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Are Processed Foods "Bad"?

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  • L1zardQueen
    L1zardQueen Posts: 8,754 Member
    edited May 2018
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    tennisdude2004 wrote: »
    Was it chronic inflammation?

    Chronic or acute? What is chronic inflammation? Eating a diet with saturated fat in one's diet is a cause.
  • singingflutelady
    singingflutelady Posts: 8,736 Member
    edited May 2018
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    My diet has never changed my CRP and/or ESR #s. Actually they went down on the most processed food you could have (TPN)
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    Anyone who eats Quinoa is eating a processed food as it naturally has a bitter tasting soapy layer (likely an evolutionary development to discourage grazing). The prepackaged Quinoa has been prewashed to remove this unpleasant soapy layer.

    Junk food or treats are what I have after my nutritional needs are met (and I have the calories to spare). A square of dark chocolate is nice. Or a few cheezies. Because they taste so good.

    Sometimes I extend my pleasure by eating a low calorie version of a favoured treat, like chai tea dusted with cinnamon and cocoa, or a couple cups of air popped popcorn.
  • L1zardQueen
    L1zardQueen Posts: 8,754 Member
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    tennisdude2004 wrote: »
    L1zardQueen wrote: »
    tennisdude2004 wrote: »
    Was it chronic inflammation?

    Chronic or acute? What is chronic inflammation? Eating a diet with saturated fat in one's diet is a cause.

    Do you have studies to back up that claim?

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20071648
  • kpsyche
    kpsyche Posts: 345 Member
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    L1zardQueen wrote: »
    tennisdude2004 wrote: »
    L1zardQueen wrote: »
    tennisdude2004 wrote: »
    Was it chronic inflammation?

    Chronic or acute? What is chronic inflammation? Eating a diet with saturated fat in one's diet is a cause.

    Do you have studies to back up that claim?

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20071648

    I'm not sure what that has to do with chronic inflammation... but besides that the (meta)-study concludes that
    [...] there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD.
    (emphasis mine)

    So that study doesn't support anything except that saturated fat might not have anything to do with CVD or CHD at all

  • dra760
    dra760 Posts: 55 Member
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    pzarnosky wrote: »
    ladyhusker39 wrote: »
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    Some processed foods are great. Some are pretty calorie heavy and nutrient poor.

    Can't make a blanket statement

    I don't usually see people who claim to avoid processed foods to distinguish between the ones that are "great" and the one that are calorie heavy and nutrient poor.

    Besides, what's wrong with a delicious piece of cake on occasion esp if it's within the context of an overall balanced diet?

    There is absolutely nothing wrong with a delicious piece of cake every so often. The problem is people by nature are wired to suck at moderation. Understand that from an evolutionary aspect, to encourage our survival we are wired to crave and desire sugar, fat, and salt laden foods. This is where processed foods begin to spiral downward for a lot of people. The term "processed" doesn't mean it's inherently bad. Ground flax seeds are technically processed. For those of us who choose to minimize processed foods we are looking at the nutritional effects of the processing and overall product. White vs whole grain wheat is a decent example. Complete removal of the germ and endosperm from the wheat kernel results in it becoming devoid of micronutrients. That's where enrichment starts to come in. Enrichment of vitamins is great, but you still lose phytochemicals by stripping 2/3 of the kernel away. This is a pretty simple example but yes there are nutritional concerns with processed foods. The frozen meals, potato chips, crackers, packaged cereals, pre-flavored rice and noodle packets, etc. are all highly processed and typically filled with at least one of the three crave worthy flavors I listed above. Sadly, because they are often so tasty, it actually encourages and makes it harder for us to stop eating. The how's and why's of that are still being investigated and it is largely pointing to how your microbiome changes while you eat. Overall, calories are still king and even if you eat a processed diet, if you keep your calories in check you should be able to gain, lose, or maintain weight as you choose. For health though, overall, processed foods come with concerns.

    For me, I stick to minimal processing. Buying things like nuts already out of the shell, ground flax seeds, etc. What I don't like is feeling like something has control over me. It's why I quit smoking. I do not like food cravings and I struggled with them for a long time. When I stick to my non-processed way of eating, (which is also plant centered for my main source of all nutrients) my cravings vanish within a few days and that is amazing to me. What I've been noticing and finding interesting also is that when a holiday comes around and I eat the more processed foods (sweets especially) I end up with cravings again for a few days.

    happens to me too...once i eat sweets again i start craving them. and chips. :)
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
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    VUA21 wrote: »
    Unless one is actually allergic to a food, no food is "bad". It's about the balance of getting vitamins/nutrients while at a caloric level that fits your goals. If you normally eat nutrient dense/low calorie foods, having junk food isn't bad. Also, there are different levels of processing that goes into food. Milk from the supermarket is processed food, so is bread, and vitamins. "Processed" is just a vague term that has many different meanings and levels that you shouldn't focus on too much.

    I think that's where the communication line tends to turn into some weird game of telephone. When you say "no food is bad" it automatically translates into "eating nothing but junk is as good as eating nutritious foods". Any explanation used after that just evaporates as if it didn't exist.

    I was thinking, how do we improve communication on this particular subject? I still don't have a good answer. Maybe meet in the middle instead: there are bad foods, but that "badness" is not universal and needs context to be determined?
  • Momepro
    Momepro Posts: 1,509 Member
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    ladyhusker39 wrote: »
    tennisdude2004 wrote: »
    Processed foods containing trans fats or partially hydrogenated oils are not great for you. But consumed in moderation they are not 'bad'.

