Processing absolutely does remove minerals, along with vitamins and fiber, such as when you make white flour by removing the "bran and germ" of the wheat grain.

Processing absolutely does remove minerals, along with vitamins and fiber, such as when you make white flour by removing the "bran and germ" of the wheat grain. Most often, one particular part of a food is extracted, potentially subjected to high heats and/or chemical processes in order to alter the taste, consistency, shelf life, or other properties of the substance, and then combined with other such substances. For example, a cracker might consist of flour, soybean oil (i.e. fat extracted from soybeans by soaking them in chemicals called hexanes and hydrogenated), corn syrup (sugar extracted from corn), and corn starch. The human body needs dozens of micronutrients that are easily found in a bite of a naturally-occurring food but easily absent from an artificial food, especially when the necessary sugars, fats, and starches have been sourced as cheaply and conveniently as possible for manufacturing. This isn't a value judgment, and I love eating processed foods.