of the world. The outer seed coat of P. ovata, obtained by cleaning the seeds, contains soluble and insoluble fibre in a ratio of 7:3, making products containing P. ovata husk an ideal source of health-beneficial fibre.

Time savings are significant – I didn’t have to make my own black bean burger or bake my own brioche bun or mix up a batch of home made mayonnaise.

There’s a taste test to follow of course, but in terms of degree of processing, Actual Veggies burger gets a yellow dot. 🟡

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Always important to remember that people eat food not ingredients. That means the burger needs to be all dressed up before I take my first bite or run the numbers. Besides the Actual Veggies, I used an artisan brioche bun from a local Northeast regional baker, some olive oil for frying. I also added a couple slices of tomato, some mayo, and lettuce.

I’m happy to report that my Actual Veggies burger passed my taste test.

The calories clocked in around 400 / 450. Nutrient analysis reflects 11 grams protein (plant based protein for the sustainable crowd), 8 grams dietary fiber, and a serving of vegetables (Actual Veggies, lettuce, tomato).

The sodium does look high and there’s not enough potassium to balance the potassium:sodium ratio. The sodium comes from ultra-processed foods (my brioche bun, the mayo, the Actual Veggie). But honestly, if I had done it all from scratch, the sodium would have roughly comparable.

The CDRR for sodium is 2300mg per day independent of age, gender, or lifestyle. The Advisory Committee DGA2025 meeting #6 this year made a sobering assessment regarding sodium reduction in US dietary patterns. Sodium exceeds 2300mg even when criteria are applied to identify lower nutrient density foods. My reading of that assessment is Americans are going to have to adjust to a No Added Salt dietary pattern to comply with the CDRR. And I’m not sure setting such an austere goal is helpful. Or even attainable without enlisting the food police.

🟡Grilled chicken, kidney beans, red bell peppers – the UPF kerfuffle.

If you’ve never heard of a UPF before, you’re not alone. That acronym stands for Ultra-Processed Food. A recent consumer survey reflected that only 1 in 3 Americans recognize either the acronym or the word so you’d actually be in the majority. Lack of awareness however does not mean you aren’t eating ultra-processed foods every day.

An estimated 50% of the calories Americans consume come from UPF. Should you be concerned? Maybe concerned is too strong a word. Aware is the word I think would be more appropriate.

Why do I want folks to be aware? Because over the last decade an impressive body of epidemiological research conducted outside the US has established a consistent correlation between UPF intake and adverse health outcomes.

Why outside of the United States? Because for well over a decade now, US food manufacturers and most of the nutrition research community have dismissed NOVA, a Brazilian food classification system that divides food into only 4 groups and has driven significant research outside our borders.

Should you stop eating all packaged food products? No. Besides even you tried to stop, you really don’t want to. Removing all ultra-processed foods from the food supply could result in mass starvation. About 70% of the food products found on the shelves of American supermarkets or sold in American fast food chains are currently classified UPF or ultra-processed.

Convenience is what drives UPF and the US has led the rest of the world in the development of convenience food technology. Even for folks like me who love to cook and are privileged with both time and means. But I’m selective about which UPF products end up in my shopping cart and which are left on the shelf. UPFs are not all created equal so I’m always on the look out for a convenience product that tastes as good as freshly prepared.

Pictured above is a home cooked meal using UPFs. The ingredient list is simple and straightforward: red bell peppers, canned kidney beans, pasta, pre-cooked chicken fajita, Jared basil tomato sauce, canned vegetable broth, onion, olive oil, salt.

Now here’s that same ingredient list arranged by NOVA food group:

G1 (minimally processed) – peppers, pasta, onion
G2 (processed culinary) – olive oil, salt
G3 (processed) – canned kidney beans
G4 (ultra-processed) – pre-cooked / pre- packaged chicken fajita, Jared tomato sauce, brick packed vegetable broth.

To make matters more complex, many products don’t fit neatly into a single group. The chicken, tomato sauce, and vegetable broth are considered by most to be NOVA Group 4 food products. They are industrially formulated and contain more than 5 ingredients. However, they are also clean labeled, manufactured with intact ingredients, and contain no added flavors, colors, or texture modifiers.

