Tag Archives: GRAINS

Grains are the edible seeds of plants. Whole grains are more nutritious. Refined grains are more shelf stable.

🔴 Twinkies – Don’t sweat the small stuff!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

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

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

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

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

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

🟢 On Passover & Pine Needles.

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

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

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

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

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

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

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

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

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

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

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

🔴 Naan Pizza. Convenience comes at a cost.


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

Red onion. Easy to pick up in most supermarkets.

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

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

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

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

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🟡Grilled Chicken, Red Peppers, Pinto Beans, Pasta. Moderate salt.

Food is complex. Nutrition is wicked hard. Cutting through all those layers is no small feat, but I’m going to give it my best shot.

Americans are used to starting with nutrients. So my first suggestion is to forget nutrients for a moment and focus on the food. Those gorgeous red peppers. The grilled chicken strips. That occasional pinto bean that is peeking out here and there. Or the pasta. The Italians call the pasta “elicodale” which translates into English as spiral shaped and as you can see those deep ridges create a sort of spiral pattern.

The grilled chicken dish is freshly prepared with traditional ingredients. But as noted above, nearly a third of the calories come from ingredients which are classified as ultra-processed – NOVA Group 4 UPF. These ingredients are the grilled chicken, the vegetable broth, and the tomato basil sauce.

These three items are industrially formulated convenience products and all were developed relatively recently. Home cooks like me know that making vegetable broth or red sauce from scratch takes time. And cutting up and grilling chicken breast strips is messy. Scratch cooking tastes better, but life intercedes so I’m okay using industrially formulated products as long as they are made with simple intact ingredients and do not contain flavors, colors, texture modifiers, or acellular nutrients.

The 29% calories UPF noted above is the sum of the calories from the vegetable broth, grilled chicken, and tomato basil sauce. The yellow 🟡 dot means I used ultraprocessed products but each of the products I used are acceptable. To me.

Focusing on food is easy. For those not used to home cooking, it may take some practice but it’s a skill anyone can develop. It just takes practice.

Focusing on nutrients is not easy.  The Nutrition Facts Label can be helpful for assessing the three nutrients that health professionals recommend limiting. As you’ll note from the label above, the sodium percentage stands out from the other Daily Value percentages. Palatability is as important to me as health when I cook at home so I salt to taste. Although I use salt in moderation, the food police will still bang on my head for using too much salt. Compared to the high sodium valued seen in restaurant meals or Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) however, my moderate use looks a lot better.

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

American who pay attention to labels are used to putting nutrients first because that’s the message labels have been reinforcing for the last 50 years. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has been nutrient focused for 5 decades! It wasn’t until December 2024 that a “meaningful amount” of food became a component for using the word “healthy” on food product labels. It’s a positive step however and I applaud the FDA for finally acknowledging that food does count.

🟢Pumpkin Pie. Home baked. Too much sugar?

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.

🟡Actual Veggies Burger. Quickly assembled. Tastes good.


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.

🔴 Cute. Clean. Tasty. Ready to eat.

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

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

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

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

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

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

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

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

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