Tag Archives: healthy

Nutrient-dense thresholds for sodium, saturated fat, added sugars.

🟡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.

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

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.

🟢Green Split Pea Soup. Too much salt.

Winter is soup weather. The colder it get outside, and trust me here in New York’s Hudson Valley it can get pretty chilly, the more I appreciate a bowl of steaming hot soup. Warms me up from the inside out.

My ingredient list is simple. Green split peas, water, mirepoix (onion, carrot, fennel), olive oil, salt. It’s a tradition recipes made from scratch with no assistance from any processed or ultra-processed products so the recipes gets a green 🟢 dot.

I think I just heard someone ask what is a mirepoix? Mirepoix is a French word and it’s the basic flavor enhancement made for much of classic French cuisine. The French version consists of onion, carrot, celery. But the concept is global, infinitely mutable, and every traditional culinary cuisines uses some form of aromatic vegetable flavor base. It’s how cooks and chefs enhanced flavor prior to the industrial food era.

The taste of home made split pea soup can’t be captured in any canned or instant soup I’ve ever tasted. Cleaner. Fresher. More robust fully developed flavors. I’m not a food scientist so I can’t tell you why however. What I do know is the best quality ingredients make the most flavorful soup.

Industrially formulated soups will sometimes use combinations of aromatic vegetables but today it’s also common to use artificial or natural flavors. Industrial processors find it easier and cheaper to pick and choose from the myriad of flavorings now available.

Whether you are an home cook like me or an industrial manufacturer, the problem with soup is the same. Too much salt. Soup is notorious for being high in sodium. My home made version uses less than commercial brands do, but it’s still a lot. And for sure when it comes to using the word “healthy” on a product label, “healthy” is the Kiss of Death ☠️.

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Within our regulatory framework, there are multiple perspectives on how to evaluate salt and health outcomes. The health problem with salt is the relationship between sodium and blood pressure in some people. And the problem with high blood pressure is it can increase the risk for cardiovascular vascular disease. It’s at this point regulatory guidelines can get messy. Using the example of my homemade soup, let’s take a look at just how messy …

❌ The Nutrition Facts Label reflect a high sodium value. High means a cup provided more than 20% of the DV (Daily Value). The Dietary Guidelines has set the value for sodium at 2300mg per day using CDRR (Chronic Disease Risk Reduction) methodology.

✅ The FDA has established a Voluntary Sodium Reduction program for food processors and restaurants. This program evaluates sodium using grams per 100 for shelf stable soup. Without boring you with calculations, my homemade spite pea soup is already below target for all three categories – restaurant, frozen, and shelf stable soups.

It’s a dilemma and a bit of a kerfuffle. Is the food police going to come after me because when I salt to taste, I increase my risk for cardio vascular problems? Or should I get a standing ovation because I’m doing better than most of my fellow Americans because I my split pea soup is homemade?

🟢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.

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

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.

🟢Roasted Cauliflower. Freshly prepared. Salt to taste.

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

And that brings me to cauliflower.

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

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

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

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

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

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

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

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

🔴 Cute. Clean. Tasty. 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.