We’re bombarded with warnings to avoid processed (or ultra-processed) foods. Should we, really? And what does “processed” even mean?
Last week, we began debunking myths solely about food and diet. Excessive worry about what we eat can ruin one’s enjoyment of life, budget, relationships and even mental health.
It does nobody any good to go to the ends of the world to construct as healthy a diet as possible, if the effort it takes only causes stress, anxiety and high blood pressure. Not to mention that health food nuts are both annoying, and often wrong.
So let’s debunk another myth.
Processed food is bad for you
Almost all food is processed. If processed food were bad for you, then the things you do to fresh farm produce in your kitchen, from washing to chopping to seasoning to cooking are all bad for you.
Wholewheat bread, soup, puréed apples, toast with jam, diced and frozen vegetables, pasta, roast potatoes and skim milk are all processed foods. Unless you’re literally yanking carrots out of the ground and chowing down on them, you’re probably eating processed food.
Food producers for the most part do what you do in your kitchen to make food presentable, tasty and easy to digest, but on a far larger scale. They also do it to rigorous standards of hygiene and quality that you probably do not observe in your own kitchen.
How often do you know the exact temperature and cooking time needed to kill specific food-borne pathogens? Food processing factories know.
What is “processed”?
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in the US distinguishes between four levels of processing:
- Minimally processed foods – such as bagged spinach, cut vegetables and roasted nuts – often are simply prepared in advance for convenience.
- Other foods with less processing include those processed at their peak to lock in nutritional quality and freshness like canned tomatoes, frozen fruits and vegetables, and canned tuna.
- The next set of processed foods would be those with ingredients added for flavour and texture (which may include sweeteners, spices, oils, colours and preservatives), including items like pasta sauce, yogurt and cake mixes.
- Ready-to-eat foods – such as crackers, cereal and deli meat – are more heavily processed.
Certain kinds of processing improve the nutritional content of food, such as adding calcium, iron, iodine, fibre or vitamins to various foods. Many kinds of processing kill pathogens, serve to improve the shelf-life of food and reduce the risk of spoilage, or simply make food more easily digestible. (No, raw food is not necessarily better, but we’ll get to that later.)
Additives
Food additives are used to improve the taste, colour, texture, consistency, “mouth feel”, or shelf life of processed foods. Most are entirely benign, but may sound scary to people who believe that pronounceability is a determinant of a chemical substance’s safety, and “there is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever”.
(These people would be terrified of chemicals like retinol, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, biotin, folic acid, cobalamin, ascorbic acid, calciferol, tocopherol, and phytonadione. And yet they’d die without them, since these are merely the names of all the vitamins.)
A small subset of additives may pose risks to a small number of people who are sensitive to particular substances. All food additives are extensively tested and approved by government authorities to both do what they’re supposed to do, and to pose minimal risk to consumers.
“Ultra-processed”
Many diet advice charlatans have taken to differentiating between merely “processed” and “ultra-processed” foods. While the latter sounds scary, any processing beyond what you might do in your own kitchen, and in fact any processing that adds ingredients, is considered to be ultra-processing.
“There’s a long, formal scientific definition, but it can be boiled down to this: If it’s wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient that you wouldn’t find in your kitchen, it’s ultra-processed food],” writes author and infectious disease doctor Chris van Tulleken in his recent, widely praised book, Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn’t Food.
That is a ridiculous definition. It excludes common and perfectly innocuous preservatives and stabilisers that are required in food that is supposed to last longer than a day, but which nobody needs in a home kitchen, for obvious reasons.
Actual scientific research on ultra-processed food is fairly thin on the ground, and it has been hard to separate the health outcomes of diet from confounders like unhealthy lifestyles that often accompany a preference for convenience foods.
Ironically, the group of people who eat the most ultra-processed foods turn out to be health-conscious vegans.
Ultimately, it’s not the degree of processing that is unhealthy. The dangers lie in the kind of processing done, the amounts of added sugar, salt and fat in food, how much food you’re consuming, and the share of your diet that consists of a fairly limited selection of highly processed foods.
Sometimes, the type of processing makes a difference. Boiling, baking, grilling, or air frying, for example, are healthier than frying in oil or fat. Partially-hydrogenated vegetable oils certainly seem worth avoiding.
Evidence suggests that people who eat convenience food often eat more of it, which may well explain poorer health outcomes. Higher calorie intake is obviously a risk factor for obesity and related health complaints.
Processed foods also often contain added sugar, especially to make up for the loss of flavour that results from making food “low-fat”, as has been popular for almost 50 years. A healthy diet minimises added sugars.
Tim Spector, the author of The Diet Myth (which in my view ranks very high on the very short list of good books on diet) concludes that dietary health requires the moderate consumption of a wide variety of different kinds of foods. So, for example, you don’t just need vegetables, you need many different kinds of vegetables.
Spector explains that certain processed foods, such as fermented foods, cheeses, and yoghurt, are a necessary part of a healthy, balanced diet.
His main critique of processed convenience foods is that they typically consist of a limited number of base ingredients, resulting in a very restricted diet for people who eat predominantly processed foods.
That is where the danger lies. Processed foods aren’t bad for you, per se. They are, however, bad for you if most of your diet consists of a limited selection of processed foods.
It isn’t necessary to avoid convenient, shelf-stable, processed foods, and there are some good reasons to prefer them, sometimes. Vary your diet, and eat a moderate quantity of calories, and you’ll be fine, however your food is processed.
Always take into account that you have a liver, kidneys and a whole digestive system designed to flush out anything the body doesn’t want or need, and that a good diet is only one aspect of good health: exercise, sleep, and fresh air are just as important.
Your mental health will certainly thank you for not over-thinking things every time you’re a mite peckish.
[Photo: Image: Pixabay – Processed Food.webp.]
CAPTION: Processed foods are not always bad for you, and often are good for you. Image: Pixabay.]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend.