Sneaky snack attacks

Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, January 17, 2025

“My favorite snack would have to be Fritos, no doubt about it. Fritos and mayonnaise. I know. Really healthy, isn’t it?” — Sylvester Stallone

Sometimes, when I see a bag of Fritos, I find myself just reaching for it.

Listen, I rationalize, they’re old school (1961, but actually 1932), have three ingredients, an incredible crunch factor and register under five on EWG’s 1-10 food scores for overall consumer safety. Environmental Working Group, an excellent resource, provides an abundance of info on what’s good and harmful to your health, including the “Dirty Dozen (foods),” “Clean Fifteen (foods),” Tap Water Database, and substantial information on skin and cleaning products.

So, classic Fritos are not the worst offenders in the world. But since I recently put myself on chip-alert, I am revisiting a few of the themes Fritos Corn Chips present and looping in the broader category of UPF’s (ultra-processed foods). UPFs are sneaky and exist virtually everywhere, from snack and prepared foods to “healthy” versions of these, to vegan and gluten-free items, as well.

What are they? Typically, UPFs are industrially manufactured, refined, high in salt or sugar, have lots of ingredients (some unrecognizable) and contain processed oils and starches. If an apple is 100% unprocessed, store-bought apple pie is generally considered ultra-processed. In thinking about the typical grocery store, and maybe even a typical natural foods store, about 75% of it could be considered ultra-processed.

Slowly these foods have begun to feel normal to us; and, because they prey on our cravings for sugar, salt and fat, we are slow to relinquish them or even be alarmed at their increasing appropriation of grocery store real estate.

So, if you take your bag of three-ingredient Fritos and examine it, what you are really getting, besides massive amounts of salt, is GMO corn and those controversial seed oils. On the salt front, a nine-ounce bag would pretty much cover your salt needs for 24 hours. And though sodium chloride is important for numerous bodily functions, when it is hidden away in UPFs as part of the tastiness of a product, salt intake can drastically increase. Generally, it is agreed that high salt intake corresponds much more with ultra-processed food intake than with adding salt to home-cooked food. Too much salt negatively impacts blood pressure and the stomach, among other things.

Corn? Sensitivities to this grain are considered by many to be on the rise. Though the whole food can be healthy, most of the corn grown in the US — our biggest agricultural crop — is genetically modified to be more resilient or cost-effective. And our exceedingly high consumption of industrially raised corn has less to do with the whole food and more to do with its derivatives: corn oil, corn starch, cornmeal, and high fructose corn syrup, which are some of UPFs’ star players.

“Our entire diet has been colonized by this one plant,” Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, told National Public Radio in 2003. And that was 20 years ago.

The seed oil controversy (soybean, corn, sunflower, canola, peanut) is a similar one. Seed oils, themselves ultra-processed, work their way into so many UPFs that, where they might have once been considered benign, they now really leverage our overall consumption of UPFs.

What can we do to tame the UPF habit? Sneak a carrot, celery stalk or other whole vegetable into the mix at least once a day, because whole-food, high-fiber additions matter most. When craving sugar or salt, drink a glass of water, then reassess the craving. Eat more clean protein in the form of tofu, eggs, lean meats, fish, beans, nuts and seeds. Read the labels on purchases and reassess this bizarre notion of industrially processed “food.” Google “flavor dust recipes” for ideas on spice blends you can add to healthier home-made snack mixes. The idea is to crowd out foods your body would be better off without by replacing them with healthier choices.

While scanning for Frito lore and odd ideas that have taken hold — Frito pie, chili served in a bag of Fritos — I stumbled on this recipe for no-bake sweet-and-salty Frito bars. With only four ingredients, these “crowd pleasers” consist of a bag of Fritos, a cup of sugar, a cup of corn syrup and a cup of peanut butter. Spread out the chips in a baking pan, melt the goo and pour it on top, refrigerate, and cut into squares. High in salt, sugar, and corn at its worst. But I can see why people would love it!

I’m not here to dis my (and Stallone’s) favorite deep-fried extruded corn meal. But I am saying that if Fritos aren’t that great with just three ingredients, consider all the other more complicated products — fresh off the conveyor belt — that you ingest, and maybe start integrating those one-ingredient snacks into the mix. Your body will thank you for it.