what exactly does “processed food” mean? Why are they so unhealthy? Are there any processed foods that are considered healthy to a regular diet?

Question

what exactly does “processed food” mean? Why are they so unhealthy? Are there any processed foods that are considered healthy to a regular diet?

In: 8

Answer 1

Processed food generally means anything that’s been altered from its original state. So if you find a prepackaged guacamole in the grocery store, it’s been processed.

The processing itself isn’t generally harmful in most cases, but rather the preservatives inside of them. See, when you process a food, it tends to go bad much faster than it can be sold. Think of when you make guacamole at home. It starts to brown and look unappealing, and then only lasts about 3-5 days if you’re lucky.

A lot of these preservatives aren’t well studied, and a lot of people who reduce the amount of these foods in their diet report feeling better or having better blood work.

Even the ones that are well studied can be problematic. Salt is one of the oldest, well used preservatives on the market. However, the amount of salt that needs to be used to preserve a product is a disproportionate amount of your daily diet.

Take a can of classic spam, for instance. A single serving (1/6 of a can) contains about 30% of your daily need of salt. Which means, should you eat one can a day, you’d get almost double your daily amount of salt. Excess salt is known to cause high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke.

Now assuming you don’t eat a whole can of spam a day, you only have to look at other preserved products to realize how easy it is to get far too much salt if it’s even a small part of your daily diet.

A lot of processed items also have sugar added. Sugar, especially the amounts you get from processed foods, is bad for you. If you look at the nutrition label, a lot of products have added sugar that really don’t need it. Pasta sauces, frozen meals, beverages you wouldn’t expect, canned meals… A piece of cake once in awhile wouldn’t hurt you, but with these processed foods your daily intake would likely cause a lot of problems for your body.

I guess the take away is processed food in this context is just an overarching term for food products that contain items of amounts of items that can be bad for you. As for being healthy to a regular diet, everything in moderation. However, moderation with those foods is going to leave you very hungry, and it’s better in most cases to buy fresh food and cook what you like.