Breaking food industry news covering major food companies, regulatory updates, labeling changes and developments impacting consumers and manufacturers,
When I saw Justvegantoday.com writing this piece about hidden sugars, I thought — haven’t I written about that before? Yes, severel times it seems. But it’s good to have an annual reminder.
Sugar is hiding everywhere in our food supply, be aware.
“Sugar often masquerades under various aliases, making it even more challenging to identify them in an ingredients list. Common names include fructose, high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, and dozens more. Manufacturers often use these alternative names to disguise the actual amount of sugar they are putting into products,” Justvegantoday.com writes.
The New York Times started the year with a five-day wellness challenge, a series to help you shop for healthier foods.
Fiber One ultraprocessed? Yes, according to the Times.
Day one defines ultra processed foods and gives you a digital game to see how much of what you buy can fit the definition.
Some of the results may surprise you, as I’m sure they were picked to do.
I found out, for example, that Fiber One cereal, my fallback buy when I can’t find Trader Joe’s High Fiber Cereal, is considered ultra processed because of thickening agents and Sucrolose it contains.
How does the series define ultraprocessed?
“Ultraprocessed foods, or UPFs, are commonly defined as products you couldn’t typically make in your own kitchen. They contain ingredients like high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, protein isolates, emulsifiers and artificial flavors, colors and sweeteners. Think chicken nuggets, hot dogs, flavored yogurts, sodas and many breakfast cereals, packaged breads and snack foods,” it states.
The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal (the blog you’re reading right now) drew 69,185 views in 2024, a jump of slightly more than 9,000 from 2023. Not bad for a year in which our attention was mainly focused elsewhere, producing what will likely be our last show for the Evanston 2nd Act Players.
This year, we’re returning this blog back to center stage, so to speak. Expect to see a lot more posts on relevant food topics, along with a lot more on the recipe page everyone loves here.
Our recipe page was the second most visited, after our home page, last year.
We’ll be writing about diet trends, food trends, new food products and more. If there are topics you’d like to see covered, just drop us a line by writing johnnfrank@gmail.com.
Olive oil should be a go-to good fat for any heart patient. Plus it can taste great, I use it not only on salads but on grilled veggies and a host of other dishes, just check my recipe page.
And now there’s more good news, a study has found it can cut the risk of developing dementia.
“Scientists examined data collected over almost three decades on about 93,000 middle-aged adults. At the start of the study, participants were 56 years old on average and had no history of cardiovascular disease, a major risk factor for dementia.
“Every four years, participants completed dietary questionnaires detailing what foods they typically ate and indicating how often they consumed olive oil: no more than once a month; up to 4.5 grams (g), or 1 teaspoon (tsp) daily; between 4.5 and 7 g (1.5 tsp) daily; or more than 7 g daily.
“Compared with people who rarely if ever consumed olive oil, those who got at least 7 g a day were 28 percent less likely to die of dementia-related causes by the end of the study, according to results published in JAMA Network Open.
Beware self-basting turkeys, they are loaded with salt. Always read the nutrition label before buying.
In the post-Covid food retailing environment, however, finding a fresh, low-sodium turkey has been tough. Two mainline supermarkets I went to had only one turkey brand, Jennie-O or Butterball, in freezer and refrigerated cases crammed with high-salt hams. Those turkeys come with self-basting fluids that are loaded with salt.
I finally turned to Whole Foods which thankfully had fresh turkeys, although even those had more salt, 125 mg a serving, than truly fresh turkeys which have about 75 mgs per serving. And I had to pay up, around $3 a pound, for the fresh turkey.
Another issue, stores are no longer carrying low-fat turkey gravy. During and after Covid, supermarkets cut the number of products they carried to simplify their supply chain management, and to increase profits. Low-salt, low-fat and low-sugar items suffered as a result.
Shop carefully this Easter, always read nutrition labels and enjoy a peaceful Sunday dinner.
Happy 2024 everyone! Now that the year-end holidays are out of the way, it’s time to get back to healthy eating. Here’s a tasty recipe to start with, Sheet-Pan Roasted Salmon & Vegetables.
Here are the ingredients with my notes on what to change to cut salt content and help in other ways as well:
1 pound fingerling potatoes, halved lengthwise (red potatoes are better if you’re worried about sugar and diabetes)
2 tablespoons olive oil
5 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
½ teaspoon sea salt (omit this, fish has enough of its own salt)
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 5 to 6-ounce fresh or frozen skinless salmon fillets
2 medium red, yellow and/or orange sweet peppers, cut into rings
2 cups cherry tomatoes
1 ½ cups chopped fresh parsley (1 bunch)
¼ cup pitted kalamata olives, halved (substitute low-salt regular olives to cut salt)
¼ cup finely snipped fresh oregano or 1 Tbsp. dried oregano, crushed
1 lemon
Directions are fairly straight-forward:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Place potatoes in a large bowl. Drizzle with 1 Tbsp. of the oil and sprinkle with garlic and 1/8 tsp. of the salt and black pepper; toss to coat. Transfer to a 15×10-inch baking pan; cover with foil. Roast 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, thaw salmon, if frozen. Combine, in the same bowl, sweet peppers, tomatoes, parsley, olives, oregano and 1/8 tsp. of the salt and black pepper. Drizzle with remaining 1 Tbsp. oil; toss to coat.
