Proccessed Foods
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Seitan... is it "Say-tan" or "Sy-tan"? Serious question; I use it, but I've never actually heard its name spoken and I'd hate to get strange looks when people think I'm saying I consume the lord of the underworld if I'm mispronouncing it...9
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Of course there is no one answer and not every situation will fit into this definition, but I view processed food as products that have man made ingredients/chemicals in them. I consider Food that has ingredients that you can't easily pronounce processed food. This is not a hard fast rule with zero exceptions...just a general thought.
1. Everything is chemicals.
2. Ingredients that cannot be pronounced vary from the amount of education one has. It's a silly way to determine if something is processed or not.13 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »OliveGirl128 wrote: »Op, I have no idea what you mean by 'package processing'?
Most food is processed in some form or another, which is great because it makes food more accessible and usable.
Heh, glad I wasn't the only one completely baffled by that terminology. Would love an explanation.
Whole foods put in a package? Like bags of apples?2 -
estherdragonbat wrote: »Seitan... is it "Say-tan" or "Sy-tan"? Serious question; I use it, but I've never actually heard its name spoken and I'd hate to get strange looks when people think I'm saying I consume the lord of the underworld if I'm mispronouncing it...
Gluten ball. Surely the food of the devil?
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RuNaRoUnDaFiEld wrote: »Likes of?
To me that is just a lack of knowledge. The last time I asked this question the poster came back saying cobalamin
To me processed means easy. Like if I buy grated cheese, it is highly processed from the milk that left the cow but it makes my life easier.
Thankfully we have developed from having to go hunt and gather our food.
So you're basically calling me uneducated because of my opinion? The question was what comes to mind when you hear processed food...? This was my opinion...why do you need to tell me my opinion is wrong?
If you can tell me that things like sodium benzoate, food colorings (red 40, yellow 5 etc), butylated hydrozyttoluene (bht) etc (the list goes on) are good for you, I'd love to hear it since I apear to lack the proper knowledge.
It is very apparent from replies I've gotten on my posts on this board that my opinions and beliefs are against the grain and in the minority...and that's fine. I don't feel the need to follow the opinions of everyone else. If the FDA says something is safe, I don't feel the need to blindly follow without doing my own research on the subject. The FDA has said many things are safe, only to have them banned in other countries or later found to be harmful. I try to avoid GMO if I can because I believe they are harmful. Do I eat them? Yes because it's extremly hard to avoid them, but if I have a choice I will avoid them.
So if I'm uneducated because I have my own opinions and follow my own food beliefs, then I suppose I'll accept that.
@megpie41 I also avoid foods with artificial colors (and flavors), and BHT, etc., etc.
Everyone I know IRL understands "processed food" to mean "Ultra Processed Food" as the government of Brazil has defined it, but here on the MFP forums it's commonly used as posters have defined above. So in threads like this I just drop the Brazil link and roll with it.7 -
Of course there is no one answer and not every situation will fit into this definition, but I view processed food as products that have man made ingredients/chemicals in them. I consider Food that has ingredients that you can't easily pronounce processed food. This is not a hard fast rule with zero exceptions...just a general thought.
So basically everything from non english speakng countries. I guess it all depends on your level of education. I just don't get how people label stuff as hard to pronounce as scary instead of actually you know looking it up.9 -
estherdragonbat wrote: »Seitan... is it "Say-tan" or "Sy-tan"? Serious question; I use it, but I've never actually heard its name spoken and I'd hate to get strange looks when people think I'm saying I consume the lord of the underworld if I'm mispronouncing it...
It's say-tawn. Nothing like how it is spelt.
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kshama2001 wrote: »RuNaRoUnDaFiEld wrote: »Likes of?
To me that is just a lack of knowledge. The last time I asked this question the poster came back saying cobalamin
To me processed means easy. Like if I buy grated cheese, it is highly processed from the milk that left the cow but it makes my life easier.
Thankfully we have developed from having to go hunt and gather our food.
So you're basically calling me uneducated because of my opinion? The question was what comes to mind when you hear processed food...? This was my opinion...why do you need to tell me my opinion is wrong?
If you can tell me that things like sodium benzoate, food colorings (red 40, yellow 5 etc), butylated hydrozyttoluene (bht) etc (the list goes on) are good for you, I'd love to hear it since I apear to lack the proper knowledge.
