Tag Archives: flavor

Flavor embraces all sensory impression: taste, aroma, texture, memories, experiences. Flavor comes from the ingredient but is interpreted in accordance with our human experiences.

Nature contributes to flavor – soil, terroir, climate, variety / breed.
Food Science contributions to flavor – additives.

🟡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.

🟢Seasonal tomatoes – salt to taste.


Last August, I wrote about how good a single vine ripened tomato tastes when sliced and served with olive oil and some salt. And I used the same picture of some local Hudson Valley tomatoes

The post prompted a caustic comment. A prominent member from the academic activist community who favors legal action again industrial food manufacturers questioned the amount of salt I used. So I backed off and committed to re-checking my calculation. As a result of that comment, I’ve spent the last year honing my salt metrics skills.

I had to wait until August to republish because I needed the complex flavors of a local vine ripened seasonal tomatoes to test what I’ve learned and tomatoes here in the Hudson Valley are only in season during August and September.

Good cooks salt to taste. It’s a tactile sensory skill that develops over time. A vine ripened seasonal tomato needs just enough salt to enhance the complex flavors of the tomato but never so much that those delicate flavors are overwhelmed. Nothing could be easier or simpler or more delicious.

I ran the numbers for a second time and my salt calculation was exactly the same as last year.

That activist academic didn’t believe a plate of tomatoes would need as much salt as my calculations suggested. That’s probably because academics don’t usually cook and if they do cook they don’t usually run numbers on their own recipes. But that’s a discussion for another day.

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

The next question now is how much salt did I actually use? And is that amount “healthy”?

As noted above, I spent many hours over the last year improving my salt metric skills. To standardized my technique, I decided to use MALDON salt. Why Maldon? Because it’s a flake salt that is easy to distribute with my fingers. Several times over the last hear, I weighed out 10 grams of Maldon salt. Then I counted out how many 2-finger pinches I got from each 10 gram weight. Over the course of the year, a pattern emerged. The result? Each of my 2-finger pinches weighs about 250 mg and puts about 100 mg sodium on the plate.

Now let’s take a look at the label posted above. The value listed for sodium is 280 mg. In other words, for each serving of sliced tomato, I used 280 mg sodium / 700 mg salt. That’s a smidgen under three of my 2-finger pinches.

So now we move on to the more challenging question. How “healthy” Is that amount of salt? The current Daily Value for sodium is 2,300 mg and reflects Chronic Disease Risk Reduction (CDRR).

The sodium CDRR represents the lowest level of intake for which there was sufficient strength of evidence to characterize a chronic disease risk reduction. The sodium CDRR, therefore, is the intake above which intake reduction is expected to reduce chronic disease risk within an apparently healthy population.

In other words, if everyone stopped adding salt to food, fewer folks would develop high blood pressure and the population would experience fewer cardiovascular events.

We humans do need a small amount of sodium every day. It’s estimated that need would be met with about 500 mg. But maintaining metabolic function is not why we humans use salt. Like me, most of my fellow Americans use salt because we want to eat food that tastes good. There’s no getting around the cold, hard fact that there’s often a tradeoff between tasty and healthy.

My choice is tasty so I use salt when I cook. But not a lot more. That academic’s caustic comment made me angry at the time but now I’m thankful. Without the motivation, I would not have had the patience for the tedious and time consuming task of counting out 2-finger pinches and weighing out salt batches. Because of his comment, I now feel more confident in my ability to track my own use of salt when I cook.

I’ve also improved my ability to put how I use salt in context. That way the next time the food police comes after me for non-compliance, I can at least put my use of salt in context with other recipes or other packaged food products.

🟢Ratatouille – salt to taste.

The month was August. I was spending the summer in the beautiful university town of Aix-en-Provence and had some time on my hands, so I signed up for cooking lessons with the chef of a local restaurant. The dish our chef prepared that day was ratatouille. Ingredients were seasonal – freshly harvested bell peppers, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, plus garlic, basil, parsley, and olive oil from Provence-Alpes-Cote-D’Azur, the region that produces most French olive oil.

Our chef instructor chopped up the vegetables and tossed them into a pot one handful at a time. Each batch got copious additions of olive oil and salt along with some garlic, parsley, and basil. The aroma of the vegetables as they roasted gently filled the air of that small kitchen and additions of freshly picked basil leaves and garlic sweetened and intensified those aromas. The deliciousness of my first bite has stayed with me to this day. 