These three products have attributes from both NOVA Group 3 and NOVA Group 4. So I have grouped them together in a new subgroup which, for lack of a better word, I call NOVEL. I have no research papers to reference and or academic researcher to quote. My decision is purely anecdotal and based my own common sense.

The jarred sauce and vegetable broth are products I use on a regular basis but I probably won’t get the chicken product again. My reason has nothing to do with the product’s UPF status. The chicken puts good protein on the plate but, for me at least, it has no taste. I would get better flavor and texture by adding an extra 30 minutes prep time and sautéing the chicken pieces myself. Can’t say for sure because I haven’t run any numbers, but the final preparation would probably need less salt too. For the dish above, it was my choice of an Italian imported pasta and those gorgeous freshly prepared sautéed red peppers that made the dish work.

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

NOVA was never intended to be a nutrient profiling system. As originally envisioned in 2009, it’s a classification system designed to assess the degree and purpose of food processing. But that omission does not mean nutrients are not important.

The nutrition facts label posted above analyzes my recipe as if it were a food product. As you can see, sodium is high exceeding the DV (Daily Value) by  20%. Too much salt? Perhaps. Certainly too much to permit labeling the dish “healthy”. The amount exceeds the sodium CDRR. That’s the lowest level of intake for which sufficient strength of evidence exists to support Chronic Disease Risk Reduction within a healthy population. It’s a challenging goal for food manufacturers, for restaurants, for home cooks, for consumers, and even for eaters.

🟡Corn tortilla with refried beans

My California childhood was a culinary blessing in so many ways. Like local fruits and vegetables virtually all year long. Or a taste for robust whole wheat bread. Or my appreciate of good Mexican street food.

I gave up on finding good Mexican street food once I moved to the east coast a couple decades ago, but over time it’s gotten easier to source the right ingredients – refried beans, corn tortilla, and Chipolte sauce

Each of the three ingredients pictured above contribute their own unique flavors to what I’ve always loved about the Mexican street food I grew up eating in California. So you may be asking, what’s so special?

The refried beans are made with mashed pinto beans, aromatics, oil, spice, and salt. It’s more authentic to Mexican cooking to use lard but much harder to buy here in the US. Lamorana chipolte sauce is imported from Mexico 🇲🇽 and is just the right level of heat for my kind of Mexican palate.

Best of all are the corn tortillas!  They are made by Vista Hermosa – exactly the taste I remember. That’s because the tortilla is made by following the thousand year old process of Nixtamalization used by the Aztec & Mayans, a traditional processing method which is more respectful of the corn’s food matrix. I don’t buy these corn tortillas because of the certifications – USDA Certified Organic, non-GMO, and Gluten Free. I buy them because they taste like the tortillas I grew up eating. The product is not designed for convenience or shelf stability. These tortillas will go stale or develop mold if they remain in plastic for too long. So I use another kind of processing – freezing – to store any tortillas I haven’t used once the package is opened.

And as you can see by checking the Nutrition Facts Label, one tortilla actually meets the proposed FDA requirements for labeling a food product “healthy” based on the percentages Daily Value for sodium, saturated fat, and sugar. My usual portion is two or more tacos however.

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Now let’s take a look through the NOVA lens.

Most industrially formulated refried beans have relatively clean ingredient lists. Some brands add flavor and most use RBD seed oils like canola or soybean. Expeller pressed oils are refined, blanched, and deodorized (RBD) but are spared hexane extraction. The refried beans pictured above as well as the Chipolte sauce both list more than 5 ingredients.

Commodity corn tortilla brands are formulated with flavors, gums, preservatives. They are shelf stable, mold free, mass produced, wrapped in plastic, and lack a distinctive taste. The corn tortillas I use are not as shelf stable but taste like an authentic corn tortilla.

All three products could be categorized as UPF depending on which qualifiers were selected as the basis for classification. Squishy lines of demarcation make my nutrient focused colleagues go glassy eyed and provide the basis for dismissing the NOVA classification all together as unscientific.

But I have a better idea.

