You constantly hear about how processed food is bad for your health and should be avoided. But what is it and why is it so bad?
In: Biology
Processed food just means food that has been put through a set of actions (a process). It’s a very broad and difficult to define term.
Consider different ways that you can eat an apple.
Take an apple off of the tree, give it a wash and start eating. That’s *un-processed* food. (Well, technically the washing can be counted as a type of processing. Lines are starting to blur already.)
Take an apple, wash it (just assume this step from now on) put on some food-grade wax to protect it during shipping, and that’s *minimally processed*, but by some definitions so are frozen fruits (apple isn’t commonly frozen, though).
Take the apple, peel it, mash it up, put it into a jar, that’s applesauce, a *processed* food. You could also slice it up and add some preservatives to keep it from browning, that’s another processed form of apple.
Take the apple, cut it up, add some sugar, spices, bake it into a pie crust, and well a homemade pie is more *processed*, but arguably not into the final category of:
*Ultra-processed* would be taking the apple and adding sugar, spices, thickeners, stabilizers, natural and/or artificial flavors, to the point where the Brand-Name-Here fruit pie more resembles a candy bar than the apple it started as.
As you can see, there are some blurry lines in what counts as unprocessed, minimally processed, processed, and ultra-processed (the most common classifications I can find online).
There’s nothing inherently unhealthy about any of this. Eating raw grains of wheat isn’t healthier than eating a loaf of bread. Eating a fresh green bean may not be healthier than eating one that’s been frozen (depending on a number of factors, mainly how long it took them reach your plate). Eating an apple pie is healthy, in moderation.
However, ultra-processed foods are more likely to have unbalanced nutrition. They tend to be high in salt, fat, and sugar, and they very often focus on flavor instead of nutrition. There’s nothing wrong with eating potato chips, but eating nothing but potato chips will lead to problems.
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