Tag Archives: FreshlyPrepared

Freshly prepared is what happens in kitchens, commissaries, restaurants, and cafeterias when we cook from scratch. The results can and do vary because the food is cooked by humans. Modern food processing technology enables the mass production of products that taste exactly the same.

🟢Pumpkin Pie – the taste of added sugars

The aroma that fills my kitchen when I’m baking a pumpkin pie lingers even after the pie comes out of the oven. It’s a sweet, voluptuous, and earthy aroma that fills the room and lifts my spirits.

There’s nothing new about humans enjoying sweetness. Industrially refined sugar cane is relatively new addition but all civilizations have had a preferred source – honey, molasses, jaggery, dried fruit, maple syrup. That’s why sugar is classified as NOVA Group 2 Culinary Processed. Industrially refined sugar is a traditional sweetener that is part of our food environment.

Since I’m a traditional cook, it makes sense that the ingredients for my pumpkin pie are simple and traditional: the pie crust (whole wheat flour, olive oil, whole milk plain yogurt, salt); the pie filling (canned pumpkin, turbinado sugar, milk, egg, butter, vanilla, spices). The only ingredient that falls into Group 4 is vanilla extract so I’m giving my pumpkin pie a green 🟢 for NOVA compliance.

And since I’m a dietitian, I also take a peek through the nutrient lens. This view presents a darker picture. Assuming the pie makes 6 servings, the percentage Daily Value reflect too much fat and way too much sugar. That added sugar percentage jumps out and smacks you in the face – 29 grams / 58% DV!

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Added Sugar has been a line item on our Nutrition Facts Label since 2016. Percentage Daily Value (%DV) has been part of the labeling process however since 1994. A Daily Value for a nutrient is based on nutrition research and scientific evidence which does change over time. The DV on our labels can be updated to reflect new research. But this updating process is incredibly cumbersome and moves at a notoriously slow pace.

There are two way to interpret what a %DV means.  On an item by item basis. Or in the context of the whole day.

As per the FDA, a consumer should use %DV to determine if a serving of the food is high or low in an individual nutrient – 5% DV or less is low and 20% DV or more is high. Food manufacturers like the item by item basis. That’s the current marketing strategy behind sugar substitutes. Banners for SUGAR FREE and NO ADDED SUGAR are proliferating. Manufacturers are using various combinations of novel and artificial sweeteners to reduce the %DV for added sugar on CPG labels.

My preference however, especially for sweets, is the other interpretation. I favor setting the percentage in the context of a whole day. If you don’t eat much sugar at breakfast, lunch, or snack time, having a piece of my pumpkin pie for dessert looks much better. That percentage (58%)  is significantly under what is recommended for the whole day.

🟢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.

🟡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.

🟢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.

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.