Modern food manufacturing technology is amazing especially in combination with microbiology. All three products pictured above use modern food processing technology to reinvent traditional methods.

So whether these 3 products are considered Group 3 / processed or Group 4 / ultra-processed, I’m okay with all three. I like to think of products like these as reinvention. Using modern food technology but following and replicating traditional methods and tastes. Sort of like reinventing the wheel.

Spring Salad – a picture is worth 1000 labels.

Take a look at the picture above and ask yourself this question.

Which is better evidence of healthfulness – the picture of the salad or the Nutrition Facts Label? But before we get to that …

During the summer I make lots of salads. And all my salads tend to follow the same basic pattern – a variety of crunchy raw greens, some protein, and some canned or home cooked beans.  This is actually the salad I prepared when a fellow dietitian came to lunch a couple weeks ago. Delicious and refreshing and just right for a casual get together on one of those lovely almost warn spring Hudson Valley days.

This salad was made with mostly minimally processed fresh vegetables – escarole, radicchio, arugula, avocado, tomato – and a couple of freshly boiled eggs. I used traditionally processed canned chickpeas and canned tuna whereas the olive oil, vinegar, and salt are culinary processed. Only the small amount of Dijon mustard I used to emulsify the salad dressing and a couple of marinated baby artichokes qualify as ultra-processed. A super NOVA friendly salad!

I served the salad as the main dish and I figure we each ate about 2 to 3 Cups, the amount reflected in the label.

All my salads failed the original thresholds established by the FDA for fat, saturated fat, and sodium back in 1994. This time around, however, the saturated fat assessment depends on the protein food source.

Salads like the one pictured above made with seafood and eggs catch a break when it comes to counting saturated fat grams so my salad benefits from the addition of both canned tuna and hard boiled eggs.

The sodium thresholds have also been relaxed. So I’m happy to report that my salad is co,pliant and will pass the nutrient component as long as the correct reference amount is used for labeling purposes.

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

The last time I ran numbers on my own recipes was about 15 years ago. I never finished the project because I got so angry. None of my recipes met the low fat / saturated fat, or low sodium thresholds required for compliance. So I resigned myself early on to being a dietitian who loved vegetables and whole grains and fresh fruits but choose not to eat “healthy”.

This time around I’m finding more recipes pass the Kiss of Death Test.

But the Nutrition Facts Label has left its mark. Many ordinary Americans think more about nutrients than they do about food. It’s taken me almost 30 years to wrap my head the significance of what my study of nutrition really means but I think I may have finally figured a few things out.

Over the last 4 decades, food has evolved from something familiar and tangible that we make at home in our kitchens into a product that is manufactured, packaged, labeled, and sold. As the label has become increasingly important in determining “healthfulness”, so has our collective  reliance on experts for interpretation.

I am concerned that many of my fellow Americans put more trust in a label than they do in their own ability to make a decision for themselves.

Split Pea Soup – enjoyment is essential.

Expecting food to taste good is a legitimate expectation and guidelines for eating healthy need to acknowledge the legitimacy of this expectation. But before we get to that …

It’s the middle of May here in New York’s Hudson Valley but there’s still enough chill in the air to justify a bowl hot steaming soup. Probably the last batch of the season however so when this pot is gone, no more soup until October or November.

Making my own means I decide which ingredients to use – extra virgin olive oil, lots of aromatics, and the right amount of salt for palatability. I wish one of the commercial manufacturers would come up with a way to make soup the way I like it. Current soup brands use too much salt and brands that market low salt versions are bland.

Nothing comes for free and soup making is time consuming – lots of chopping and prep work – not to mention the hour or two it takes to slowly soften those dry little green half sized peas plus putting the soup through my food mill, portioning it out, and freezing the units.

That’s why I wish I had a better option. But I don’t …

All my soups are NOVA friendly because they are all freshly prepared with minimally processed and culinary processed ingredients. Listed in descending order by weight, the ingredients are water, green split peas, onion, carrot, fennel, olive oil, parsley, salt.

Despite all the quality ingredients, the soups fails the test.

Why you maybe asking? Too much salt.

