It’s hard to believe, but in one recent year, Americans ordered 2.3 billion restaurant servings of chicken nuggets. So when meatless nuggets were put on restaurant menus and grocery store shelves, it caused quite a commotion.

What are these nuggets made of?

Impossible Chicken Nuggets contain 28 ingredients. It’s never a good sign when a "food" is engineered with that much stuff. The top 15 include: water, soy protein concentrate, wheat flour, sunflower oil, soybean oil, cornstarch, and 2% or less of methylcellulose, salt, natural flavors, wheat starch, cultured dextrose, dried onion, dried garlic, dextrose, and food starch modified.

A serving of four nuggets is cholesterol-free (MacDonald’s McNuggets have 25 grams), but they also have 8 more grams of carbs and a few more calories than the drive-thru favorite, and contain the same amount of fat — including saturated fat — as well as almost the same amount of sodium.

Here's a nugget of nutritional advice: Don't think of meatless chicken nuggets or meatless burgers as the last stop on your journey to healthier eating. They are clearly not health-promoting.

We suggest you think of them as a temporary step on your journey to better health — perhaps a way to get used to the idea of eating a plant-based diet.

Even if you don't embrace a vegetarian or vegan diet and go truly meat-free, your plant-based diet can include natural, skinless poultry (not fried or breaded), salmon and other fatty fish, and five-plus servings a day of fruits and vegetables.

That's not impossible, is it?