Tag Archives: protein

Protein is a macronutrient. Protein functions as biological cement.

Plant sources of protein include pulses, nuts, seeds, soy. Animal sources include seafood, milk, meat, poultry, eggs. Protein from animal sources is more bio-available for humans than protein from plant sources with the exception of soy.

🟡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.

🔴Boca Burger turns 45 this year.


The Boca Burger has been around since 1979.

That means Boca marks the beginning of an era. During the 1980’s, the dominance of ultra-processing #UPF was established in our American food environment.

A plant based burger is a lot more sophisticated today than it was in 1979. Most plant based burgers however, regardless of the degree of sophistication, are classified as NOVA Group 4 / #UPF.

The Boca I served for dinner the other night consisted of the burger, hamburger bun, shredded lettuce, tomato, mayo. There’s not much controversy over what makes the Boca ultra-processed. Or for that matter what makes the commodity hamburger bun ultra-processed. Both are industrially formulated convenience products manufacturer with markers and processes not available to home cooks. Both products have a lengthy ingredient list. Commodity mayo is also ultra-processed because it usually contains a preservative but I’m okay with food safety. The shredded lettuce and tomato are both minimally processed but these ingredients constitute only about 25% by weight.

The Nutrition Label pictured above reflects the nutrient facts. Note the Daily Value for sodium is well above 20% DV, the FDA guideline for determining a high amount. The protein looks adequate but there may be a case to be made for hyper palatable based on the combination of fat and salt.

So that’s the scoop. Thanks to the Nutrition Facts Label we know my Boca Burger is high in sodium. Using my NOVA lens, it’s easy to see why my Boca Burger qualified as ultraprocessed. In my opinion #UPF is not a reason to avoid the Boca Burger unless …

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

My significant other likes burgers and buns. He’s okay with plant based and that’s why I gave Boca a shot. Keeping a meal in the freezer that can be reheated and served on those days when I don’t have time to cook is handy so I’m always evaluating options.

He was fine with the Boca. My problem with most industrially formulated foods is they are boring – they always taste the same.

But my digestion was not happy. Something in the combination upset my gut.

Just because an additive is safe doesn’t mean the substance sets well in everyone’s gut. My gut is unhappy with one of the substances. Is it the soy protein concentrate? Or perhaps the modified cellulose, the wheat gluten, the hydrolyzed wheat protein, or the natural flavor? Or perhaps it’s simply that my gut is not used to metabolizing substances that only come from time to time?

What ever the reason, it’s still okay to say no thanks. Trusting your gut is just common sense and there’s nothing wrong with good old fashioned common sense.

🟡Would your Great Grandmother Eat an Enchilada?


My great grandmother wouldn’t have a clue what to do with an enchilada. She was born and raised in Maine. She ate baked beans, cornbread, meat, potatoes, salt cod, wheat flour, and molasses. The word enchilada would have been unrecognizable.

Another word that would have no meaning to her is ultra-processed. But I’ll save those comments for later …

I love to talk about why my great grandmother wouldn’t recognize an enchilada because I love to poke fun at Michael Pollan’s ridiculous food rule – Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. 

Thank goodness my great grandmother immigrated to California because I’ve been eating enchiladas all my life. Growing up in California, it’s hard to avoid Mexican food and I developed a taste for good street food early on. Burritos. Tamales. Chile Rellanos. And of course Enchiladas.

The enchilada pictured above is a frozen ready-to-heat meal developed by a manufacturer in California. The owners aren’t Mexican but they’ve focused on the plant based ingredients indigenous to authentic Mexican food. The frozen ready-meal is no match for a good street food vendor but in a pinch when I don’t have time to cook, a little convenience is appreciated.

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

Another one of Michael Pollan’s food rules is – Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients. I count 20 ingredients in the ready-meal pictured above.

And 20 is a lot more than 5.

So I got to thinking about the line of demarcation between processed food and ultraprocessed food. Nutrition professionals and food scientists often disagree on which group a given food product should be placed in. The line of demarcation is especially squishy between Group 3 / Processed and Group 4 / Ultra-Processed. This frozen enchilada is a perfect example.

The ingredient list read as follows: filtered water, organic rice, organic pinto beans, organic corn tortillas (organic white corn, water, trace of lime), organic tomato purée, organic corn, organic onions, organic zucchini, organic bell peppers, organic tofu (filtered water, organic soybeans, magnesium chloride), organic pinto beans, expeller pressed high oleic safflower and/or sunflower oil, organic sweet rice flour, spices, sea salt, organic tapioca starch, olives, organic garlic, organic green chiles, chives.

