In my previous post, I graded the first two days of the Healthier Eating Challenge published in the New York Times. The challenge is mainly about eating less ultraprocessed foods. As a Food Science professor in my former life, I graded it using basic Food Science principles. The two major problems I have with the first two days of the challenge were the two major premises: (1) that a not-ultraprocessed food with a similar level of fat, salt, or sugar is clearly healthier than its ultraprocessed counterpart, and (2) we can determine the richness a food’s flavor by merely sniffing it.  Needless to say, the author of the challenge would not have been pleased taking her grades home to her parents. Let’s see if she does better on the last three days of the challenge.

Day Three: For Healthy Snacks You Actually Crave, Try a Sprinkle of ‘Flavor Dust’

The premise of Day Two of the challenge was that ultraprocessed products were not really as flavorful as not ultraprocessed foods. We apparently just gulp down the ultraprocessed items without really enjoying them. The writer contacts chefs Evelyn Garcia and Henry Lu of famed Houston restaurant, Jun, as well as New York City chef Kwame Onwuachi at Tatiana in New York City. In this challenge we are urged to sprinkle two types of ‘flavor dust’ on fresh popped popcorn and two other types on mixed nuts as designed by acclaimed chefs.

The ingredients for Snacky-spice ‘flavor dust’ include sugar and selected spices (black pepper, chili flakes, cinnamon, coriander, cumin, fenugreek), and sea salt. Flaming Hot Cheese dust consists of Parmesan cheese, cayenne pepper, chili pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, and sea salt. Before sprinkling on the hot-cheese dust we should coat the fresh-popped corn with melted butter or olive oil spray. When consumed in modest amounts, neither dust should contribute to excess salt or sugar consumption. Be careful of the amount of melted butter, though, as it may contribute fat to the popcorn. Also, make sure that the olive oil spread does not contain the ultra-ingredient dimethyl silicone or you may be turning a ‘healthy’ concoction into an unhealthy one!

Turning to the flavor dusts for nuts, we are introduced to a House Spice and a Plantain Spice. Ingredients in the House Spice include cayenne pepper, granulated garlic and onion, ground black pepper, Hungarian paprika, kosher salt, and Worcestershire Powder. I don’t have most of these ingredients in my spice collection, but I am pleased that they are available on Amazon.com. The Plantain Spice dust adds confectioners’ sugar, Caribbean curry powder, ground cumin, and more kosher salt to the aforementioned House Spice.

It’s great that we can spice up simple popcorn and nuts to be more flavorful. All four flavor dusts promise dynamic alternatives to these whole foods. I am sure that they are enticing selections. I was surprised to find one recipe incorporating both cinnamon and cumin. I would have thought the two ingredients would clash with each other, but I am a home cook and not a chef. I defer to their expertise. As a home cook who opts for convenience, preparing these flavor dusts seems like too much work, when there are readily available in the supermarket. Besides I carefully watch the salt, sugar, and fat in my diet.

It is nice that we can find recipes for flavor dust to enhance the appeal of fresh-popped popcorn and mixed nuts. I am sure that all of these recipes deliver pop to these blander whole foods. BUT, in Day Two of the challenge we were told that ultraprocessed foods are really not all that flavorful and designed merely to make us eat more food. If we really believed that, then why do we need to dress not-ultraprocessed foods up with flavor dust? Is making healthy snacks more flavorful a way of getting around the appeal of ultraprocessed products? And aren’t we supposed to enjoy a whole foods diet rather than ‘crave’ foods when we dress them up?  I thought that hyperpalatability was the whole idea for abandoning ultraprocessed products as consumption of them could lead to a food addiction. Also note, that spices are toxic at higher levels than normally consumed, more toxic than most ultra-ingredients added to foods. If either of these two dusts are particularly enticing, however, we could be exceeding safe levels of fat, sugar, salt, and selected spices when popping too many handfuls into our mouths. Remember it is the dose that makes the poison, and who can stop at just one delicious mouthful?  

I give the writer of the challenge credit for coming up with the concept of adding flavor to otherwise bland foods that are not ultraprocessed. Product designers in the food industry are tasked with a similar mission to improve the flavor of ultraprocessed foods. Isn’t this challenge to provide healthier alternatives to ultraprocessed foods? And yet, this exercise is encouraging us to add fat (melted butter or olive oil), salt (kosher), and sugar (cane?) to improve the flavor. That is exactly what we accuse Big Food of doing for foisting large amounts of fat, salt and sugar even if they are approved culinary ingredients (NOVA Group 2) and NOT ultra-ingredients (NOVA Group 4). That is the crux of the debate between pro- and anti-UPFers.