How much salt did that chef use? I don’t know. He probably didn’t know. But it was the right amount. Just enough to accent the flavors of the vegetable but not so much that it dominated other flavors.

Salt to taste is not popular among my dietitian colleagues. But it’s how I use salt to this day. Now that I’m a dietitian and have become proficient with nutrition stats, however, I go back and calculate the amount of salt I use. I’ve done this over time so I know I use a moderate amount. Not low. And not high. But somewhere in between towards the lower end of the in between range.

Pictured above is the label I ran for the ratatouille I made last August. The serving size is small because I used 1/2 cup (85g), the FDA reference amount for labeling vegetables.

If I use the FDA 1994 threshold for “healthy”, it’s the Kiss of Death ☠️ for my ratatouille.

If I use the proposed FDA update for “healthy” and if my ratatouille were a product, I could use the word “healthy” 😇 on the label.

If I use the 5% / 20% FDA general guidance – 5% DV or less of a nutrient per serving is considered low / 20% DV or more per serving is considered high – the amount of salt is in between HIGH and LOW.

Unlike my chef instructor in the south of France, I do know how salt I actually used. For each pound of vegetables, I count use about 3 grams salt. That 3 grams of salt in common measure is equivalent to about 1/2 teaspoon table salt or 1 teaspoon flake salt like Diamond Chrystal or Maldon Sea Salt.

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Which group does NOVA put salt in?

Salt belongs in NOVA Group 2. That’s the group of processed culinary ingredients. Other members are ingredients like cane or beet sugar, vinegar, oil, and animal fats like lard, suet, or schmaltz. All are ingredients traditionally used by chefs and home cooks.

Most of my RDN colleagues have dismissed NOVA as unscientific, unworthy of serious attention, and based on limited evidence. I hear their objections and don’t disagree. What my colleagues miss however is the social context. 

NOVA grew out of the cultural matrix of Brazil during the later part of the 20th century. The Brazilian middle class at that time enjoyed freshly prepared meals based on a food culture inspired by mixture of indigenous inhabitants, Portuguese adventurers, and subsequent generations European immigrants. NOVA was triggered by the sudden arrival of our American food culture – industrial formulations of packaged food products which were convenient, tasty, and affordable.

NOVA makes sense to me because it reflects how I learned to cook growing up in my beautiful California and later polishing my culinary skills as a private chef for a couple of years in a suburb just outside of Paris. Using salt is normal when you’re used to cooking every day. And experienced cooks know that what’s needed is the right amount. That’s why experienced cooks salt to taste.

Fast forward to today. Most Americans no longer expect freshly prepared meals every day. And too much sodium has become a major concern. It’s no wonder my colleagues find NOVA to be unreliable. Because NOVA doesn’t use a nutrient focused lens, it provides no insight on sodium reduction.

Who does gets NOVA? It’s home cooks and traditionally minded chefs who love to cook and have been salting to taste since the day they set foot in the kitchen.

🟢Freshly prepared green beans with gremolata.


“How not to eat like an American”. That’s the subtitle for this post. My fellow Americans thrive on innovation, hyper palatability, and convenience. As for me, my interests are traditional, tasty, and I’m okay with the relentless daily grind of home cooked meals. And that takes me to the joys and pleasures of gremolata. 

It’s an herb mixture of parsley, garlic, lemon zest. There are a gazillion variations but the key to success no matter which recipe you choose is to use the freshest best quality ingredients and to adjust proportions to taste. Gremolata is a perfect finish to the early green beans I just picked up at a local farmers market. 

Ingredients for the dish pictured above are: green beans, cherry tomato, vegetable broth*, Gremolata (parsley, garlic, lemon zest), olive oil, Parmigiano, salt.

Fresh minimally processed ingredients are the key to the most flavorful freshly prepared meals. Local green beans are beginning to come in here in the Hudson Valley and those are the best green beans to used for the dish. They are sweet and tender and a joy to eat.

Commodity imports from California or Florida work well in the winter but can never match the delicate flavor of the early summer beans. Green beans will be coming in all summer, but It’s still too early for local tomatoes, so I use cherry tomatoes. To finish off, 100% California extra virgin olive oil, Italian imported Parmigiano, and gremolata.

