Kale Chips, Styrofoam and Michael Pollan: The Problem with Processed Health Foods

I thought I'd hit a healthy-food bonanza in a Big Lots store... crunchy, salty, yummy kale chips, Low in calories and guilt, yet still chips. Luscious chips.

After all, every aspiring foodie knows that unique, good-quality gourmet treats are found in nooks and small corners of certain bargain stores... Ross, Big Lots, Marshall's. (Oh, the Italian-made artisan pastas in Big Lots!) 

The chips were a steal at $2. Goldbaum's multigrain Kale Chips with a Touch of Salt sell for $5 a 3-oz pack on Amazon, and you're forced to buy a case of 12 for $60.  

I snatched up a bag of these guilt-free chips, and rushed home to savor a snack that's:

• Certified gluten-free
• GMO free
• Preservative free
• Trans-fat free
• MSG free 
• Additive free
• Kosher certified
• Baked
• All natural
• Low in sugar

At last! The perfect snack for those who won't sacrifice noshing while trodding the road to better health. 

Problem is... these chips are tasteless. Beyond bland. They have the texture and taste of cheap styrofoam. Or a much-used cardboard box. (These chips are salted? Really?)  

I suppose slathered with heaps of guacamole or a high-calorie dip, the unfortunate mouth-feel of these processed kale chips would disappear.  But that misses the whole point of buying guilt-free chips for snacking. 

Which brings me back to the two premises of author Michael Pollan's seminal "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual."  

• Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.
• Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

Whether intended as "healthy" or who-gives-a-damn delicious, processed food are processed, and not Real Food. Not produce nor meat nor dairy.  Fake foods. 

I was the fool, taken in by the "health halo" effect of pretty, window-free packaging with promises of guilt-free eating pleasure.  And like most supposedly super-healthy processed foods, it tasted horrible. 

"Kale powder" is listed as the 7th of 8 ingredients in these sallow-yellow chips.  No actual kale is shown as used. 

Homemade kale chips are green, made from kale leaves sprinkled with olive oil and salt, then baked until crunchy.  

At least I only paid $2, a small price to relearn Michael Pollan's smart lessons for eating.

As for the chips, I threw them into our rose planters to mix with the aging redwood bark cover. Might do some good there. And I have a hunch the bugs won't eat them, either.  

New Nabisco Triscuits: We Made a Real-Food Dent in Industrial Fake Foods!

Holy healthy foods!!!  They hear us. And they're making  product changes to appease and please us! 

Our Real Food movement is apparently having an impact on at least one  industrial fake-food manufacturing mega-corporation.

Just imagine! A brand-new Nabisco cracker line obviously created to appeal to shoppers looking for products made with real foods, and not concocted with chemicals, additives, fillers, stabilizers, and dozens of fake-food  industrial ingredients.  

I found this box (see at right) in a special display at Stater Bros, a major 167-store grocery chain. Not at a health food store, not some expensive specialty-foods store. A typical chain grocery store, albeit one that does try a bit harder to also stock better-quality fare (expanded organic produce sections, La Brea Bakery breads, a to-go salad bar).  

Mind you... Triscuits are a snack food, and not equivalents of fruits and veggies, which are better food choices.  These crackers are not fortified with vitamins and minerals essential to anyone's health. Nutritionists would still apply the "empty calories" tag to Nabisco's Brown Rice line of Triscuits. (Three sugars are among the ingredients, below.)

But all Americans indulge in snacks. These particular snacks appear to be largely free of the cheapest, nastiest non-food chemicals and fillers, unlike almost all processed snack foods. 

That, alone, would be huge health news. That, alone, is a signal that the Real Food movement is starting to impact the U.S. food supply.

Invoking a "Health Halo" Effect

Per the requisite Nutrition Facts label,  ingredients of Brown Rice Triscuits Baked with Sweet Potato are:

• Long grain brown rice
• Soybean oil
• Whole grain soft white wheat 
• Dried sweet potato
• Onion powder
• Brown sugar
• Sweet potato powder
• Sea salt
• Sugar
• Garlic powder
• Dried molasses
• Dried parsley
• Yeast extract
• Distilled white vinegar
• Citric acid

The ingredients sound appealing, like ingredients you and I might use in our kitchens. Which, of course, is Nabisco's whole marketing point: to invoke a much-desired "health halo" effect for this new Brown Rice line of Triscuits, thereby achieving their sole goal of increasing sales and profits. 

The box of Brown Rice Triscuits Baked with Sweet Potato is festooned with Real Food marketing goodness:

"Triscuits... delicious... real food snacks. Made with delicious real food ingredients."

"We start with 100% WHOLE GRAIN BROWN RICE & WHEAT and bake in real food ingredients such as pieces of delicious golden SWEET POTATOES or savory RED BEANS."

I sheepishly confess... the new cracker tastes terrific, although a tad too salty.  I like the lighter texture and crispier crunch better than traditional Triscuits.  I'm sure the four other flavors available at Stater Bros also taste terrific. Industrial-made snack foods are always engineered to taste absolutely terrific.  

 Is this the entire ingredient list? I don't know. 

Are any of the ingredients laced with chemicals, additives, fillers, stabilizers? I don't know. Probably yes, since the box has no spoilage date and does not indicate "no preservatives."

   
Is this a healthy snack? No, of course not.  Nuts, fruits, veggies, cheeses are far healthier snack choices.  Nutritionists lament "health halo" snacks because they fear that...

"...people eat so much more of the ever-so-slightly less awful, so-called 'better for you' choice that they actually eat more in the way of calories, or salt, or sugar than they would have had they chosen that food's blatantly junky brother." (Source - U.S. News and World Report Health: Why Baked Chips are Worse Than Fried)

As a Real Food advocate, though, I celebrate Nabisco's new Brown Rice product line of Triscuit crackers.   

This new product that sounds seemingly near-free of industrial ingredients means we are that having an impact on industrial fake-food manufacturing mega-corporations... in this instance, Nabisco, which is owned by Kraft Foods, conveniently renamed recently as Mondelez International. 

Making one tiny dent in product formulation strategies for industrial fake-food corporations is cause for celebration. 

Certainly, it's only the very beginning of what will be a long crusade to clean-up the health-shattering morass of U.S. industrial-made foods... but I feel encouraged. They hear us. And they're finally making  product changes to appease and please us!