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> Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products I assume by highly processed, you mean foods altered in such

> Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products I assume by highly processed, you mean foods altered in such that they are now high in fats, salt, sugars or some combination thereof. I ask, because the term processed gets thrown around (in my experience) for highly preserved foods like canned meat to flash frozen frozen vegetables in the freezer aisle. The former is obviously worse for you. Taking in high amounts of sugars, bad fats, and possibly salt is detrimental. However, referring to green beans that were grown, picked, flash frozen and delivered as a processed food is somewhat misleading. Flash freezing is altering the food from its natural state. Thus, a frozen vegetable is technically a processed food. The connotative definition, however, implies that more than freezing has happened.

brianwawok 11y ago
Freezing is a form of processing, but it is a very light processing. Take some Oats off the ground. Cool unprocessed. Mill it a tiny bit to help it cook more easily into steel cut oats. Minimally processed. Grind it down into instant oatmeal - Heavily processes. Add some chemicals and put in a test tube to turn into some weird kind of artificial sweetener? Highly processed. I try to go as low on the chain as possible, without killing myself. I don't enjoy eating oats right off the ground, or boiled as is (unsure if we can even digest raw oats, never tried). Steel cut I do enjoy - so I stop there. So back to fruit. If you can get fresh fruit great. If not, frozen is pretty close. If you have to revert to fruit rollups? Probably went too far. * There is a debate that frozen fruits can actually be better than frush fruit, as fresh fruit is picked unripe and ripened in a truck - whereas frozen fruit can be picked when fully ripe. In this case, the slightly processed fruit may end up being better than the unprocessed fruit. Overall though this is the exception, for 99% of food - the more you do to it the more you lose.
- blacksmith_tb 11y ago
  This seems like a fairly extreme interpretation of 'processing' - I haven't seen anything that suggests there's a nutritional difference between steel cut, rolled, or quick oats. Human beings have 'processed' their foods along these lines for more than 10,000 years, as opposed to say, making Twinkies.
  - retbull 11y ago
    I think in the oats case not much happens nutritionally until it gets to the cheeri o's stage of processing. The only thing I could think of that steal cut might do is remove some of the fiber when the shell falls off.
  - undersuit 11y ago
    There is a very big nutritional difference between steel cut and rolled oats compared to quick oats. The bran is removed in quick oats.
- debacle 11y ago
  > If you have to revert to fruit rollups? Probably went too far. Potentially a misconception, as well. While modern Fruit Roll-ups are very processed, fruit leather is basically just ground up fruit paste that's been dried. Way more calories by weight than real fruit, but essentially no different.
- readams 11y ago
  This is falling prey to the naturalistic fallacy, which is the belief that because something is "natural" that is is therefore the best. Cooking food, for example makes it much easier to digest and more nutrient rich, but is cooking food natural? Remember that the most "natural" state involves dying to any number of diseases, malnutrition, or predation. The heuristic of "the less natural the worse it is" is not a very good one.
tremendo 11y ago
This is a good observation. Yogurt for example is now something one buys packaged from a grocery store, after milk was pasteurized and deliberately (re)inoculated with the right mix of bacteria to induce lactic fermentation. This of course can occur naturally, but now we do it in a controlled and safe manner and thus is now a "processed food". Well, of course there are those that come with added "fruit" (not really). Same with Sauerkraut and even originally the curing of meats (Salami, Chorizo, de-hydrated meats, etc). And that is different from most packaged, canned, boxed, foods which are clearly manufactured as they just wouldn't happen otherwise, in the way that ingredients are mixed and put together with the primary goals of making a product hyper-palatable (it sells), at lower cost and with a long shelf-life (minimizes risks), and only incidentally if at all, with any care for its nutritional value, in which case they throw in whatever fortifications will allow the vendor to claim certain nutritional benefit while not affecting negatively their ability to sell. These tend, as you mention, to just add sugar, fats and salt, in a way that one simply does not find in non-manufactured foods. As they say, context matters. For example there are many who believe that salt intake by itself is not the problem, instead the optimal ratio of Sodium to Potassium is what becomes problematic. In latter years with all those added salts, Sodium intake has increased, while the lower share of natural foods has also meant a reduced intake of Potassium, throwing us off-balance from what a "normal" body needs.
- debacle 11y ago
  In the US, your yoghurt also likely has some combination of pectin, gelatin, and xanthum gum as well.
grahamburger 11y ago
I realized how meaningless the term 'processed food' is when I started trying to eat a more natural diet and every source of information I could find on the topic recommended I start by buying a food processor.
Shorel 11y ago
Good luck finding anything high in fats and processed in a modern supermarket. If anything, everything is low fat nowadays. With added fructose of course.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Good luck finding anything high in fats and processed in a modern supermarket. Er, there's quite a lot of high fat, processed foods in modern supermarkets. Now, they don't put "high fat" on the label, because "high fat" isn't a selling point. but that doesn't change the fact that they are high in fat.
  - Shorel 11y ago
    It is a selling point for me, as long as it is animal fat and not hydrogenated vegetable oil. I'm part of the minority who reads every label.

