Eat Real Food, Even When You Snack
What happens when you apply Michael Pollan’s rules (and a little bit of common sense) to snack food?
When I first started my weight loss and fitness journey, the most common question I got was what diet I was following. I consistently answered that I was following a whole food diet. What was that? Did it mean shopping exclusively at Whole Foods? Did I cut out [fill in a food group]?
None of the above, I answered.
My fundamental approach was to eat real food, with real ingredients. Michael Pollan advocates this ethos, as do Mark Bittman, Alice Waters, Samin Nosrat, and so many others. It’s really quite simple, and completely antithetical to the American way of eating. Our food culture has been driven by convenience and industrial processing since the 1800s, and that has a great deal to do with the explosion of obesity and related health issues over the past 50 years.
As I’ve been writing about this topic in the context of my own journey and my work as a food writer, I can’t help but notice how starkly our culture is stacked against such a mindset. Every message we are given is that food is about calories, nutritional guidance, and flavorings. The thing is everything we are told is wrong and driven by money and convenience.
One of the best examples I’ve seen recently is a comparison of two snack bars. I was given the first, a Nutri-Grain® Apple Cinnamon bar, by an acquaintance at the gym.
It looks great, right? We learn that it has 120 calories right up front, because we are trained to believe that number is the most important metric of nutrition. We are told the bar contains 8 grams of “whole grains” which suggests it is healthy for you. The “Morning Energy” message is punctuated by the sunburst graphic and the light splash behind the Nutri-Grain® logo. So far, the marketing team is working hard to sell us on the supposed benefits of the bar.
Turn the package over, and we encounter different things. First off, we are presented with the nutrition facts, and things get murkier. For the bar’s 37 grams of weight, we start with 3 grams of fat, which sounds great unless you already know that the body uses fat for energy. At 110 milligrams of sodium, we have nearly one milligram for each calorie, which seems a little high for something so small, but then again, salt motivates us to consume. The carbs aren’t terrible at 24 grams, but we don’t know whether they are complex carbohydrates or primarily driven by the 12 grams of sugar. With only 2 grams of protein, however, this bar’s “morning energy” won’t last long.
Flip the flap, and this supposedly health bar starts to look like exactly what it is: an industrial product. There are 42 ingredients in this apple cinnamon breakfast bar, including seven different kinds of sugar. Soybean oil and soy lecithin make this toxic to anyone who has a soy allergy, and the three wheat products make it toxic to an even larger segment of the population. Ingredients like vegetable glycerin, carrageenan, and guar gum have been added for texture, though many food additives are often manufactured from soy and other products and still can affect people with food allergies. Take note, also, that this apple cinnamon bar contains no actual apples, just “apple puree concentrate” which is third behind invert sugar and corn syrup.
Perhaps we should also ask what methylcellulose and soluble corn fiber are doing in something that you’re eating. The quick answer is this: They are there to hold the product together (emulsify it) and to make digestion of the product easier. Specifically, methylcellulose is better known by the brand name Citrucel. It is also used to improve the texture of processed foods, as well as to produce glue, cement mortar, paper, and hair shampoo.
Put simply, this is a product of a factory, not a kitchen, and every ingredient in it has been engineered to create maximum (dare I say, addictive?) flavor, and the vitamins and minerals have been added because they have been stripped from the actual grains this started with.
When I got to work, I pulled another bar out of my bag, an Epic Almond Butter Chocolate Performance Bar. This is, admittedly, a bar designed for athletes and others interested in maximum nutrition in a small package. Though General Mills acquired Epic Provisions in 2016, the company has largely maintained Epic’s focus on whole food production.
This bar’s packaging is no-nonsense, earthy colors without the glossy plastic that will remain in the environment. The two nutritional claims on the front — “Non GMO” and “Cage Free” — are simply descriptions of the ingredients, rather than marketing claims. In fact, unlike the claims on the Nutri-Grain® bar, the non-GMO claim is supported by third-party certification. In other words, this snack doesn’t have to convince the consumer that it is good.
That comparison becomes clearer when you flip the package over. We are told that it has no added sugars and is safe for people with gluten and soy allergies. We are also clearly told that it is “Not a Low Calorie Food,” a simple, direct fact that this thing has actual nutrition and substance. As you might expect for 53 grams per bar compared to 37 grams, the caloric value is higher at 210, as are the fat (3:7), sodium (110:180), and sugars (12:19). It’s in the ratios of carbohydrates (24:25), dietary fiber (1:4), and protein (2:12) where you begin to see the real difference in actual nutrition in the two bars.
When we get to the ingredients, the differences become stark. The Epic bar has six ingredients, each of which is a recognizable food. Eggs and almonds are the potential allergens, with no processed ingredients to raise the allergen danger. In Pollan’s terms, these are ingredients you might find in your pantry and that your grandmother would recognize.
It helps if we put the information in a visual to show the differences in nutritional value.
So, for 42 ingredients, we get a much higher ratio of carbohydrates from corn syrup, fructose, dextrose, and three types of “whole” grains compared to three times as much protein and fiber. In other words, the “Morning Energy” is going to evaporate far more quickly (and potentially cause more gastric distress) than the “Performance Bar.”
The message here is simple: pay attention to what you eat. If nutritional marketing claims are the first thing you see, take a minute to look at the ingredients and ask yourself whether you want to eat chemicals or food.
