Tag Archives: nutrients

Nutrients are chemical compounds found in food that the body metabolizes to function properly and maintain health. Macronutrients are needed in large amounts. Micronutrients are needed in smaller amounts.

Food patterns are nutrient dense when prepared with no or little added sugars, saturated fat, sodium. Reference: Dietary Guidelines 2020-2025, Executive Summary, page x.

🔴Classic Cream Wafers • Tastes good to me.


What tastes good to me is not necessarily what most of my fellow Americans like. And I usually avoid #UPF because I prefer the taste of freshly prepared. But I’m okay with  the taste of these crispy wafers with chocolate cream filling. How to explain that anomaly will require some investigation.

The product is clearly and unequivocally ultra-processed. How do I know? Because I counted the number of ingredients and looked for markers. The list reads as follows:  wheat flour, coconut oil, glucose syrup, whey powder (milk), sugar, cocoa processed with alkali, soy flour, chocolate (sugar, chocolate liquor), nonfat dry milk, hazelnuts, leavening (sodium hydrogen carbonate, disodium diphosphate), salt, soy lecithin, barley malt extract, peanut butter, spices, almonds, natural vanilla pods. Yikes!

So why does it taste okay to me? To answer that question I had to take a look at nutrients.

The saturated fat value is more than 20% DV (Daily Value) and is therefore considered high. Saturated fat comes from these two ingredients – the cocoa and the coconut oil. As long as it’s doesn’t upset my stomach, I’m okay with high fat.

As for added sugar, the value is 10% DV and is considered moderate. Personally I don’t find the DV for added sugar useful. My preferred reference point is percent composition by weight. The label tells me there are  5 grams in one serving and a serving weights 32 grams. With those two numbers I can calculate the percent composition by weight. The sugar metric for this product is 16 grams per 100 grams. That means the product is 16% added sugar by weight. Oreo thins, a classic American favorite, has a sugar metric of 41%. In other words, the wafers that taste good to me have a lot less added sugar than an Oreo Thin.

Anomaly solved. I like these wafers in spite of their #UPF status because they don’t upset my gut and they’re not too sweet.

Finally for those of you who relate better to food apps than to words, check out the GoCoCo score. The score for this product is 1/10.

🟢 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. 

🟢 Turkish Yogurt Cake. Tasty. Tart. Sweet.

Here’s a picture of the yogurt cake I baked to celebrate the first day of Spring last year. The recipe comes from a beautiful book of Mediterranean recipes by Claudia Roden. The flavor profile balances tartness from lemon and yogurt against sweetness from cane sugar. This cake doesn’t fit the usual American profile for sweetness despite what looks to be a lot of sugar on the Nutrition Label. And based on the reaction of my guests, it’s okay as a dessert but as my daughter put it “It’s just not a real dessert Mom”.

The recipe is made with a squeaky clean list of ingredients – plain whole milk Greek yogurt, eggs, turbinado sugar, lemon juice, wheat flour, lemon zest. Quality ingredients don’t count for much these days because the primary focus is nutrients or food groups as carriers for nutrient dense composition. Our friendly food police dismisses the yogurt I use on the basis of too many grams of saturated fat. And they dismiss the sweetener on the basis of too many grams of added sugar. So it’s not surprising that food focused people like me have a hard time communicating with nutrient focused food scientists and dietitians who do the research and write the labels.

I always like to make the case that moderation is preferable to excess. But given the austere nutrient focused approach to sugar and “unhealthy” fat recommended by our dietary guidelines, moderation is no healthier than excess. This logic puts both my daughter’s ultra sweet “real dessert” and my yogurt cake with a balance between tart and sweet in the same not-healthy bucket.

VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

I’m thinking it’s time to redefine healthy and I’m going to start with a couple of common sense observations.

• Food counts. Whole, intact, real, natural, substantial, seasonal, regional, minimally processed, freshly prepared …

• Nutrients count. Cellular nutrients are the nutrient still intact within the cell structure of the food as opposed to nutrients that have been extracted or isolated or manufactured.

• Tradition counts. The yogurt cake honors a traditional eastern Mediterranean formulation. The recipe grew out of a culture that has integrated fermented milk products into the food culture for generations. And naturally fermented yogurt has always been made with whole milk because the industrial technology to process lower fat dairy products was not available.

Our current approach to healthy has been nutrient focused now for almost 50 years. Shifting the balance back to include food is long overdue.

🔴 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.

🟢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.

🟡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.