Why you may ask spend so much money on an Italian import? Because our American Parmesan doesn’t taste the same. Like I said in the beginning, I don’t eat like an American. I spend more on food than the average American, but I economize in other areas like clothing, travel, and entertainment. So I figure that in the long it all evens out.

Besides spending more on the ingredient I like to cook with, there’s one more thing that sets me apart from my fellow Americans. I value the taste of freshly prepared and I’m okay with the NOVA food classification system, the classification system that is not based on nutrients.

I do check nutrients, but only after I’ve assembled the ingredients, prepared the meal, and verified it tastes good to me. Labels are useful because nutrients are important. But there’s is so much more to food than the Nutrition Facts Label can tell me.

I figure it’s an accomplishment however when one of my creations gets a pass. The label above is based on an FDA standard serving size. And the DV (Daily Value) is optimal as per FDA guidelines for both saturated fat and sodium. If my green beans with gremolata were a product I could label it “healthy”.

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Did you notice the star after the vegetable broth* on the ingredient list? The star stands for squishy. And squishy means the product has aspects in common with both traditional processing (NOVA Group 3) and ultra-processing (NOVA Group 4). These “squishy” products can be classified as processed or UPF (ultra-processed) depending on who is doing the classification and how the criteria is interpreted.

I use a packaged vegetable broth for convenience. Making my own is an easy task but it’s an exceeding time consuming process. The broth I use can be classified as UPF because the product lists 12 ingredients, considerable more than the 5 ingredient cut off. This vegetable broth can also be classified as processed because no added flavors or other cosmetic additions are listed. That why it’s a squishy product.

A product that lists 12 ingredients and uses vegetable concentrates would probably not be on the shelf however if the food police moved in for a massive sweep.

🟡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.

Invasive Correctness and Seafood Linguine.

A philosophy of dietary correctness pervades our food environment. But before we get to that…

My kitchen smelled like the sea as I unwrapped the packages and start my preparation. Ingredients in descending order by weight are: hard durum wheat semolina pasta, shrimp, clams, scallops, wine, olive oil, fennel, garlic. All credible ingredients. If I just substituted whole wheat pasta for the hard durum wheat semolina pasta, the recipe would pass the test.

The reason I’m unwilling to make the switch is based on the taste and texture of the pasta. I’ve experimented with whole wheat pasta both domestic and imported brands but the products don’t cook the same way and the finished dish doesn’t taste the same.

This correctness approach requires a binary decision. The argument for ignoring taste, texture, and the Italian tradition in a binary system is because the food component will not pass. And since both sodium and saturated fat are below respective compliant thresholds with the right serving size, it’s a business no-brainer.

What would I advise a client on a labeling strategy? To the independent restaurant managed by a chef owner I would tell them not to bother with nutrition. For a retail provider I would recommend considering a substitution because it’s too complex trying to explain the winner take all approach if the only two options are healthy or not healthy. That’s apparently what many of the global manufacturers of breakfast cereals have done. They’ve reformulate many product substituting whole wheat for refined wheat flour to increase the fiber grams on the label.

But I’m thinking to myself – what a choice!

 VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

A philosophy of dietary correctness pervades our food environment. My seafood linguine isn’t “healthy” because I use durum wheat semolina pasta imported from Italy instead of whole wheat pasta. Despite all other benefits on the plate – variety of seafood, Omega-3 fatty acids, an artful presentation, the taste of deliciousness – the plate fails.

Sitting here in my kitchen and gazing out the window I’m remembering the advantages of one on one counseling sessions. If I were talking to a client right now about the difference between traditional imported hard durum wheat pasta and whole wheat pasta, I could acknowledge the taste difference between the two and we could discuss alternative sources of fiber.

I could describe to my client how the kitchen smells like the sea as I unwrapped the packages and start my preparation. I could encourage my client to be an adventurous cook and share my expertise on buying Little Neck clams and local scallops and why I prefer shrimp harvested in the Gulf or Carolinas compared to commodity farmed shrimp.

I could talk about Italian culture and tradition and the taste and texture differences between an Italian brand of pasta that has been extruded using bronze-cut dyes as opposed to commodity pasta which is manufactured with wheat flour and the more common Teflon dyes. And if the client like the taste of beans or peas or lentils – all excellent sources of intact fiber- we could explore recipes from traditional Italian cooking which include these plant based beauties.

 A labeling approach that reduces benefits and risks down to a single icon like the proposed FDA update or The Kiss Test forces a binary choice. All components need to pass the test and the product or recipe either passes or fails. The plate is either one or the other. Good or Bad. Winner or Loser. Pass or Fail.

