“The unhealthy characteristics of processed
foods.”
So, you decided to take good care of your
nutrition to stay healthy or become healthier? That is fantastic! What about
your healthy-looking breakfast cereal claiming ’high fiber content’ on the box,
and the fruit yoghurt you eat with?
What about other processed foods? Do you think they would pass the health exam?
With a very few exceptions, they do not.
For this reason, the best you can do is to change
for as simple and natural products as you can by always checking their
ingredients list, and prepare simple and healthy foods for yourself from
scratch, anytime you can manage.
Well, you could ask if preparing a colorful
raw salad at home by chopping the fresh, green salad, red tomatoes and peeling
the carrots, then adding some nice spices, cold pressed oils and vinegar is not
processing? Yes, it is, and indeed, even raw salad mixtures and canned legumes
fall into the category of processed food. Logically, there is no (or much less)
problem around these ones, moreover, they can help busy people to eat healthy
by reducing the preparation time of a dish.
When I am talking about the importance of avoiding processed food, I am
referring to the highly processed food like ready-to-eat foods such as cookies
or crackers, or the most heavily processed ones like pre-made meals usually
are, such as microwavable foods, frozen meals (pizza, lasagna, fish-fingers).
The
reason why you should avoid this group of processed food, is because they
contain high amounts of added sugar, excess sodium (salt), unhealthy fats and flavor
enhancers. Most of the times a lot more than you
would ever suspect so without being
aware you are putting inside your body more
amount of something that you should not ingest at all.
Nr1
enemy: sugar. Sugar, maltose, brown sugar, corn
syrup, cane sugar, glucose-fructose syrup, sucrose, dextrose (everything with
the end in the word ’ose’ are forms of sugar). You can see some of these
different forms of sugar in almost every piece of processed food. Not only in
the ones that are supposed to taste sweet but in all kinds of food since sugar
improves the taste and consistency and makes the aliment more enjoyable. The first problem with this is that you are
eating refined sugar which itself is bad for your health (no, we are not
talking about the sugar that is in fruits or carbohydrates along with many
valuable nutrients. Those are naturally occurring
sugars and are totally fine and necessary to eat.)
The
second problem is that this is extra sugar in your diet, that means extra
calories so you are going to get fat. Lot of
producers already realized that their consumers are more aware of their sugar
intake and started to replace the sugar in their products with artificial
sweeteners (sucralose, saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame) They do supply less
calories but some artificial sweeteners
can be dangerous in large quantities. The same is true for artificial colorings
that are often added to snack foods, fizzy drinks and candies, especially the
ones that target children.
The
third, serious problem is that sugar is addictive so the more you eat, the more
your organism craves for. That is one of the
reasons it is added to everything, to make you eat and buy more of the certain
product. A lot of pasta sauces or salad dressings for example are high in added
sugar, and even healthy-looking aliments like yoghurt (the plain one is indeed
healthy, but not the flavored ones), or breakfast cereals suggesting being healthy
by their image. And now, the fourth,
serious problem is what happens with your taste if you eat these processed foods
regularly. Your taste will adapt to the flavor enhancers and sugar added to the
processed foods so anything else outside of this version of a meal will taste
nothing for you. Real food will no
longer satisfy you. Instead, you will crave for the ready-made products going
deeper and deeper into this vicious circle.
Nr2
enemy: trans-fat and saturated fat. What about the
fats in the processed food?
The biggest
problem is their trans-fat content, since this kind of fat lowers the good
cholesterol (HDL) level in the body while raising the bad cholesterol (LDL) in
the same time.
So, they are very bad for
your heart and cardiac system, causing high blood pressure and raising the risk
of strokes and heart attacks.
Trans fat is produced by a process of
hydrogenation of vegetable oils so that the oil stays solid at room
temperature. Trans fats are added to the products with the aim to be crispier
and increase their shelf life so the final product - imagine, a nice cookie –
stays in the same shape and texture, and can be consumed for two-three years
easily… nothing suspicious, right? For this reason, products with ’hydrogenated vegetable oil’ or ’partially hydrogenated
vegetable oil’ listed among their ingredients, should be avoided in a healthy
diet. Trans fat is mostly found in margarines, fried foods, baked commercial
goods (cookies, crackers) and processed foods.
The other
problem is the too much saturated fat in processed food.
We should consume all kinds of fats
(saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated) but saturated fats in much
less proportion than the other two (less than 10% of the daily consumed
calories). The reason is that too much saturated fat can raise the bad
cholesterol level, and leads to weight-gain since this kind of fat is more
likely to be stored as fat reserve in the body, unlike monounsaturated fats (such
as olive oil without heating) that are used easily as immediate energy sources
for the cells. Animal foods like milk, cheese and meat have saturated fat (red
meat has more than fish and poultry), as well as tropical oils such as palm
oil, coconut oil and cocoa butter.
How
can you avoid eating too much processed food? Process the food yourself, in
other words: COOK from scratch! If you use the ingredients in their most
natural form, you maximize the control over the added substances that your
final dish will have.
Obviously, using mostly raw
material would mean hours in the kitchen and this is half of the truth about
keeping yourself away from processed food. Yes, you need to do it yourself
instead of buying ready. But the other half is that you can help yourself with
smart slight changes in your diet. Learn to do simple but healthy dishes, like
a satisfying salad containing canned beans, and as snack options turn to fresh
fruits, dry fruits, nuts, natural yoghurt, and so on. Or prepare simple but
real food to take-away.
The other magical weapon that you need in
this battle is already in your hand. You have it since you learned to read. Now
you can go to the market, take the
product you supposed you need, and turn it to see the ingredients list. Do it
with all single products, even if it seems stupidly time consuming, and
seems to make no difference since you do not know about everything in the list
what they are. Does not matter, you will get to know more and more with time. For now, make it a habit to check. Filter first for the most basic things like
added sugars, trans fat and flavor enhancer content. Remember an important rule, that the ingredients are listed in
descending order of predominance in the product. So, if you look for
example at the label of Nutella, you will see that the first ingredient is
sugar, the second is palm oil. So, the components this hazelnut cream has the most of are sugar and saturated fat,
hazelnuts come only at the third place, with 13%. Read the ingredients. That is what the given product really is, not what the image suggests.
Next step: remake the healthy, home-made
version of the food you put back onto
the shelf after seeing the ingredients list. I can promise you, that will be much more fun,
creative and healthier for your body and mind.
by Fanni Szintai-Major (Life Mentor)
by Fanni Szintai-Major (Life Mentor)
Wishing you a neat and wealthy life,
Pedro Proff & Fanni Major
"For a Neat Life."
Pedro Proff ®
INPI Patent nº 523332
Education, training, health and sports services, entertainment and cultural activities.
Life Mentoring Method ®
INPI Patent nº 537386
Education, training, health and sports services, entertainment and cultural activities.
INPI Patent nº 523332
Education, training, health and sports services, entertainment and cultural activities.
Life Mentoring Method ®
INPI Patent nº 537386
Education, training, health and sports services, entertainment and cultural activities.
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