• The case for UPF / Group 4. The ingredient count adds up to 20. Two of those ingredients can be classified as additives – magnesium chloride and tapioca starch. The product is also pre-prepared and ready to heat.

• The case for Processed / Group 3. The major ingredients are whole recognizable foods like corn kernels, pinto beans, the tortilla – all with the food matrix more or less intact. One of the additives, magnesium chloride, is a sea salt derivative and is used as coagulant for tofu/soybeans. The other, tapioca starch, is a commonly used thickener. Both products are marketed directly to consumers and could therefore be used in a home kitchen.

I call it the UPF kerfuffle. How should we resolve a situation where a single product qualifies for more than one NOVA group?

My solution will not satisfy food scientists and purists. But sometimes life intercedes and although it’s tempting I don’t always have a couple of discretionary hours to think about kerfuffles. So here’s my work around for products like the frozen enchilada that are made with whole intact recognizable components but are formulated with more than 5 ingredient. I put them Group 3 / Processed and think of them as G3>5.

Yes it’s subjective. Yes it’s sort of cheating. But it works. Especially useful when I’m busy and I don’t want to spend precious discretionary time knocking my head against kerfuffles.

Invasive Correctness and Seafood Linguine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW

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

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

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

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

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

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

Processed or Ultra-Processed?

photo credit | gourmetmetrics

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

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

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

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

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

What a pleasant surprise!

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

INGREDIENTS

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

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

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

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

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

NUTRITION

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

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

TASTE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rethinking healthy starts with rethinking nutrients.

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Green Salad with Shrimp | photo credit: gourmetmetrics

Green Salad with Shrimp | photo credit: gourmetmetrics

This year looks to be pivotal for rethinking healthy. At the highest governmental level, the FDA has committed to release new guidelines for label claims. As the FDA commissioner put it earlier this year:

“Healthy” is one claim that we believe is ripe for change … Traditionally, we’ve focused primarily on the nutrients contained in food in considering what is healthy. But people eat foods, not nutrients. This is why we’re asking the important question of whether a modernized definition of “healthy” should go beyond nutrients to better reflect dietary patterns and food groups …

Emphatically my answer is yes.

An FDA mandate for nutrient claims only covers consumer packaged goods. And maybe even restaurant menu labels at some point in the future. But what the FDA decides makes a packaged food healthy permeates the general food ecosystem. When FDA defined healthy in the early 1990s as low fat and low sodium, low fat reigned supreme for a decade.

Nutrients are important. No argument here on that point. As a dietitian and culinary nutritionist, I spent a couple years learning just how important they are. But so is food. And taste. And culture. And tradition. Not to mention enjoyment. So I applaud the decision to acknowledge that food is as much a part of a healthy pattern as nutrients. Defining healthy as the sum of the nutrient parts is called a reductionist perspective.

The problem with a reductionist perspective.

Reducing a food to the sum of its nutrient parts tends to skewer the meaning in a negative direction. Especially when, as was the case in the 1990s, healthy was defined in terms of 4 nutrients to avoid:  sodium, cholesterol, total fat, saturated fat.

Now feast your eyes on my shrimp and greens salad pictured above. Note the variety of vegetables on the plate: a generous handful of arugula, a dark green vegetable, some radicchio, a couple of small tomatoes, and some sliced scallions. The greens make up the bed for those lovely freshly steamed wild caught North Carolina shrimp.

Remember that under the original concept of healthy, food did not count. Well, those pristine steamed shrimp are salty. All shrimp are salty. Shrimp live in the sea and the sea is salty. When healthy was measured by counting milligrams of sodium per 100 grams, shrimp are automatically knocked out.

Remember too under the original concept, palatability did not count. Salads taste better when they are served well dressing, but a couple of tablespoons of fine olive oil and sherry vinegar added too much fat and saturated fat.

In other words, the only way to make this plate healthy under the original concept was to remove the shrimp, hold the vinaigrette, and serve the greens naked.

This reductionist view of healthy did a lot of damage. Is it any wonder so many folks rejected such a austere approach and labeling a food healthy became the kiss of death?

What a difference a couple of decades makes.

A lot has changed since 1994. That’s the year the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act became law and the draconian nutrient content claim for healthy was cast in regulatory cement.