I’m a bit of a contrarian dietitian here because first I make the soup that tastes good to me, then I go back and run the numbers to determine the stats. The label posted above is based on a generous cup, a little more that the reference amount of 245 grams. Usually home cooking is an excellent strategy for reducing dietary sodium. There are exceptions however and the most notable exception is soup.

My soups are not nearly as high as commercial brands which have almost twice as much sodium. And that is why, for me at least, commercial brands taste much too salty.

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Palatable is a loaded word.

My fellow dietitians prefer to use words like nutrient-dense and healthy dietary patterns.

On the other side of the binary divide, cooks, chefs, food manufacturers, and eaters talk a lot about good tasting food. These folks may not actually use the word palatable but there is all round expectation that food should taste good.

Healthy is important, but enjoyment is essential. So even when I use all the tricks in the usual dietitian’s healthy eating playbook and it’s not enough, I say to myself, palatable beats healthy and it’s okay to break the rules.

Yikes! My favorite cookies have no nutrition facts label!

photo credit | gourmetmetrics

photo credit | gourmetmetrics.

Pictured above are my favorite oatmeal raisin cookies. Let’s call them the next best thing to freshly baked. Each little package is processed for local distribution with a list of ingredients but, on closer examination, you’ll notice something is missing.

All manufacturers are required to label products. But only some manufacturers are required to add nutrition facts. When a package of cookies like this one is sold without a nutrition facts label, it means the production batch is small.

So I started thinking, do I really need to know the nutrition stats for these very tasty cookies?

We already know cookies are calorie dense. Most cookies are 400 to 500 calories per 100 grams / 110 to 140 calories per ounce. I weighed the cookies from the package pictured above. The results – a serving size of one cookie (about 45 grams / 1.5 ounces) clocks in at 200 calories plus / minus 50.

We already know cookies are indulgent. The basic formulation is always the same no matter if the cookies are freshly baked with your grandmother’s recipe or turned out in massive numbers using industrial processing and technology. That formulation is flour, sugar, and fat. Most folks don’t need a label to tell them cookies are high in fat and sugar and calorie dense.

We always have an ingredient list. The cookies pictured above are made from organic wheat flour, brown sugar, butter, raisins, oats, eggs, salt, vanilla extract, baking powder, baking soda. It’s a clean list of quality ingredients with oats being a good source of fibers. Butter instead of less expensive palm or canola oil. Brown sugar instead of dextrose or high fructose corn syrup. No gums or emulsifiers to improve the texture. No preservatives to keep the cookies shelf stable for years so eat quickly or store in the freezer. 

So you see there’s a lot we can do using common sense and an ingredient list. Our nutrition facts label serves manufacturers and analysts well, but it’s not consumer friendly. Most countries have experimented with various formats, symbols, graphics but, in my observation at least, no one has found an optimal approach. I like to think of nutritional labeling as a work in progress. In the meantime, a little common sense goes a long way.

Cute and tasty and ultra-processed?

photo credit | gourmetmetrics

photo credit | gourmetmetrics

Pictured above is one package of Mild Green Mojo Multigrain Tortilla Chips and a couple of little Mojos. Not being a chip person, I’m not a good judge on how Mojos compare to the competition, but one of my best friends who speaks from years of chip experience has confided that the chips are good verging on addictive.

I do agree the Mojos are tasty. When I take the first bite, corn predominates. Very nice. Makes sense too because corn is the main ingredient. After the distinctly corn taste comes a cheesy somewhat salty taste. Definitely salty, but not so salty that other flavors are over powered. I’m okay with a couple of Mojos, however, I seem to be immune to what ever causes my friend’s addictive behavior.

INGREDIENT LIST

The ingredient statement lists each substance by name in descending order by weight and here’s what I found when I turned the package over. Note that parenthesis and brackets indicate sub-ingredients. I’ve also added asterisks to mark an ingredient as separate from any sub ingredients.

