What are processed foods and why are they bad?
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Lets use an example many of us know and love (sorry to allergy sufferers): Peanut Butter.
Raw, ‘unprocessed’ pure PB (quotes because the nuts had to be shelled and ground) is not the consistency or flavour I grew up with. It is simultaneously grainy and oily. It has instructions to stir well as it settles, and to put in the fridge to help maintain freshness.
Processed PB does not have these qualities. To aid with the runny consistency the healthy Peanut oil is removed and replaced with less healthy and more saturated oils which make it more like a butter than an oily paste. To prevent it from going rancid so quickly salt is added. To temper the saltiness and enhance the flavour sugar is also added. Finally, to prevent the peanut from settling emulsifiers are added.
In sum, a perfectly healthy (and more expensive despite the additives because it doesn’t last as long) variant of a common staple has much of it’s healthy content stripped out and replaced with unhealthy fat, salt, sugar, and artificial ingredients to make a more pleasant, cheaper, and long lasting product for the consumer. Processed.
Nutritional Comparison (per 30g)
|Nutrient|Unprocessed|Processed *(reduced from 33g)*|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Total Fat|14g|14.5g|
|Saturated Fat|2g|3.2g|
|Dietary Fibre|2g|1.8g|
|Sugars|2g|2.7g|
|Protein|8g|6.4g|
|Calories|190|172|
“Processed” means that the things have had stuff done to them (the process is whatever is done to them). Not foods right off the vine or whatever; food that has been treated and changed into something else.
There are a lot of processes that are done to foods, many are quite useful (like pasteurization or homogenization of milk) but the “bad” label of “Processed food” is used for foods that are so treated that they lost nutrients and are so treated by mixing with additives, flavorings, preservatives, salt, and whatever that they are actually bad for you, or at least worse for you than fresh foods.
Overcooking, mixing of poor quality ingredients, adding unneeded and sometimes potentially harmful ingredients (especially sugar and salt) are all “processes” that can make for food that is not very nutritious and even could be bad for your health if eaten frequently.
It turns out that people like food with too much sugar or too much salt, and they like food that doesn’t go bad (so filled with preservatives). It turns out that the human system isn’t designed to deal with lots of salt and sugar or preservatives. So, even though we know that such foods aren’t the best for us, we still love to eat it. We shouldn’t.
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