Morning!
The battle between whole foods and ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is not a new one, though it has gained renewed urgency in a world where your fridge can be stocked entirely with items that have no discernible expiration date, or, if we’re being honest, any real resemblance to food at all.
Today, in what may be the most passive-aggressive food comparison of our time, we’re placing a whole-grain, minimally processed croissant side-by-side with a Twinkie, the poster child of industrialized nutrition, and asking a deceptively simple question:
Is it worth paying more for food that doesn’t outlive you?
CORE
Nutritional Density: An Important Metric
Nutritional density, in clinical terms, is the amount of micronutrients per calorie of food. In less clinical terms: it’s the difference between feeding your cells and feeding your cravings. While it is actually one of the best metrics to measure the quality of a diet, it’s not commonly calculated because it requires a spreadsheet, a PhD (probably), and the willingness do arithmetic for the rest of the day.
Here’s what you need to know:
The higher the nutritional density, the more your body can actually do something useful with what you ate. Lower nutritional density means… well, the opposite.
This is where UPFs, like the Twinkie, collapse under their own engineered perfection. Ultra-processed foods must be consistent, identical in taste, texture, and appearance every single time. Uniformity is non-negotiable when your product needs to survive international shipping and still taste "fresh" in two years. But this refinement process comes at a cost.
To preserve consistency, irregularities must be removed. And in food, irregularities mean nutrients. Vitamins and amino acids are damaged or destroyed by high heat and chemical treatments, all of which are required to make your snack shelf-stable for the apocalypse.
So let’s be clear, your Twinkie is not food. It is a carefully stabilized package of flavor signals and textural engineering.
Whole Foods: Still Flawed, But At Least They’re Honest
Let’s return to the croissant. Not the one from a gas station that comes vacuum-sealed in plastic, but one made with whole grain flour, real butter, honey, and an egg wash. This is not a health food, but it is food.
Here’s what’s different:
Whole grain flour retains the bran, which holds the lion’s share of the grain’s micronutrients, think magnesium, iron, and B vitamins. Refined white flour, by contrast, is stripped of nutrients and fiber. It’s cheap, shelf-stable, and nutritionally bankrupt.
Honey, while often dismissed as “just sugar,” contains over 200 biologically active compounds, flavonoids, antioxidants, and enzymes that white sugar simply does not have. It’s still sugar, yes. But it’s sugar with added benefits, and lots of them.
Butter, maligned for decades, is not a villain. It's not the best source of fat, but not the worst either. It’s also expensive, which is why in UPFs, it’s replaced with palm oil. Cheap and hyper-processed.
So, the croissant might still be an indulgence, but it brings something to the table.
PRODUCE MENTION
OceanElements has what no other product brings to the table. Every mineral you body needs. But it gets better. These minerals are high-absorption and 100% junk-free, meaning your body will be able to use the minerals effectively, and quickly.
Remember that nutritional density from before? Well OceanElements will instantly improve this metric, offering dozens of micronutrients that are readily available for your body.
CORE
What About Fiber?
Now for the controversial character in this story… fiber.
Most people misunderstand fiber. It’s often lumped in with “healthy stuff” and yet, paradoxically, criticized for blocking nutrient absorption. That’s not entirely wrong.
Fiber does bind to minerals like calcium and magnesium, making them harder to
absorb. In fact, 7 ounces of whole grain bread can negate the calcium from a glass of milk. That is not an insignificant drawback. Also, fiber acts like a physical barrier between your small intestine cells (enterocytes) and the food in your bowel. In other words, you won’t be able to absorb the nutrients because the unabsorbable fiber is in the way.
But here’s the twist, fiber can also bind to heavy metals, toxins, and other undesirables, dragging them out of your body like the janitor of the digestive tract. It’s a trade-off. Less mineral absorption, yes, but also reduced systemic toxicity.
So, what’s the verdict on fiber? While there are arguments for both sides, the bottom line is that removing it entirely leads to a thinning of your gut's mucus layer, reduced immune resilience, and eventually, a microbiome that looks like a desert during a water crisis. Yes, there are drawbacks, but they can easily be managed and the benefits far outweigh them.
And wouldn’t you know it, fiber is filtered out of UPFs. Why? Palatability. People prefer white bread to whole grain because it’s softer, sweeter. But palatability is not the same as healthfulness.
But the Labels Look the Same...
This is where nutritional discourse falls apart. Your average TikTok dietitian, probably filmed in the front seat of their car, iced coffee in hand, will gleefully point out that a Twinkie and a whole-grain croissant have similar calories, sugars, and saturated fats. And technically, that’s true.
But nutritional facts panels are legally required to be misleading (kidding… but not really). They reduce complex foods to a few numbers, ignoring the thousands of non-nutritive bioactive compounds that make food food. That honey we mentioned? Again, it has 200+ compounds. White sugar? One.
ENDNOTE
Final Thoughts
If you liked this week’s edition, let us know! We love to hear your feedback and know what you're curious about reading in the future.
Remember to grab your own OceanElements before the end of the day!
Until next week!
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