Roasted Pear Salad Recipe, Spotlight on Pears and Halloumi, plus Another Reason to Avoid Ultra-Processed Foods
Do you love the crispness of autumn and one of the season’s most succulent fruits—pears? Then you’ll love the following recipe, which highlights pears along with one of my favorite cheeses, halloumi. Eating whole foods enhanced with natural ingredients like extra virgin olive oil is a tasty way to get healthy nutrients at every meal. And my dish shows how easy it is to enjoy delicious flavors in just a few steps. Processed foods, on the other hand, might offer greater convenience, but they often come at a cost. I’m sharing the details of a very important report from a group of noted scientists about questionable ingredients in packaged foods that fly under the oversight of the FDA. Though many should probably be considered and called out as additives, an FDA rule allows them to be termed “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, and added to products without scrutiny. It’s another serious situation of buyer beware. I hope you’ll read the summary in its entirety.
Roasted Pear Salad
Roasted Pear SaladAs with pears, roasting red onions brings out their sweetness. Rather than just drizzling them with olive oil and maple syrup, this recipe melds those two ingredients first—it’s my take on the “instant caramel” craze that swept the internet over the summer. Its richness is balanced by the slight saltiness of the halloumi and the bitterness of the greens.
Ingredients
- 5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided use, plus more for drizzling
- 3 tablespoons maple syrup
- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 4 large ripe firm baking pears, like Anjou, Bosc, or Starkrimson
- 1 small red onion
- 8 ounces halloumi
- 4 cups fresh greens
- 16 walnut halves
Directions
Step 1
In a large bowl, vigorously whisk 3 tablespoons olive oil and the maple syrup until they meld and the sauce becomes a rich caramel color, about 3 minutes. Whisk in the salt and set aside.
Step 2
Preheat your oven to 375°F. Cut the pears into halves and use a small spoon or melon baller to scoop out the seeds. Cut each pear half in two. Peel the onion and cut into 8 wedges. Add the pears and onions to the sauce and toss gently to coat. Transfer to a rimmed sheet pan and roast for 30 minutes or until caramelized, flipping over the pears and onions halfway through the roasting.
Step 3
Toward the end of the roasting time, sauté the halloumi. Cut the cheese into 8 sections. Heat a frying pan large enough to hold them. When hot, add the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil and the halloumi pieces. Cook until browned, up to 5 minutes, then flip and repeat.
Step 4
Divide the greens among four plates or bowls. Top with equal amounts of pears, onions, halloumi, and walnuts, then drizzle with the roasting pan juices and a splash of olive oil.
Yields 4 servings
Healthy Ingredient Spotlight
Halloumi
Members of the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club know I’m a huge fan of halloumi (yes, there’s even a video of me grilling it on our Facebook page!). Halloumi not only tastes delicious, but also has the perfect texture for grilling—the mild and slightly briny cheese develops a wonderful smoky flavor while holding its shape.
This cheese, made from sheep’s (and sometimes goat’s) milk, hails from the island nation of Cyprus in the Mediterranean where it is made according to centuries-old tradition. Just as I always shop for true Parmigiano-Reggiano and not “parmesan” cheese, buy true halloumi by looking for the special Protected Designation of Origin or PDO mark that certifies it was made there.
Quick Kitchen Nugget
Choosing Pears
There are many sweet and succulent pears to enjoy throughout the fall. If you tend to reach for Bartletts as a default, it’s time to try varieties like Seckel, Comice, and Concorde pears. While any pear that’s ripe can be eaten raw, when you want to roast, poach, or bake pears for special dishes, do choose the firmer ones that won’t fall apart at hot temperatures—Anjou and Bosc.
If you’ll use them within a few days, keep pears at room temperature. Indeed, they may not be ripe enough to eat when you first get them home because, unlike many other fruits, they must be picked well before they ripen (or else their texture will turn grainy or mushy). If you want to slow the ripening process, keep them in the fridge until 2-3 days before you’ll eat them.
For Your Best Health
Another Reason to Avoid Ultra-Processed Foods
The article “Regulation of Added Substances in the Food Supply by the Food and Drug Administration Human Foods Program,” published in theAmerican Journal of Public Health, details how a legal loophole is allowing unsafe ingredients in US foods. Here is the summary of the findings provided by New York University, where the first author is an associate professor.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is tasked with overseeing the safety of the US food supply, setting requirements for nutrition labeling, working with companies on food recalls, and responding to outbreaks of foodborne illness. But when it comes to additives already in our food and the safety of certain ingredients, the FDA has taken a hands-off approach.
The current FDA process allows the food industry to regulate itself when it comes to thousands of added ingredients—by determining for itself which ingredients should be considered “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS—with companies deciding on their own whether to disclose the ingredients’ use and the underlying safety data to the FDA. As a result, many new substances have been added to our food supply without any government oversight.
