Processing processed food

Let us process for a moment the definition and judgements related to processed food.  Do you know how processed food is defined?  Processed foods have been altered from their natural state for safety and convenience. The FDA definition for "processed food" is: The term "processed food" means any food other than a raw agricultural commodity and includes any raw agricultural commodity that has been subject to processing, such as canning, cooking, freezing, dehydration, or milling. While it's true that processing food can strip food of fiber and some nutrients, this is not always the case. So, why do processed foods have a such a bad rap?  Milk is a processed food because it's pasteurized to kill bacteria and homogenized to keep fats from separating. Freezing vegetables preserves vitamins and minerals and makes them convenient to cook and eat all year around. Fruit and vegetable juice. Consider orange juice that is fortified with calcium to make it even more nutritious. Oatmeal, frozen fish, frozen berries and 100% whole-grain bread are also processed foods. 

Eating processed food is a very normal thing to do.  Nutrition can inform our decision about the choices we make, but we can be VERY healthy and normal eaters who include all kinds of processed foods (including everything from the examples above to candy, fast food, and what society calls "junk food").  If nutrition were to drive our choices, preparing food would be very time consuming and may not match our appetite.  Taste and convenience are normal factors in decisions about what to eat. 

 

Normal processed meal:

Delicious meatball soup made with frozen meatballs, frozen vegetables, frozen crushed garlic, boxed chicken broth, and cut spaghetti noodles.  Yum! 

Normal processed meal:

Grilled cheese on whole wheat bread with whole grain chips, organic yogurt and organic frozen blueberries.