It’s not the smartest approach for encouraging people to eat healthier in my humble opinion.

Processed or Ultra-Processed?

photo credit | gourmetmetrics

The best lasagna I ever ate was home made. Even the pasta! 100 grams durum semolina flour and 1 egg, diligently hand mixed, kneaded, then rolled into thin sheets with this cool little pasta machine I brought back from Rome one year. Pelati, canned whole peeled Italian tomatoes, olive oil, some garlic and onion, fresh basil and parsley, gently boiled down into a traditional marinara sauce. Fresh ricotta cheese. A mixture of ground beef and pork browned and seasoned. Layer by layer all that deliciousness was carefully arranged in my pan and baked to perfection in the oven. It was incredibly delicious! 

My home made masterpiece was a spontaneous event. I don’t even remember following a recipe although I had a general idea of ingredients before I set out. But I’ll never do it again. Why? Because the process took one whole day!

When I serve a lasagna these days, my choices are store prepared or store bought off the shelf. I’ve had good lasagnas, but I’ve never found a replacement that matches the taste of that lasagna I made myself. Not at least until recently …

Rao’s Made for Home, the same folks who produce a wicked good Marinara sauce, has gone into the frozen entrée business and one of their offerings is Meat Lasagna. 

Pre-prepared meal entrées are often disappointing because they are ultra-processed formulations of inferior ingredients intended to displace real food. Convenient yes. Delicious no. Never as good as the dish they intent to replace. But hope springs eternal, especially after a year of pandemic isolation, so I decided to give it a try. 

What a pleasant surprise!

What truly amazed me was the quality of the pasta. The taste and consistency of those sheets of lasagna actually reminded me of that lasagna I made by hand. It’s an amazing accomplishment because Rao’s Made for Home lasagna is a manufactured product, so by definition it’s both an industrial formulation and ultra-processed. Or is it ultra-processed?

INGREDIENTS

The ingredient list reads like a recipe for home made lasagna: Italian Whole Peeled Tomatoes (Tomatoes, Salt, Basil Leaf), Ricotta Cheese, (Milk [Whole & Skim], Vinegar, Salt), Pasta (Durum Semolina), Water, Beef, Mozzarella (Pasteurized Part Skim Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes), Pork, Romano Cheese (Pasteurized Cow’s Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes), Onions, Olive Oil, Egg, Salt, Spices, Garlic, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder. 

The ingredients are recognizable. And the label is beyond clean because no additives of any kind are listed. What isn’t on the label is as significant as what is. No modified corn starch, no natural flavor, no carrageenan, no gums. No messy additives to clean up!

The ingredients are top quality. Whole peeled Italian tomatoes are listed instead of tomato paste or purée. Fresh ricotta cheese instead of dry curd cottage cheese. And olive oil instead of canola or soybean oil.

Bronze cut does not appear in the ingredient list but the words can be found on the back of the box on the right panel. “Snuggled between every layer of bronze cut pasta …”. Those words bronze cut pasta are significant and may explain why the Rao’s lasagna reminded me of my hand rolled sheets.

Pasta has been made in Italy since the 13th century, but up until recently it was mixed and cut by hand. Manufacturers today use an industrial process called extrusion. The dough is mixed then forced through a mold or “die” which forms the familiar shapes we find on the grocers shelf: orecchiette, penne, lasagna. Most modern producers coat their dies in Teflon producing a smooth shinny pasta. Using bronze is the traditional method but its use fell out of favor because Teflon is cheaper. 

NUTRITION

Using current nutrient reductionist criteria, lasagna is not a healthy choice. Whether frozen and re-heated, served at the Olive Garden, or prepared at home with hand rolled lasagna sheets and carefully sourced ingredients, lasagna gets classified as “empty calories”. Too many grams of saturated fat and too many milligrams of sodium. 

There are other ways to think about what’s healthy and widen the focus however. Like ingredient quality. Or degree of processing.

TASTE

So why does the Rao’s lasagna remind me of my home made lasagna. Maybe it’s because of the whole peeled tomatoes or the fresh ricotta? Or maybe the bronze cut sheets of lasagna? Or maybe the olive oil? It’s not cold-pressed extra-virgin, but at least the oil is pressed or centrifuged from olives instead of rape seed or soybeans. 

