Processing the Processed
Over the decades, food has evolved from simple sustenance to complex, engineered convenience.
Post World War II, home-cooked meals gave way to “TV dinners” and ready-to-eat convenience foods.
These days we not only see the growing awareness of the food industry being linked to obesity, but increasing public perception of utra-processed foods as well.
The question that comes to mind is whether processed food alone makes it bad food or is it the further processing of processed food that strips the food of its goodness, and thereby causing harm and resulting in bad health?
Plain yoghurt - nothing added except milk and live cultures is “processing”. It’s like cooking - you are creating food. We all eat processed food in our lives which is not bad.
But when you pasteurise milk, denature proteins, cool it, inoculate it with bacterial cultures, ferment it for several hours and turn it into yoghurt - then add various starches, stabilisers, emulsifiers, concentrates, artificial sweeteners, and flavourings to the mix - it then becomes “ultra-processed.
Food companies have billions to spend on marketing. Various fake health halos - fortified, plant-based, natural flavours, vitamins, low-fat, sugar-free, etc. - disguise harmful additives and confuse buyers. These foods not only give us diseases, but also mess up gut microbes and make us eat more.
So, before buying, read the label. The longer the list of chemicals and warning signs, the more processed the product - and therefore the more harmful.
Z P
#UltraProcessed #FoodIndustry #GutHealth #EatReal #FoodAwareness #HealthMatters #ProcessedVsUltraProcessed
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