Ingredients: *organic ground whole corn, *organic expeller pressed sunflower oil and/or organic expeller pressed safflower oil, *organic brown rice, *organic chia seeds, *organic grain & seed blend (organic flax, organic millet, organic brown rice, organic quinoa, organic amaranth), *Late July organic mild green mojo seasoning (salt, organic green pepper powder, organic parsley powder, organic sour cream powder [organic cream, organic whey powder, lactic acid, cultures, salt], organic cheese powder [organic cheddar cheese, organic whey powder, lactic acid, disodium phosphate, cheese cultures, non-animal enzymes], organic whey powder, organic evaporated cane sugar, organic jalapeno powder, organic lime juice powder [organic lime juice, organic maltodextrin, mixed tocopherols], organic garlic powder, organic onion powder), *organic evaporated cane sugar.

That’s a lengthy list of substances most of which you won’t find in my kitchen cabinet. Note too that the word count is 114 even though the ingredient count is only seven. Many of those 114 words are repetitions. The word organic appears 29 times; the word powdered 11 times.

Both seed & grain blend and chia look to be intact but the other ingredients have all been pulverized or dehydrated.

DEGREE & PURPOSE OF PROCESSING

As my colleagues who work in the food industry love to remind me, humans have always processed their food. And they are of course spot on.

What is worth taking a closer look at however is the degree and purpose of the processing.

Making a chip takes some pretty sophisticated technology. First the ingredients are powdered, pulverized, dehydrated, and deconstructed. The industrial process is fascinating to watch. It’s easy and free to check one of the many videos available on UTube that gives you a visual of how a chip gets made.

Nutrients survive processing and are listed on the nutrition label but the food matrix has been shattered. In other words, the corn, green pepper, cheese, sour cream listed on the ingredient statement are unrecognizable.

Marketing the chips takes some pretty sophisticated technology too. Just take a look at that beautifully designed bag. Color is two vibrant shades of environment green with yellow lettering to highlight those intact seeds and grains. A work of art that has been hermetically sealed to ensure crispness and protect from intruders. Each bag sits seductively on the shelf patiently waiting for indulgence to happen.

I would say the Mojos are a outstanding example of a well crafted ultra-processed product. Would others agree? I don’t know. The concept has not been reduced to a consistent set metrics we can measure yet.

ARE ULTRA-PROCESSED PRODUCTS BAD?

The answer to that question depends of course on who you ask.

My position is to remain neutral but to ask lots of questions. How does all the grinding and pulverizing effect metabolism? Are we really just eating pre-digested food? Why am I satisfied with a handful of Mojos but my friend can’t put the bag down? And, most basic of all, what set of metrics should we use to decide what is ultra-processed and what is not?

Rethinking healthy starts with rethinking nutrients.

Leave a reply

 

Green Salad with Shrimp | photo credit: gourmetmetrics

Green Salad with Shrimp | photo credit: gourmetmetrics

This year looks to be pivotal for rethinking healthy. At the highest governmental level, the FDA has committed to release new guidelines for label claims. As the FDA commissioner put it earlier this year:

“Healthy” is one claim that we believe is ripe for change … Traditionally, we’ve focused primarily on the nutrients contained in food in considering what is healthy. But people eat foods, not nutrients. This is why we’re asking the important question of whether a modernized definition of “healthy” should go beyond nutrients to better reflect dietary patterns and food groups …

Emphatically my answer is yes.

An FDA mandate for nutrient claims only covers consumer packaged goods. And maybe even restaurant menu labels at some point in the future. But what the FDA decides makes a packaged food healthy permeates the general food ecosystem. When FDA defined healthy in the early 1990s as low fat and low sodium, low fat reigned supreme for a decade.

Nutrients are important. No argument here on that point. As a dietitian and culinary nutritionist, I spent a couple years learning just how important they are. But so is food. And taste. And culture. And tradition. Not to mention enjoyment. So I applaud the decision to acknowledge that food is as much a part of a healthy pattern as nutrients. Defining healthy as the sum of the nutrient parts is called a reductionist perspective.

The problem with a reductionist perspective.

Reducing a food to the sum of its nutrient parts tends to skewer the meaning in a negative direction. Especially when, as was the case in the 1990s, healthy was defined in terms of 4 nutrients to avoid:  sodium, cholesterol, total fat, saturated fat.

