Proccessed Foods
ShortRound82
Posts: 84 Member
When you hear the words processed foods what comes to mind. Food processing or package processing?
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Replies
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Anything that happens to a food after it is picked or separated in some way from the animal source is processing.
Some processing is good and makes for fine products (think things like cottage cheese, yogurt), and other processing makes food that's fun and enjoyable but isn't super nutrient dense (like Reese's cups).
Avoiding "processed" foods is "in" right now, but I find it's a meaningless metric that unnecessarily demonizes perfectly good foods.36 -
Food processing3
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I think about food processing, something that has been altered where it's no longer one ingredient (i.e: veggies, fruits, meats, cereals, legumes, etc) instead it's in a package and has ingredient and nutritional content7
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GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »Anything that happens to a food after it is picked or separated in some way from the animal source is processing.
Some processing is good and makes for fine products (think things like cottage cheese, yogurt), and other processing makes food that's fun and enjoyable but isn't super nutrient dense (like Reese's cups).
Avoiding "processed" foods is "in" right now, but I find it's a meaningless metric that unnecessarily demonizes perfectly good foods.
Well said, agree 100%.
Makes you think, though...we have a food processor in our kitchen at home. So if I use that to prepare a meal, does that mean it's now processed food???
O Noes!!!1!1!116 -
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.16
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Food processing. Mainly because I have no clue what package processing would be.
And I tend to think of the foods that are processed that I eat: cheese, Fage plain greek yogurt, goat's kefir (new favorite), smoked salmon, canned black soy beans, bacon (I get it from a farm, but still), dried pasta, olive oil. Or maybe grabbing a lunch at Pret or a salad at Protein Bar or something at Snap Kitchen on occasion. I had a Kind bar yesterday, so that too.1 -
I think about food processing, something that has been altered where it's no longer one ingredient (i.e: veggies, fruits, meats, cereals, legumes, etc) instead it's in a package and has ingredient and nutritional content
Plain old oats have been processed and are often in a package with nutritional and ingredient contents (ingredients = oats).
And they are in fact processed.
And, of course, if I make a salad and put it in a container and bring it to a picnic, it has more than one ingredient. If I bring gazpacho, it's not only more than one ingredient, but I probably used the food processor, as Anvil points out!4 -
Unless you drink from a cows teet, milk is processed food. Everything that is food that is not in it's raw form is processed. This doesn't necessarily mean bad, just that someone has done something to it and has changed it from it's raw state.
Learn to read labels. Some "processing" is literally mashing the hell out of then putting in a jar. I have peanut butter with the following ingredients: peanuts. It's still processed food.5 -
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.2 -
I mean, unless you are growing and picking your own veg, drying your beans, slaughtering and butchering your meat, making your own cheese and butter etc etc etc then pretty much everything you consume is processed in one way or another.
The recent application of the term processed seems to mean anything we can demonise because it's freeze dried or an end product. Like flavoured pasta meals in boxes or packets, ready meals, breads, cakes, potato chips. Basically anything we can apply a moral judgement to for being "bad".
Personally IDGAF and have all of the above in my diet. Pre-packaged food has fine nutrition, I'm not going to do it again but I've shared many times products and their ingredients list that some people think are terrible when in actual fact they are near identical to the same thing made at home.12 -
First thing that comes to mind when I first hear this phrase is "here we go again...", but for some reason when I hear it I picture sausages, I have no idea why. Maybe because we used a food processor to prepare the meat when we made sausages before we bought a meat grinder?8
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I think "processed has absolutely no association with the healthiness"11
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Likes of?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.
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.4 -
I see processed food as anything that comes in a form other than how it grew . . . sort of. I don't see cuts of meat or even ground meat as processed and I don't see frozen veggies as processed (canned veggies, yes).
Foods that are all or partially prepared before purchasing in order to save the cook time (bread, frozen dinners, instant oatmeal, bags or boxes of dried pasta, Moon Pies, Bisquick, Protein powder or bars, etc. are "convenience foods".
I limit my convenience foods because I like to cook. I have no trouble fitting them into my calorie and nutrition goals. I don't care one way or another if something is processed.
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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.1 -
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.
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Technically most food is processed, but 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.
So, technically all yoghurt is processed, but what comes to mind when I think of processed yoghurt is some sort of dairy-based dessert, held together with gelative and with some artifical flavouring and sweeteners.
In the same way, I would not considered fresh ground meat processed, although obviously it is, but I would considered canned meat processed.
I am pretty sure that in real life and not MFP (at least where I live) my definition of "processed" is very mainstream
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Whether or not it's good for you, sodium benzoate is extremely easy to pronounce.
Some people, on the other hand, struggle with quinoa.17 -
Food processing, anything that has been modified so it has more than one ingredient in it (like the previous example of rolled oats, the oats would still be natural as long as it's just the oats in the packaging, but add sugar or salt it becomes processed).2
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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
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