Because taste is 100% subjective, I don’t know if you would like the lasagna as much as I did but two facts are indisputable. The lasagna is made with quality ingredients. And it costs twice as much as its competitors. 

SO IS RAO’S LASAGNA  PROCESSED OR ULTRA-PROCESSED?

There’s an argument to be made for either side. As per this 2019 commentary:  Ultra-processed foods are not ‘real food’. As stated, they are formulations of food substances often modified by chemical processes and then assembled into ready to consume hyper palatable food and drink products using flavours, colours, emulsifiers and a myriad of other cosmetic additives. 

The product is a formulation that is industrially made and mass produced. That’s why the product will taste exactly the same every single time. These are characteristics it has in common with Twinkies, Oreos, and Doritos.

However, the ingredients are real food. I’m being subjective here, but I don’t see the ingredients listed on the label as food substances. Or as Michael Pollan puts it “food-like” substances. Rao’s lasagna uses precisely the ingredients that I would use to make lasagna at home. No additives needed. No flavors, colors, emulsifiers, or any other cosmetic ingredients. Just real food.

I want to classify the product as processed because the taste is clean and the list of ingredients is simple and straightforward. But I can’t ignore the technological sophistication which guarantees that taste will be consistent in every box. So there you have it. Is Rao’s meat lasagna processed or ultra-processed? It all depends …

Bottom line, there are some wrinkles in the NOVA food classification system which will be need to be ironed out.

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?

Can we eat healthy and high fat?

summer flounder | gourmet metrics

summer flounder | gourmet metrics

 

Wednesday is fish night and summer flounder is what I served for supper a couple weeks ago. The piece I picked out weighing about 2/3 pound (300 grams) so at $15 a pound, I paid about $10.

At my table small is beautiful, so a little bit of protein goes a long way. Just the two of us that night and we split the flounder. That piece pictured above was my half. Cooked and ready to serve let’s say about 4 ounces (120 grams) which by American standards is on the skimpy side. But taste wise and protein wise (15 grams) it’s enough for me.

Some of my more zealous colleagues look at flounder as a low calorie / low fat option because the fish is so lean. Not me. Now I love flounder or fluke as some call it because the flesh is so delicate and the taste so subtle, but even this eater has to admit that all by itself flounder tends to be on the bland side.

My way to cook flounder is to pan-fry in olive oil, season with salt, kiss with pepper, finish with whisper of unsalted butter, and serve with a twist of lemon. Delicious but not low fat.

For the rest of the plate, steamed local spinach and farro. Local fresh spinach has plenty of flavor and to my taste at least needs nothing else, not even salt. I added some farro for whole grain carbohydrate but I took the picture before putting it on the plate. We finished off with a salad of finely diced kohlrabi, red Boston lettuce, Napa cabbage, and a couple of hydro-tomatoes dressed with my vinaigrette. And local blueberries for dessert.

The calorie count ran around 650 per person. Not a big meal by American standards but more than enough for us. It was a work night and we prefer not to have a heavy meal before going to bed.

Sounds pretty healthy doesn’t it? Let’s take a look.

Protein. A modest portion. Bonus points for seafood.

Vegetables. 6 different kinds of vegetables, total of 2 cups. Bonus points for dark green.

Fruit. Blueberries, rich in Anthocyanins, 1/2 cup. Bonus points for whole fruit.

Whole Grain. Farro is a wheat (not gluten free) and one of my favorite ancient grains. Bonus points for whole grain.

Fatty Acid Ratio: excellent which means more olive oil and less butter.

Sodium. 780 mg for the meal and 33% DV.

And for added value the meal qualifies as sustainable and affordable. In New York, flounder is local and not currently overfished. And despite the high price per pound, a modest serving size makes the cost manageable.

But there is always that question from the back of the room. How about fat? No problem. I’m a nutrition nerd and I always have the numbers. The percentage is above the recommended cut off which puts my meal into the high fat range. Not a meal for someone who needs to adhere to a low fat regime or who believes only low fat meals are healthy.

And because regulatory compliance is cast in concrete leaving little flexibility for humans to exercise judgment, labeling my meal healthy would be illegal.

It’s what I call healthy versus healthy.

And that’s why, when it comes to my own table, I exercise culinary judgment.

“Judgment is to law as water is to crops. It should not be surprising that law has become brittle, and society along with it.” The Death of Common Sense, Philip K. Howard, 1994