Rinse salmon; pat dry. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 tsp. salt and black pepper. Spoon sweet pepper mixture over potatoes and top with salmon. Roast, uncovered, 10 minutes more or just until salmon flakes.
Remove zest from lemon. Squeeze juice from lemon over salmon and vegetables. Sprinkle with zest.
Salmon is great if you’re looking for a substitute for red meat main dishes. It has body and flavor to it, and supposedly some of the good fat we’re supposed to eat.
Most people assume that LDL or bad cholesterol, can only be lowered with medications. That’s not true. We have a lot of control over our LDL levels based upon what we eat, especially the types of fats and the types of carbohydrates we choose.
Saturated fats that come from animal sources (think butter, cheese, the marbling in beef, etc.) help raise LDL. This is why some people that go on a keto diet will see their LDLs go through the roof. On the other hand, unsaturated fats that come primarily from plant-based sources (think olive oil, oils in nuts and seeds, oils in fish, and in avocados etc.) help lower LDL in most people and raise HDL (good) cholesterol while reducing triglycerides – yielding an overall much more favorable cholesterol profile.
Complex carbohydrates (think brown rice, beans, whole fruits and vegetables, etc.) are digested slowly causing small increases in blood sugar and lower insulin levels. Highly processed or simple carbohydrates (think puffed rice cereal, white bread, sugary soda and alcohol, etc.) are digested quickly causing big increases in blood sugar and insulin levels. Insulin is a storage hormone so when it’s floating around in our blood stream it pushes our biochemistry into storage mode.
Artificial intelligence is all the rage these days, with people speculating it will put us all out of work and worse in the not-too-distant future. But like most things tech, the hype right now seems a bit ahead of the reality, at least when it comes to meal planning, says Bon Appetit magazine in a piece headlined, Please Don’t Ask ChatGPT for Diet Advice.
Can Chatgpt give you salmon five ways in one page? I think not, so stick with my recipe page for now.
“With few boundaries around what you can ask the app, users can quickly find themselves flooded with dangerous and completely unvetted dietary advice and potential nutritional misinformation,” notes the article’s author. “When I asked two experts to review and rate a handful of bot-created meal plans for common diets, they noted a couple of major red flags—and none of the plans passed with flying colors… They both agreed: AI-generated dietary information could easily promote disordered eating behaviors.”
The issue is that the A.I. chatgpt is telling you what it thinks you want to hear. In other words, it lies without really knowing what that means. That is the true danger of A.I., in my opinion. Its the ultimate echo chamber right now.
So, do your own meal planning, at least for the next few years. You can start on my recipe page which has lots of low-salt, low-fat, low-sugar meal options.
Sometimes it’s really not difficult to understand why I’ve had two stents in the past 111 years. The foods I always loved the most are the worst for heart health. I started this blog to find other things to eat, but when I see pieces like this, Cardiologists Share The 1 Food They Never (Or Rarely) Eat, I tend to feel very, very hungry.
Fried chicken is on my no-eat list again, after splurging on it during Covid.
The list includes donuts, big, fatty steaks, bacon, bologna and fried chicken! Indeed the only two things on the list that do not make my mouth water are breakfast sausages and margarine.
I grew up taking bologna sandwiches to school almost every day. In college, we would fry it, thinking that meant we were becoming chefs!
During the pandemic, I tended to leave my heart-healthy diet behind, thinking Covid would kill me before heart disease would. I ate a lot more cake and donuts, not to mention fried chicken, which a local supermarket has on special every Monday.
Eating healthy is tough. But it’s time for me to get back to it. My blood pressure rose to unacceptable levels during Covid as I gained weight. I need to drop pounds and get it under control again. Bye, bye fried chicken!!!
We’re approaching mid-February, usually the time of year all those positive New Year’s resolutions start to fade away. How many of you promised to eat healthier this year, making all sorts of elaborate plans on how you’d do that? And now?
Want to eat healthier? Start with small steps, like steaming more veggies for nightly meals.
Maybe you went about it all wrong, reports the Washington Post. “The science of building healthy habits consistently shows that the easier we make something, the more likely we are to succeed,” notes this Post piece. Why do we overthink our plans?
“There’s a value we place in our society in exerting self-control and being in charge,” Wendy Wood, a research psychologist at the University of Southern California and author of “Good Habits, Bad Habits,” told the Post. “Sometimes the easier something feels, it feels like you’re less in control, and it’s less appealing somehow.’’
