Eating guide: how (un)healthy are vegetable wraps?

Wraps, aren’t they Mexican?

Not strictly speaking. Here a ‘wrap’ is a soft wheat pancake that you roll around a filling, ‘wraps’ in coal English. But pancakes made from corn or wheat flour are called tortillas in Mexico. Filled they are called ‘tacos’, not wraps. But a knee ear that falls over that.

Are wraps healthy?

That mainly depends on what you fill it with! Nobody eats a bald wrap. But if you only look at the wrap, the nutritional value is somewhere between that of white and (light) brown bread, depending on the brand.

What is most important then?

Dietary fiber and salt. Wraps usually don’t contain a lot of fat or sugar. Most wraps also contain less than 1 percent salt and around 4 percent fiber, even less salt and more fiber than in white bread. Wraps with whole-wheat flour are higher in fiber and therefore slightly healthier: La Morena whole-wheat tortillas contain 8 percent fiber, slightly more than whole-wheat bread (about 7 percent). But if it only says ‘with whole grain’ or ‘multigrain’, the fiber content is less than ordinary wraps.

Isn’t there even more fiber in vegetable wraps?

Maybe a little more than in many ‘regular’ wraps, but they certainly contain less fiber than the whole grain versions. Of all wraps, beet and carrot wraps also contain the most sugars.

But vegetables are very healthy, right?

Correct. It has been proven that minimally processed fresh, frozen and canned vegetables, in addition to fiber, also contain all kinds of healthy substances such as vitamins and minerals. Although the vegetable wraps from No Fairytales of Knorr contain some vegetable puree, juice or pieces, it is questionable whether such processed products contribute to your health in the same way, says the Nutrition Center and nutrition scientist Jaap Seidell. By the way, you get a maximum of 20 grams of vegetables per wrap, about 2 snack tomatoes. Quite little, since the recommended amount of vegetables 250 grams per day. Then it is much better to process more vegetables in the filling: vegetable and wholemeal wraps are also much more expensive.

What is the healthiest wrap?

A (possibly whole grain) wrap that is filled with lots of vegetables and legumes.