Now feast your eyes on my shrimp and greens salad pictured above. Note the variety of vegetables on the plate: a generous handful of arugula, a dark green vegetable, some radicchio, a couple of small tomatoes, and some sliced scallions. The greens make up the bed for those lovely freshly steamed wild caught North Carolina shrimp.

Remember that under the original concept of healthy, food did not count. Well, those pristine steamed shrimp are salty. All shrimp are salty. Shrimp live in the sea and the sea is salty. When healthy was measured by counting milligrams of sodium per 100 grams, shrimp are automatically knocked out.

Remember too under the original concept, palatability did not count. Salads taste better when they are served well dressing, but a couple of tablespoons of fine olive oil and sherry vinegar added too much fat and saturated fat.

In other words, the only way to make this plate healthy under the original concept was to remove the shrimp, hold the vinaigrette, and serve the greens naked.

This reductionist view of healthy did a lot of damage. Is it any wonder so many folks rejected such a austere approach and labeling a food healthy became the kiss of death?

What a difference a couple of decades makes.

A lot has changed since 1994. That’s the year the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act became law and the draconian nutrient content claim for healthy was cast in regulatory cement.

In 2016, The FDA released a preliminary working document indicating their thinking on revising the nutrient criteria for labeling food healthy.

Use of the Term “Healthy” in the Labeling of Human Food Products: Guidance for Industry.

And with the release of the most current Dietary Guidelines in 2015, a healthy pattern took precedence over unhealthy nutrients.

Previous editions of the Dietary Guidelines focused primarily on individual dietary components such as food groups and nutrients. … The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines provides five overarching Guidelines that encourage healthy eating patterns, recognize that individuals will need to make shifts in their food and beverage choices to achieve a healthy pattern, and acknowledge that all segments of our society have a role to play in supporting healthy choices.

So what do these changes mean for my shrimp and greens salad?

Bottom line is that my simple little salad of greens, tomato, shrimp, and vinaigrette just got a whole lot healthier.

Thanks to revised thinking from the FDA, the ratio of saturated to unsaturated fats is now more important than just the grams of saturated fatty acids. Olive oil, although it does contain a significant franction of saturated fatty acids has a stellar ratio of almost 6 to 1.

And thanks to the Dietary Guidelines, the pattern and the whole plate are now important. Food counts and you get bonus points for more fish like shrimp and more dark green vegetables like arugula.

We’re not there yet, but my sense is we may actually be moving in the right direction.

Looks like the French are up to mischief again …

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Something happened in France at the end of last year.

The French government officially endorsed Nutri-Score on October 31, 2017 and that beautifully designed 5 color graphic pictured above because the official voluntary front of the package scoring system in France.

Why voluntary? Because France as a member of the European common market is not allowed to mandate a food label. However, several large French food manufacturers have already agreed to start using Nutri Score and a couple of enterprising young French entrepreneurs have already launched an app that reads barcodes and scores products.

Americans are used to French influence. Think French restaurants. Or Bordeaux wine and Brie cheese. Or Jacques Pépin. And most Americans are familiar with French food. We suspect the French eat perhaps a little more butter and cheese than most of us think is healthy. And we may also suspect the French have a more casual approach to food that allows for enjoyment without guilt. But I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say that consumer package labeling is not the usual place one looks to for French inspiration.

Besides, why look to France when we have our own version of a front of the package label.  Ever notice those little boxes with numbers and percentages on the front of packaged foods as you’re walking down a supermarket aisle? Sometimes there is just one box. Usually there are four boxes. Sometimes up to six boxes. Here’s what our Facts Up Front label looks like

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The first box always lists calories per serving. The next three boxes provide information on nutrients to limit in the diet: saturated fat, sodium, and sugars. Subsequent boxes if they appear are used for nutrients to encourage.

The two systems reflect two very different approaches to the same problem. One isn’t necessarily easier or better than the other. A shopper who wants to choose healthier packaged items can succeed with either system. But because the approaches are so different, I decided to compare the two, detail those differences, and share my discoveries with you.