It is very apparent from replies I've gotten on my posts on this board that my opinions and beliefs are against the grain and in the minority...and that's fine. I don't feel the need to follow the opinions of everyone else. If the FDA says something is safe, I don't feel the need to blindly follow without doing my own research on the subject. The FDA has said many things are safe, only to have them banned in other countries or later found to be harmful. I try to avoid GMO if I can because I believe they are harmful. Do I eat them? Yes because it's extremly hard to avoid them, but if I have a choice I will avoid them.
So if I'm uneducated because I have my own opinions and follow my own food beliefs, then I suppose I'll accept that.
@megpie41 I also avoid foods with artificial colors (and flavors), and BHT, etc., etc.
Everyone I know IRL understands "processed food" to mean "Ultra Processed Food" as the government of Brazil has defined it, but here on the MFP forums it's commonly used as posters have defined above. So in threads like this I just drop the Brazil link and roll with it.
Do you point blank avoid everything you can't pronounce or everything with a chemical name?6 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »Whether or not it's good for you, sodium benzoate is extremely easy to pronounce.
Some people, on the other hand, struggle with quinoa.
So is cyanide and belladonna...7 -
Yes, sodium benzoate is easy to pronounce...that one came to mind because I knew if off hand and didn't have to look it up to spell it.
Think of the old Bryers ice cream commercial with the little girl reading the ingredients. She reads the competition and can't pronounce the chemical names....she reads Bryers and reads "milk, cream, sugar..." This was my point.1 -
when I hear "processed food", I think of processing that adds a ton of preservatives to extend the food lifetime way beyond what more natural ways would achieve, or artificial flavouring and colouring to mask/alter significantly the taste, or using substitutes for other ingredients, either to make them more "trendy" or usually to cut the costs.
I find this interesting, because I simply would not assume the word is used in such a limited way, it makes no sense to me. And as I said above, I think to the types of processed foods I eat or use, which are mostly more lightly processed or about preparation vs. addition of preservatives (not that I think there's anything inherently wrong with preservatives, and traditionally it's such things as salt, plus smoking, canning, pickling and related ingredients).
I wonder when the popular usage started shifting so that some people think "processed" refers to a much smaller portion of foods than it does.
I find this usage really frustrating, because if someone asked me if I avoid processed foods I'd say of course not, because I eat yogurt, etc. But then people insist that they do when they have protein powder and packaged bacon and so on in their diaries. If I said I did not eat processed foods (even though I do eat a mostly whole foods diet just because of personal preference), I'd feel like a liar, so people who eat lots of processed (in my mind) stuff insisting they gave up processed foods because they stopped going to McDonalds (well, more than once a week) or
buying lots of frozen pot pies or whatever is confusing and makes communication so much harder, IMO.
I'm not trying to be critical, but more to understand. I don't find that people in my life have some clear meaning of "processed" that is different than what I think of as processed. They's probably say something like "I'm avoiding foods with additives" if that's what they meant (which is problematic too, as what additives, just salt is an additive, but still not the odd meaning of "processed" I see here).7 -
RuNaRoUnDaFiEld wrote: »Likes of?
To me that is just a lack of knowledge. The last time I asked this question the poster came back saying cobalamin
To me processed means easy. Like if I buy grated cheese, it is highly processed from the milk that left the cow but it makes my life easier.
Thankfully we have developed from having to go hunt and gather our food.
So you're basically calling me uneducated because of my opinion? The question was what comes to mind when you hear processed food...? This was my opinion...why do you need to tell me my opinion is wrong?
If you can tell me that things like sodium benzoate, food colorings (red 40, yellow 5 etc), butylated hydrozyttoluene (bht) etc (the list goes on) are good for you, I'd love to hear it since I apear to lack the proper knowledge.
It is very apparent from replies I've gotten on my posts on this board that my opinions and beliefs are against the grain and in the minority...and that's fine. I don't feel the need to follow the opinions of everyone else. If the FDA says something is safe, I don't feel the need to blindly follow without doing my own research on the subject. The FDA has said many things are safe, only to have them banned in other countries or later found to be harmful. I try to avoid GMO if I can because I believe they are harmful. Do I eat them? Yes because it's extremly hard to avoid them, but if I have a choice I will avoid them.
