Processed, Junk, and Fake Foods

 

 

 

 

Processed food is made from real food that has been put through devitalizing chemical processes and is infused with chemicals and preservatives. Beef jerky, canned tea, jam, hot dogs, and low-fat yogurt with sugar or aspartame are a few examples of processed food.

 

Junk foods contain very little real food. They're made of devitalized processed food, hydrogenated fats, chemicals, and preservatives, and include anything made with refined white flour. Canned breakfast drinks, cold/sugary cereals, doughnuts, drive-through foods, and soda are examples of junk foods.

 

Fake foods are made primarily of chemicals, and often contain gums and sugar fillers. Examples include bacon bits, bottled salad dressing, dehydrated soups, and instant coffee.

 

Nutrition ?

 

These non-foods have one thing in common; it costs your body a great deal more to digest, absorb, and eliminate them than they offer your body in nutritional value – an extremely poor return on your investment that leaves your body sluggish and depleted.

 

 

 

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Processed foods are any foods altered from their natural state – usually for shelf life and ease of transportation. Basically the majority of the foods you’re finding in your grocery store. Processed foods are usually depleted of nutrients – including good fats, vitamins, minerals and fiber. Then they’re pumped full of ingredients to change the taste (sugar is sweet but aspartame is sweeter!), shelf life (so that cupcake is still edible in a year), color (no, it’s not fruit in froot loops making your breakfast look like the rainbow), etc

What’s so wrong with that? A lot, actually, because babes, strawberry fruit rollups are not giving you the same nutrients as fresh strawberries, and many frozen meals are full of ingredients like butane (lighter fluid) to preserve freshness, plus enough salt for a month.

 

As it stands, about 90 percent of the money that Americans spend on food is used to buy--that's right--processed foods.

Think about it ... if it comes in a box, can, bag or carton, it's processed. The fact that these foods are so readily available, and, often, of such poor quality, has led some, like associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard David Ludwig, to say that they're actually discouraging healthy eating and leading to a "toxic environment."

 

"There's the incessant advertising and marketing of the poorest quality foods imaginable. To address this epidemic, you'd want to make healthful foods widely available, inexpensive, and convenient, and unhealthful foods relatively less so. Instead, we've done the opposite," says Ludwig.

Processed foods have, indeed, been implicated in a host of chronic diseases and health conditions that are currently plaguing the nation. What follows is just a taste of the risks processed foods may present to your health.