brianwawok 11y ago

Freezing is a form of processing, but it is a very light processing. Take some Oats off the ground. Cool unprocessed. Mill it a tiny bit to help it cook more easily into steel cut oats. Minimally processed. Grind it down into instant oatmeal - Heavily processes. Add some chemicals and put in a test tube to turn into some weird kind of artificial sweetener? Highly processed. I try to go as low on the chain as possible, without killing myself. I don't enjoy eating oats right off the ground, or boiled as is (unsure if we can even digest raw oats, never tried). Steel cut I do enjoy - so I stop there. So back to fruit. If you can get fresh fruit great. If not, frozen is pretty close. If you have to revert to fruit rollups? Probably went too far. * There is a debate that frozen fruits can actually be better than frush fruit, as fresh fruit is picked unripe and ripened in a truck - whereas frozen fruit can be picked when fully ripe. In this case, the slightly processed fruit may end up being better than the unprocessed fruit. Overall though this is the exception, for 99% of food - the more you do to it the more you lose.

blacksmith_tb 11y ago
This seems like a fairly extreme interpretation of 'processing' - I haven't seen anything that suggests there's a nutritional difference between steel cut, rolled, or quick oats. Human beings have 'processed' their foods along these lines for more than 10,000 years, as opposed to say, making Twinkies.
- retbull 11y ago
  I think in the oats case not much happens nutritionally until it gets to the cheeri o's stage of processing. The only thing I could think of that steal cut might do is remove some of the fiber when the shell falls off.
- undersuit 11y ago
  There is a very big nutritional difference between steel cut and rolled oats compared to quick oats. The bran is removed in quick oats.
debacle 11y ago
> If you have to revert to fruit rollups? Probably went too far. Potentially a misconception, as well. While modern Fruit Roll-ups are very processed, fruit leather is basically just ground up fruit paste that's been dried. Way more calories by weight than real fruit, but essentially no different.
readams 11y ago
This is falling prey to the naturalistic fallacy, which is the belief that because something is "natural" that is is therefore the best. Cooking food, for example makes it much easier to digest and more nutrient rich, but is cooking food natural? Remember that the most "natural" state involves dying to any number of diseases, malnutrition, or predation. The heuristic of "the less natural the worse it is" is not a very good one.

tremendo 11y ago

This is a good observation. Yogurt for example is now something one buys packaged from a grocery store, after milk was pasteurized and deliberately (re)inoculated with the right mix of bacteria to induce lactic fermentation. This of course can occur naturally, but now we do it in a controlled and safe manner and thus is now a "processed food". Well, of course there are those that come with added "fruit" (not really). Same with Sauerkraut and even originally the curing of meats (Salami, Chorizo, de-hydrated meats, etc). And that is different from most packaged, canned, boxed, foods which are clearly manufactured as they just wouldn't happen otherwise, in the way that ingredients are mixed and put together with the primary goals of making a product hyper-palatable (it sells), at lower cost and with a long shelf-life (minimizes risks), and only incidentally if at all, with any care for its nutritional value, in which case they throw in whatever fortifications will allow the vendor to claim certain nutritional benefit while not affecting negatively their ability to sell. These tend, as you mention, to just add sugar, fats and salt, in a way that one simply does not find in non-manufactured foods. As they say, context matters. For example there are many who believe that salt intake by itself is not the problem, instead the optimal ratio of Sodium to Potassium is what becomes problematic. In latter years with all those added salts, Sodium intake has increased, while the lower share of natural foods has also meant a reduced intake of Potassium, throwing us off-balance from what a "normal" body needs.

debacle 11y ago
In the US, your yoghurt also likely has some combination of pectin, gelatin, and xanthum gum as well.

grahamburger 11y ago

I realized how meaningless the term 'processed food' is when I started trying to eat a more natural diet and every source of information I could find on the topic recommended I start by buying a food processor.

Shorel 11y ago

Good luck finding anything high in fats and processed in a modern supermarket. If anything, everything is low fat nowadays. With added fructose of course.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> Good luck finding anything high in fats and processed in a modern supermarket. Er, there's quite a lot of high fat, processed foods in modern supermarkets. Now, they don't put "high fat" on the label, because "high fat" isn't a selling point. but that doesn't change the fact that they are high in fat.
- Shorel 11y ago
  It is a selling point for me, as long as it is animal fat and not hydrogenated vegetable oil. I'm part of the minority who reads every label.