So if I'm uneducated because I have my own opinions and follow my own food beliefs, then I suppose I'll accept that.
It's how fora work, somebody posts and others comment on it. And yes not being able to pronounce things is just because we haven't learnt how to say them. It doesn't mean any thing else.
As for GMO etc you have your choice to make like each other individual has. Being in the UK we don't have them except in animal feed.
If we did I doubt I'd go out of my way to avoid them.0 -
Is this going to turn into another sodium bicarbonate thread11
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Yes, sodium benzoate is easy to pronounce...that one came to mind because I knew if off hand and didn't have to look it up to spell it.
Think of the old Bryers ice cream commercial with the little girl reading the ingredients. She reads the competition and can't pronounce the chemical names....she reads Bryers and reads "milk, cream, sugar..." This was my point.
She probably couldn't read or understand Shakespeare either. Should we avoid his plays?12 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »when I hear "processed food", I think of processing that adds a ton of preservatives to extend the food lifetime way beyond what more natural ways would achieve, or artificial flavouring and colouring to mask/alter significantly the taste, or using substitutes for other ingredients, either to make them more "trendy" or usually to cut the costs.
I find this interesting, because I simply would not assume the word is used in such a limited way, it makes no sense to me. And as I said above, I think to the types of processed foods I eat or use, which are mostly more lightly processed or about preparation vs. addition of preservatives (not that I think there's anything inherently wrong with preservatives, and traditionally it's such things as salt, plus smoking, canning, pickling and related ingredients).
I wonder when the popular usage started shifting so that some people think "processed" refers to a much smaller portion of foods than it does.
I find this usage really frustrating, because if someone asked me if I avoid processed foods I'd say of course not, because I eat yogurt, etc. But then people insist that they do when they have protein powder and packaged bacon and so on in their diaries. If I said I did not eat processed foods (even though I do eat a mostly whole foods diet just because of personal preference), I'd feel like a liar, so people who eat lots of processed (in my mind) stuff insisting they gave up processed foods because they stopped going to McDonalds (well, more than once a week) or
buying lots of frozen pot pies or whatever is confusing and makes communication so much harder, IMO.
I'm not trying to be critical, but more to understand. I don't find that people in my life have some clear meaning of "processed" that is different than what I think of as processed. They's probably say something like "I'm avoiding foods with additives" if that's what they meant (which is problematic too, as what additives, just salt is an additive, but still not the odd meaning of "processed" I see here).
I have always found the popular usage to mean Ultra Processed Foods.3 -
Yes, sodium benzoate is easy to pronounce...that one came to mind because I knew if off hand and didn't have to look it up to spell it.
Think of the old Bryers ice cream commercial with the little girl reading the ingredients. She reads the competition and can't pronounce the chemical names....she reads Bryers and reads "milk, cream, sugar..." This was my point.
It's important to understand what the ingredients are. I think that virtually all of the foods with lots of ingredients I buy premade have ingredients that are easy to pronounce AND things I understand what they are. I mean, Breyers, which is not the ice cream I prefer or one I think of as all that, is unquestionably processed, no?* And the ice cream I make at home -- which I do sometimes -- is every bit as much a food I should limit as a store-bought ice cream, no? So how is this even all that useful?
Again, I would personally feel like a liar saying that I don't eat processed foods, and so when someone asks about that I am kind of in a bind (like when someone asks if I'm born again and I think "well, under my definition, of course, but under yours, probably not"). I think I don't eat processed foods as they define it (based on my understanding of how the word gets used on MFP), but of course I really do -- and so do they! So I feel compelled to explain more and then we get into one of these silly debates.
The post from @ksharma frustrates me (although I like her quite a bit, she has smart things to say), because that IS NOT how I think people off MFP normally use the term and when I say "yes I eat processed foods, I eat smoked salmon and yogurt" I am not being difficult, I am trying to be as honest and clear as possible.
