Processed Foods vs. All Natural or “Lightly Processed” Foods

Over the years much has been written and discussed about the perils of including an ever increasing percentage of heavily or overly processed foods in the American family’s diet. The central fact in this controversy, however, is quite incontrovertible – processing foods takes out the inherent nutrition contained in most organic food products.

Marion Nestle, writing in her book, “What to Eat”, reveals that heavy processing not only diminishes basic nutritional elements in food, but adds calories by adding fats and sugars. In addition, the loss of taste in processed foods is often addressed by adding salt, artificial colors, flavors and other additives. Even canned foods, which are lightly or heavily processed, add salt (in soups) and sugar (in fruits).

Alternative forms of “light” processing of food include aging, drying, freezing, canning and cooking do change foods but incur little loss of nutritional content and make nutrients more available to the body. This is most true when the original ingredients are kept intact. Frozen meals and pastries, for example, are highly processed are therefore altered nutritionally.

The nutritional composition of a food product depends on four factors: (1) how much water it contains i.e., more water dilutes nutrients; (2) the solubility of nutrients in water, i.e, some vitamins dissolve in boiling water; (3), the extent of processing, i.e., the more that is done to a food between harvest and eating, the lower the nutritional content; and (4), what gets added, i.e., many processed foods contain added sugars and fats.

The best way for food shoppers to determine the extent of processing done to a particular food product is to carefully read the ingredients on the food product label. Ingredients are listed in order of the percentage of the product contained in the container or package. Labels listing added sugars, corn syrups, salts, artificial flavors, or other ingredients will generally have less of the food product’s inherent nutrition value.

O’Meagher Farms promotes healthier eating by offering a variety of tasty, all natural foods (which are plant-based) on its website. Please visit us at http://www.omeagherfarms.com.