In 2016, The FDA released a preliminary working document indicating their thinking on revising the nutrient criteria for labeling food healthy.

Use of the Term “Healthy” in the Labeling of Human Food Products: Guidance for Industry.

And with the release of the most current Dietary Guidelines in 2015, a healthy pattern took precedence over unhealthy nutrients.

Previous editions of the Dietary Guidelines focused primarily on individual dietary components such as food groups and nutrients. … The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines provides five overarching Guidelines that encourage healthy eating patterns, recognize that individuals will need to make shifts in their food and beverage choices to achieve a healthy pattern, and acknowledge that all segments of our society have a role to play in supporting healthy choices.

So what do these changes mean for my shrimp and greens salad?

Bottom line is that my simple little salad of greens, tomato, shrimp, and vinaigrette just got a whole lot healthier.

Thanks to revised thinking from the FDA, the ratio of saturated to unsaturated fats is now more important than just the grams of saturated fatty acids. Olive oil, although it does contain a significant franction of saturated fatty acids has a stellar ratio of almost 6 to 1.

And thanks to the Dietary Guidelines, the pattern and the whole plate are now important. Food counts and you get bonus points for more fish like shrimp and more dark green vegetables like arugula.

We’re not there yet, but my sense is we may actually be moving in the right direction.

Christmas Dinner 2017

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Pictured above is the center piece of my Christmas meal this year – a roasted rack of pork. You can see from the rib bones that the butcher has employed a presentation technique referred to as “Frenched” and the rack was roasted with the skin on. Those crusty squares you can see on the top are cracklings. They’re delicious. Almost as good as the tender juicy roasted pork.

A center piece needs to be carefully positioned with surroundings to be fully appreciated. Properly selected, the appetizer announces there’s more to come without being too filling or overwhelming. This year, I made an escarole salad with Forelle pear, walnuts, and Parmiggiano dressed with an apple-cider honey vinaigrette dressing. Cooling, refreshing, lightly salted and slightly sweet. A well positioned beginning for what is to come.

Moving on to the main course, let’s consider side dishes. This year, I selected winter greens and baked sweet potatoes. Rapini braised in olive oil and garlic is my dish of choice but not everyone has developed my taste for bitter greens so I always serve steamed green beans along side. I sliced the rack of pork between each rib bone, arranged the pieces on a serving plate with the sweet potato along side accompanied by the two bowls of greens. There was a moment of silent appreciation and then we dug in and I have to admit we did eat well.

To accompany the meal, we offered beer, apple cider, or a red Bordeaux.

The ending of a meal should never in my culinary opinion at least outshine the centerpiece. So I prepared an apple pudding, derived from one of my favorite French desserts – clafouti. And of course a dish of mandarin oranges from my beautiful California. No meal, even a celebration meal like Christmas, is complete for me without some seasonal fresh fruit at the end.

MEAL METRICS

The holliday season is a time for celebrations and my Christmas meal is my celebration of the season. From the beginning salad appetizer to ending piece of fruit, the meal clocks in just a little over 1400 calories.

Like all combination plates, a meal is a mixture of different foods some clearly more healthy than others.

The health promoting aspects of my meal are the abundance of vegetables and fruits (59% plant based by weight), good protein (74 grams), and beneficial fiber (71% Daily Value) from intact sources. On the not so healthy side, we note 21 grams saturated fats, 970 mg sodium, and 18 grams sugar.

Now what I would like to have is an algorithm that would balance the value of the healthy foods against the risks from the not so healthy components and seasonings. My thesis that is in the final analysis, the benefits outweigh the risks. Now I need to find my self algorithm that will do that kind of computation.

Eating more fish is healthy. Finding good fish is hard work.

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That’s what I call a beautiful piece of fresh tuna. Good fat marbling for flavor and nutrition. Drills down to fatty acids including omega-3 fatty acids. Beautiful color. Pan fried with just a little salt and pepper and we’ll be good to go.

My fishmonger assured me it was caught off Montauk point Long Island. And I have no reason to doubt him.  There’s good reason to find folks you trust and buy from them. Yes I know it’s a gut response but I believe it’s the best way to source.

My first experience shopping for fresh fish was the local farmer’s market was in Garches, a suburb outside of Paris. The men did the fishing, wives and daughters did the selling, and my French was good enough to establish myself as a serious customer. I learned how fresh fish smells and tastes. And what it looks like. And I experienced firsthand the value of relationship building.