A second question is what is actually wrong with processed food, choosing perhaps something we'd all agree is processed, like some protein powder, or a Kind bar, or an Amy's frozen meal** (example of the ingredients from one chosen randomly: filtered water, organic corn, organic corn masa (organic stoneground corn, trace of lime), organic black beans, monterey jack cheese (pasteurized milk, culture, salt, enzymes [without animal enzymes or rennet]), olives, expeller pressed high oleic safflower and/or sunflower oil, organic tomato purée, organic onions, organic sweet rice flour, spices, sea salt, organic garlic, organic cilantro. contains milk).
*I'm currently into Jeni's when I get ice cream. Ingredients for the Middle West Whiskey Pecan, which also is unquestionably processed: Nonfat Milk, Cream, Cane Sugar, Roasted Pecans, Whiskey, Tapioca Starch, Sea Salt, Natural Flavors.
**I don't eat frozen meals, but I think they vary enormously in nutritional content.5 -
Cooking is processing. So is slicing, peeling, and chopping.6
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alabove2017 wrote: »When you hear the words processed foods what comes to mind. Food processing or package processing?
Neither. I ask myself whether it's tasty on it's own or do I need to do something to it to make it tasty AND, does a serving fit into my calorie goal (plus the usual, blah, blah, macro/micro, healthy, meeting nutritional needs).
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livingleanlivingclean wrote: »Yes, sodium benzoate is easy to pronounce...that one came to mind because I knew if off hand and didn't have to look it up to spell it.
Think of the old Bryers ice cream commercial with the little girl reading the ingredients. She reads the competition and can't pronounce the chemical names....she reads Bryers and reads "milk, cream, sugar..." This was my point.
She probably couldn't read or understand Shakespeare either. Should we avoid his plays?
You guys really are insultive...very mature. I have beyond a college education so I am well educated. Can I actually pronounce the names, yes. Most educated people can differentiate between a chemical name and quinoa. You guys can continue to eat FDA chemicals because they cause no harm. I will continue to avoid them and that is my choice.
Maybe I should have said difficult to pronounce for a 10 year old...but now you're going to complain with that analogy...there is no winning or common understanding with you guys so I'll stop trying.
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kshama2001 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »when I hear "processed food", I think of processing that adds a ton of preservatives to extend the food lifetime way beyond what more natural ways would achieve, or artificial flavouring and colouring to mask/alter significantly the taste, or using substitutes for other ingredients, either to make them more "trendy" or usually to cut the costs.
I find this interesting, because I simply would not assume the word is used in such a limited way, it makes no sense to me. And as I said above, I think to the types of processed foods I eat or use, which are mostly more lightly processed or about preparation vs. addition of preservatives (not that I think there's anything inherently wrong with preservatives, and traditionally it's such things as salt, plus smoking, canning, pickling and related ingredients).
I wonder when the popular usage started shifting so that some people think "processed" refers to a much smaller portion of foods than it does.
I find this usage really frustrating, because if someone asked me if I avoid processed foods I'd say of course not, because I eat yogurt, etc. But then people insist that they do when they have protein powder and packaged bacon and so on in their diaries. If I said I did not eat processed foods (even though I do eat a mostly whole foods diet just because of personal preference), I'd feel like a liar, so people who eat lots of processed (in my mind) stuff insisting they gave up processed foods because they stopped going to McDonalds (well, more than once a week) or
buying lots of frozen pot pies or whatever is confusing and makes communication so much harder, IMO.
I'm not trying to be critical, but more to understand. I don't find that people in my life have some clear meaning of "processed" that is different than what I think of as processed. They's probably say something like "I'm avoiding foods with additives" if that's what they meant (which is problematic too, as what additives, just salt is an additive, but still not the odd meaning of "processed" I see here).
I have always found the popular usage to mean Ultra Processed Foods.
And I have not. If I told someone I knew I didn't eat processed foods while eating a homemade pasta dish with some cheese on it (also veg and lean meat), I imagine they'd poke a bit of fun.
This is despite the fact that neither the dried pasta I used nor the cheese would be "processed" in the weird sense it gets used by some.
So I'd feel like a liar to claim I do not eat processed foods and it causes me dissonance when people who clearly do insist they do not (especially when they usually ate, until last week, ultra processed foods I never ever ate and are specifically referring to cutting out those things).
I am confused by this in part because I did go through a stage where I tried to avoid all foods not processed by me, and it was HARD and made things pointlessly hard for me, and I absolutely did worry about things like cheese and flour.1
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