Do a quick count of how many of your meals from the past week looked like that.
Our world is full of processed food, for better or worse.
But just because something is processed (whatever that means) doesnt automatically make it bad for you.
Dont Obsess OverHowProcessed Each Food Is
Heres the hard part: defining processed food.
Not a tough call there.
Raw potato with the dirt still on it: unprocessed.
So far so good.
Thats kind of processed, isnt it?
But its notveryprocessed, you might say.
The problem comes when you have a go at draw a line to saythesethings are processed, andthesethings arent.
Where would you put a cow thats been chopped up into steaks?
Vegetables that are frozen?
Beans that are canned?
Bread baked by a local baker?
Bread baked by a factory?
There isno major nutritional differencebetween the two.
SodaStream offers everything from no-calorie seltzer toDIY Pepsi.
Taken to an extreme, the processed-is-bad mentality would put plenty of things off-limits that shouldnt be.
Frozen veggies areas healthy as fresh, sometimes more so.
Pasteurized milk is processed, andbetter for it.
But wait, you say.
Its easy to avoid if you read carefully, thoughlabels are required to list it.
For now, youll have to look under Sugars on the label.
If the FDA gets its way,Added sugars will soon be its own line-item.
Deli meats and restaurant meals are top sources.
(For some reason, I keep hearing people say that soda has a lot of sodium.It doesnt.)
you could suss out sodium with its line item on the Nutrition Facts label.
That said, unless youre salt-sensitive and have high blood pressure, itsprobably not bad for you.
Theyre high in fat.This is true of oily snacks like chips, and often a lot of restaurant meals.
Twizzlers and pretzels both fit the bill, for example.
Theyre addictive.Theres no label for this one, Im afraid.
Some ready-to-eat junk foods, like chips and candy bars, aredevilishly well-designed.
A high-fat/high-sugar combo is the signature move, often with a good dose of salt thrown in.
Colorings, flavorings, and preservatives arent automatically bad.
Even those that have sparked controversy are still very likely to be safe.
Of course, the best plan is to not need to buy any of that processed food.
But how many of us can cook every meal from scratch?
You get the idea.
Sure, in some parts of history, people didbut that was part of theirjobas a housewife or farmer.
Today, cooking every single meal from scratch is more like a hobby.
A fine one to have, but not a mandate for everyone.
Illustration by Kevin Whipple.
get in touch with the author at[email protected].