“Both the FDA and the public are unaware of how many of these ingredients—which are most commonly found in ultra-processed foods—are in our food supply,” said Jennifer Pomeranz, JD, MPH, associate professor of public health policy and management at New York University School of Global Public Health and the study’s first author.
Since 1958, the FDA has been responsible for evaluating the safety of new chemicals and substances added to foods before they go to market. However, food safety laws distinguish between “food additives” and “GRAS” ingredients. While compounds considered “food additives” must be reviewed and approved by the FDA before they are used in foods, ingredients considered GRAS are exempt from these regulations.
The GRAS designation was initially established for ingredients already found in foods—for instance, vinegar and spices. But under a rule used since 1997, the FDA has allowed the food industry to independently determine which substances fall into this category, including many new substances added to foods. Rather than disclose the new use of these ingredients and the accompanying safety data for FDA review, companies can do their own research to evaluate an ingredient’s safety before going to market, without any notification or sharing of the findings. The FDA suggests—but does not require—that companies voluntarily notify the agency about the use of such substances and their findings, but in practice, many such substances have been added without notification.
In their analysis, the researchers review the history of the FDA’s and industry’s approach around adding these new compounds to foods and identify the lack of any real oversight. This includes a federal court case in 2021 upholding the FDA’s hands-off approach. “Notably, the court did not find that the FDA’s practices on GRAS ingredients support the safety of our food supply,” said Pomeranz. “The court only ruled that the FDA’s practice was not unlawful.”
“As a result of the FDA’s policy, the food industry has been free to ‘self-GRAS’ new substances they wish to add to foods, without notifying FDA or the public,” said senior author Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH, director of the Food is Medicine Institute and distinguished professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “There are now hundreds, if not thousands, of substances added to our foods for which the true safety data are unknown to independent scientists, the government, and the public.”
According to the researchers, the FDA also lacks a formal approach and adequate resources to review those food additives and GRAS substances already on the market. After an ingredient is added to foods, if research later suggests harms, the FDA can review the new data and, if needed, take action to reduce or remove it from foods. In a rare exception, the FDA announced in March that it would be reviewing 21 chemicals found in foods, including several food ingredients—a tiny fraction of the thousands of food additives and GRAS substances used today.
An example of the 21 food additives to be reviewed is potassium bromate, a chemical added to baked goods and drinks with evidence that it may cause cancer. Potassium bromate is banned in Europe, Canada, China, and Japan. California recently passed a law to ban its use, along with three other chemicals, and similar bills have been introduced in Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania. “This is a stark example of the FDA’s regulatory gap,” said Pomeranz. “We’re seeing states starting to act to fill the regulatory void left by the FDA’s inaction over substances increasingly associated with harm.”
The FDA’s oversight of GRAS ingredients on the market is also limited. The agency rarely revokes GRAS designation (an FDA inventory only shows 15 substances that were considered GRAS and then later determined to not be), nor does the FDA review foods on an ongoing basis with GRAS ingredients that can be safe when added at low levels but not in large quantities—for instance, caffeine, salt, and sugar.
“In 1977, the FDA approved caffeine as a GRAS substance for use in sodas at a low level: 0.02%,” said Pomeranz. “But today, caffeine is added to energy drinks at levels far exceeding this, which is causing caffeine-related hospitalizations and even deaths. Given that the FDA regulates the use of GRAS substances, the agency could set limits on the amount of caffeine in energy drinks.”
“The sheer number of GRAS substances and food additives on the market, combined with the lack of knowledge about the existence of self-GRAS ingredients, insufficient resources, and documented time delays even for well-supported action, renders reliance on post-market authority flawed and unreliable to ensure a safe food supply,” said study coauthor Emily Broad Leib, JD, director of Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation and founding director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic. “FDA is only starting to utilize its post-market powers to review a tiny number of ingredients in the food supply, even though evidence of harm has been present for decades.”
The authors’ analysis provides the FDA and Congress with several potential actions to better assess and oversee the safety of both GRAS substances and food additives. This could include introducing a new requirement that companies must publicly notify the FDA of the use of GRAS ingredients, and share their underlying safety data, before they are put in foods; creating a robust review process to reevaluate the safety of GRAS ingredients and food additives once they are already on the market; and clarifying the distinction between GRAS ingredients and food additives.
In order to fund this stronger oversight of the food supply, the researchers suggest that Congress could allocate additional resources to the FDA or establish a user fee program in which food companies pay for the FDA to review the safety of their ingredients before they are added to foods. “Both the FDA and Congress can do more to enable the FDA to meet its mission of ensuring a safe food supply,” said Pomeranz. The National Institutes of Health supported the research.
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