• Do food additives approved by regulatory agencies around the world contribute to more chronic disease in the country than excess salt, sugar, and fat? and
• Do not-ultraprocessed foods with added fat, salt, and sugar healthier than ultraprocessed products with or without added fat, salt, and sugar?

I give the Day Three challenge a grade of C+ for creativity, but I can’t go higher for falling into the same trap as Big Food in enhancing the hyperpalatability of their products.   

 

Day Four: How to Grocery Shop Like a Nutrition Scientist

The writer of the challenge goes grocery shopping with Dr. Marion Nestle to get her perspective on buying healthy food.

In full transparency, I admit that Dr. Nestle is not my favorite Nutrition Scientist! I have seen five movies in which she was a featured attraction, and I have read at least five of her books. When she talks actual nutrition, we are in agreement about 90% of the time. When she talks about food and food composition is where we have major disagreements. I particularly took issue with a comment she made in Unsavory Truth where she described my profession as

“The purpose of food science is to support the food industry by training students for jobs in the industry and by conducting research to support industry goals and practices.”

I have never made statements about other fields of study on a university campus, and certainly not about the fields of Nutrition or Dietetics. My research primarily focused on handling of fresh fruits and vegetables from field to market as well as on the mechanism of chilling injury of susceptible fresh fruits and vegetables. But, I digress.

Dr.  Nestle encourages her shopping companion to first focus on ingredients. She points out that many of those ingredients are not immediately recognizable, those ultra-ingredients I mentioned in my analysis of Day One of the Challenge. Dr. Nestle points out that fewer ingredients mean less processing. Some of those hard-to-pronounce names are vitamins, and the ingredient statement will identify them as such.  Many frozen foods have ‘real’ foods and they are acceptable to Dr. Nestle. She further states “One rule I have is never to eat anything artificial.” The writer then brings in Dr. Mattei from the Harvard School of Public Health who urges us to ignore terms like ‘healthy,’ ‘natural,’ and ‘plant based’ on the label as these products could also contain ingredients that make them ultraprocessed.

There was little I could disagree with in this day of challenge. Aside from the comment of not fewer ingredients meaning less processing and not eating any artificial ingredients, this day seemed the best of the challenge so far. I was pleasantly surprised at the Day Four Challenge. Grade B+.

Day Five: One Change to Eat Healthier All Year Around 

The last day of the challenge was a summary of lessons learned on the previous days and some practical advice of how to eat healthier. First, we should add more fruits and vegetables to our plates, a few at a time and find ways to eliminate some of the less healthy items. Next, we are advised not to avoid ultraprocessed foods but focus on nutrient dense foods (high in nutrients and low in calories). Finally, Dr. Kevin Hall, the lead investigator of the widely cited NIH study comparing an ultraprocessed diet with one not ultraprocessed, emphasizes importance of the overall profile and not the individual foods. For example, he suggests that you “pair your chicken tenders with greens.” The advice given on the last day of the challenge sounds so easy, but it is so difficult to maintain for days, weeks, and the remainder of our lifetime! I like the practicality, but I sill have trouble with the dramatic contrast with the first three days of the challenge. Grade A-.

Take home lessons include

Ultraprocessed foods are not about food processing but about molecules with unpronounceable names, or ultra-ingredients, added to manufactured foods in small amounts. Fat, salt, and sugar are acceptable ingredients, and their presence doesn’t qualify a food as ultraprocessed.

Therefore, I pose the following questions:

1. Are food additives with unpronounceable scientific names responsible for the dramatic increases in diet-related chronic diseases in the USA while ignoring contributions of the elephants in the room—alcohol, fat, salt, and sugar?
2. Are not-ultraprocessed foods with similar levels of added fat, salt, and/or sugar really healthier than corresponding ultraprocessed products?
3. By dressing up perfectly acceptable whole foods with spices, fat, salt and sugar, aren’t we doing what many of us accuse Big Food of doing when designing and manufacturing ultraprocessed products?

The biggest problem I have with ultraprocessed foods is that most of them contain too much fat, salt, or sugar. I do not think that these items should be banned, but I do think we should restrict their role in our personal dietary patterns. I firmly believe that decreasing consumption of food high in saturated fat, salt, and sugar is a goal more worthy of attention in developing healthy dietary patterns than focusing on a poorly defined category of ultraprocessed foods. Grade for the entire challenge C+.

 

Coming soon: Distilling down the Report of the Dietary Guidelines Committee