It’s been a couple of years now that I have been cultivating my relationship with the fishmonger at the farmers market. At one market I buy from the fisherman himself. At the other I buy from the fisherman’s wife. Sometimes they make fun of my curiosity but most of the time I seem to be able to get answers my questions. More important, over the last couple of years that I have been cultivating relationships.

Trust is not something you can build with just any old person or any old supplier. Building a good relationship happens on a personal level. Building trust is important with any person you buy from, but to my way of looking at the world it is especially important to establish trust with the person who sells you fish because there are so many issues out there. Mislabeling. Adulteration. Sustainability. Toxicity. And exactly how long ago was that fish was caught and exactly how has it been handled. I can count on one hand the places I have enough faith in to feel comfortable buying or eating fish.

So during the summer farmer’s market season, Wednesday is fish day and we are eating very well.

Delicious, nutritious, sustainable mussels.

Watermarked(2017-09-13-0536)

If you’ve never cooked mussels before but are willing to try, you get a gold star. So go for it. And trust me, mussels are delicious no matter how you serve them.

A good place to start would be with a mussels and pasta dish for supper this evening. Proportions are for two people. Not hard either once you get the hang of it. Here is what you will need to get started:

  • 1 kg (2 pounds) farm raised mussels, rinsed and sorted
  • 100 ml (1/2 cup) white wine or dry vermouth
  • 40 grams (3 tablespoons) olive oil
  • 70 grams (2 1/2 ounces) linguine, measured dry
  • couple cloves smashed garlic
  • handful chopped parsley

Rinse mussels and check each one, removing any that do not close when tapped. Add dry vermouth or white wine to 3 liter pot, pour in mussels, raise heat to high, cover, and steam mussels until they open. Discard any that do not open. As mussels begin to open, remove the meat from the shell being careful to catch every drop of cooking liquid, a delicious combination of “mussel liquor” and wine. Discard shells.

Meanwhile, start pasta water to boil. Add olive oil to a sauté pan and gentle sweat crushed garlic. Add chopped parsley. Set aside until mussels are cooked and shells discarded. Then add mussels along with the cooking liquid to the olive oil mixture. Add salt to boiling water and cook pasta al dente. Combine with mussels, olive oil, garlic herb mixture, and serve.

Taste always comes first. That’s the delicious part and it’s easy to like these tender little mussels sweet like the sea, steamed in wine, steeped in olive oil, garlic, fresh herbs, and served over linguine.

Some of us are adventurous eaters and some of us just want good taste. And that’s okay. Next step for folks like you is to go out, get yourself some very fresh recently harvested mussels, start cooking up a storm, and have fun.

Some eaters demand transparency and full disclosure. They expect more from the plate and have the patience to dig a little deeper. So here’s an ingredient audit, nutrient analysis, and allergen alert.

Mussels – Mussels grow wild in shallow waters along the east coast from Long Island to Newfoundland and are sustainably farmed in Canada.

The mussels I used for the recipe were farm raised from Prince Edward Island. The mussel seed is collected from the wild, not hatcheries, and mussels are harvested from collector ropes suspended in the ocean. Mussels feed on natural food particles, which are present in the water column and do not require feed. They get all their nourishment naturally, from the pristine ocean waters that surround them while they grow.

My preference is farmed from an environmental perspective and from a convenience perspective. Farmed mussels aren’t muddy or covered in silt and usually don’t have “beards” those pesky little hairy outgrowths found frequently on wild mussels.

Mussels also bring minerals like manganese, selenium, iodine, iron, phosphorus, zinc, magnesium, copper, potassium. Sodium is just part of the total mineral package.  And like all seafood, mussels are a source of omega 3 fatty acids (1 mg per 100 grams cooked).

Linguine – Refined durum wheat slow dried bronze cut imported from Italy. Refined grain has the fiber removed. The linguine is deliciously chewy when cooked al dente, but had I used whole wheat linguine, the fiber count would have been higher.

My pasta amounts are small by American standards. The usual amount of pasta listed in most recipes is 2 ounces (56 grams) per person. The bigger the portion size of pasta, the more calories you put on the plate

Olive Oil – Extra virgin olive oil from trustworthy brand harvest date clearly marked. Use within a year or two of harvest.

Dry Vermouth – Good quality imported vermouth. White wine is a good substitute.

Nutrition Analysis per 1/2 recipe: 520 calories, 25g fat, 470mg sodium, 35g carb, 28g protein.

CONTAINS: SHELLFISH, WHEAT