  1. The French system is color coded. Facts Up Front is not. So let’s say right up front that the color range makes the label more intuitive. Dark green indicates a healthier choice. A lighter shade of green and oranges in the middle. At the end, a deep reddish orange to indicate not so healthy choices.
  2. The French system is weight based. Facts Up Front is portion sized based. Our American system works well for comparing two brand of potato chips or whether or a portion of potato chips with a portion of an energy bar. The French system is based on a consistent weight and helps consumers compare calorie density and percentage weight. For example potato chips usually are 500 or more calories per 100 grams whereas most granola bars are closer to 400 calories per 100 grams.
  3. The French system sums up multiple nutrient numbers and presents the consumer with a single color coded score. Our American system puts 4 or more discrete values on the front of the package and it’s up to us put a picture together.
  4. The French system scores food groups. Our American system scores only nutrients. The combined weight of fruits, vegetables, legumes, or nuts is summed as a percentage of the total weight. The higher the percentage, the more points a product earns. Our American system focuses exclusively on nutrients, more specifically the nutrients to limit or avoid. There is a place for nutrients to encourage like fiber or protein or potassium, no mechanism for scoring a food group.

So there you have my run down of the differences. The best labeling strategy of course is that strategy that works for you and most folks tend to like the strategy they are used to. So most Americans will feel more comfortable with out American portion sized system and most French people will feel more comfortable with the French weight based system.

As for me I’m intrigued with the concept of including food groups in the scoring algorithm. Especially if those foods are intact whole foods. Fascinating idea and one worthy of more thought …

Let’s see if I can count the added sugars in my jam.

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Pictured above is one of my favorite jams. Lingonberry Jam. The berries grow in Sweden and this jam is imported from Sweden. It’s not too sweet and that’s why I like it so much.

With sugars rapidly replacing fats as the nutrient of the day to avoid, lots of folks are paying more attention to how many sugars are added to whatever they eat. So I thought I’d try to figure out how many grams were in my jam.

Currently as per the FDA, manufacturers will need to add a line item on the nutrition fact label indicating how many sugars in their product have been added. But for now we’re on our own. So let’s take a look

First I checked the ingredient list.

Lingonberries (48%), sugar, water, and fruit pectin. Ingredients must be listed by weight in descending order, so the list tells me that the manufacturer used more lingonberries than sugar, water, or pectin. But I still don’t know what fraction of the sugars come from added sugar and what fraction comes from natural sugars in the lingonberries.

Then I tried to find a food composition table for lingonberries.

Lingonberries grow wild in the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest, as well as Canada, Sweden, and Finland. I’ve never tasted a raw wild lingonberry but from what I can tell based on a couple of internet searches, these tiny, round berries are a distant relative of cranberries and share the same bitter flavor.

Checking my favorite food composition database, I actually found a reference to raw, low bush cranberry or lingonberry listed under American Indian /Alaska Native Foods. The record is incomplete. Carbohydrates are listed but no detail is given on how many are sugars or complex carbohydrates and dietary fibers. It’s a safe assumption to assume the number of natural sugars is pretty low just like the natural sugars in a cranberry but I still don’t have the number of added sugar grams.

Then I looked for a lingonberry jam recipe.

I’m sure recipes exist in Swedish but I can’t read Swedish. So I tried a substitution. It’s my understanding that red currants are similar to lingonberries so I set out to find a recipe for red currant jam. I want a European source because I need a weight based recipe. I have a good collection of French books and checked Conserves Familiales by Henrietta Lasnet de Lanty. Confiture de groseilles: 700 grammes de sucre par kilo de groseilles. In English: 700 grams sugar and 1 kilogram red currants. Those proportions correspond to the Swedish label which listed lingonberries first, sugar second.

But after all this I still don’t have the number of added sugar grams.

So the answer to the question is no. I can’t calculate the grams of added sugar in my jam without having the proportions used by the manufacturer.

Okay, I can’t do it. But I do know this. There is less sugar than fruit. The last thing I checked was the USDA Standard Reference food composition table. I pulled up about two dozen berry jams. Most of these branded jams list sugar first and fruit second.

And here’s my take away.

We may not be able to calculate the actual grams of added sugar until the manufacturer updates the label in 2018. But I do know what I need to look for on the ingredient list. Fruit listed first and sugars in any form listed second.