    There are plenty of processed foods in the market which are much 'less' healthy than they should be and contain high levels of inflammatory food - these are not helpful to the things like joint pain or healthy cholesterol. But again moderation is the key.

    I'm just curious, what do you mean by "inflammatory foods"?

    ETA: That's another term I've seem a lot but don't actually know what it means.

    I know others have a different meaning, but for me something is an "inflammatory food" only if I break out in hives or have an ibs attack.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,085 Member
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    amusedmonkey wrote: »
    VUA21 wrote: »
    Unless one is actually allergic to a food, no food is "bad". It's about the balance of getting vitamins/nutrients while at a caloric level that fits your goals. If you normally eat nutrient dense/low calorie foods, having junk food isn't bad. Also, there are different levels of processing that goes into food. Milk from the supermarket is processed food, so is bread, and vitamins. "Processed" is just a vague term that has many different meanings and levels that you shouldn't focus on too much.

    I think that's where the communication line tends to turn into some weird game of telephone. When you say "no food is bad" it automatically translates into "eating nothing but junk is as good as eating nutritious foods". Any explanation used after that just evaporates as if it didn't exist.

    I was thinking, how do we improve communication on this particular subject? I still don't have a good answer. Maybe meet in the middle instead: there are bad foods, but that "badness" is not universal and needs context to be determined?

    I like your objective, but don't know how to get there.

    To a black and white thinker - which I fear includes many inclined to become "bad food/good food" advocates - I think badness is just bad. There is no contextualization needed or possible.

    "Is" is a tricky word: Identity/equivalence, class membership, and the possessing of attributes, among others. "That tree is a plant" and "that tree is green" have similar form, very different meanings. Abstractions are equally tricky: Almost the whole point is to leave out some nuance or specificity.

    What does it mean, to whom, to say a food is bad?

    Sadly, I think there's little point in careful language when many parties to a conversation don't consider meaning carefully: "Processed" and "natural" are two witnesses. I'm not sure how to find common ground when abstractions are fuzzily defined yet still demonized.

  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited May 2018
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    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    amusedmonkey wrote: »
    VUA21 wrote: »
    Unless one is actually allergic to a food, no food is "bad". It's about the balance of getting vitamins/nutrients while at a caloric level that fits your goals. If you normally eat nutrient dense/low calorie foods, having junk food isn't bad. Also, there are different levels of processing that goes into food. Milk from the supermarket is processed food, so is bread, and vitamins. "Processed" is just a vague term that has many different meanings and levels that you shouldn't focus on too much.

    I think that's where the communication line tends to turn into some weird game of telephone. When you say "no food is bad" it automatically translates into "eating nothing but junk is as good as eating nutritious foods". Any explanation used after that just evaporates as if it didn't exist.

    I was thinking, how do we improve communication on this particular subject? I still don't have a good answer. Maybe meet in the middle instead: there are bad foods, but that "badness" is not universal and needs context to be determined?

    I like your objective, but don't know how to get there.

    To a black and white thinker - which I fear includes many inclined to become "bad food/good food" advocates - I think badness is just bad. There is no contextualization needed or possible.

    "Is" is a tricky word: Identity/equivalence, class membership, and the possessing of attributes, among others. "That tree is a plant" and "that tree is green" have similar form, very different meanings. Abstractions are equally tricky: Almost the whole point is to leave out some nuance or specificity.

    What does it mean, to whom, to say a food is bad?

    Sadly, I think there's little point in careful language when many parties to a conversation don't consider meaning carefully: "Processed" and "natural" are two witnesses. I'm not sure how to find common ground when abstractions are fuzzily defined yet still demonized.

    I don't actually think the problem is a genuine difficulty with communication, as I've seen it explained as carefully and clearly as possible, and then someone PRETENDING to think the other is saying that eating only donuts is fine or some such. Maybe I'm just less nice or less patient than you and amusedmonkey, but IMO the kind of response amusedmonkey speaks of, given all the clarifications, just HAS to be bad faith, question is why? I think it's that they know they have no response, but get some ego boost from claiming to avoid processed foods or eat clean or what not (they get off on thinking that the rest of us must eat very poorly, since it's unimaginable to them that if you don't say foods are "bad" that you wouldn't then overeat them). Hmm, maybe it's that they secretly think the foods they have identified as good are undesirable and can't imagine anyone eating them willingly, without telling them that eating anything else will make them fat and dead? Don't know. But as I've said before, I'm just at the end of my rope with the fact that facts no longer seem to matter to a huge percentage of people and so I am ready to recognize it's not honest confusion.

    But that disagreement aside, it seems to me that there's no conflict between saying individual foods aren't "bad" but that you shouldn't eat only donuts, since diets can be good or bad. A good diet contains all the nutrients you need and does not contain excess calories or excess other foods that can be problems in excess (sat fat being one such example, others likely depend on the person, some would need to avoid excess sodium, so on). Mostly if a diet has all you need and a diverse set of foods, you don't really have to worry about getting too much (I do think too much added sugar/sweets may be an issue, but in a nutrient-sufficient, calorie-appropriate diet, you aren't eating enough on a daily basis for it to be an issue, so it's adequate to say "eat a good diet").

    And, as you and I agree on, it is my view that we probably don't know all the things that make foods that diets have contained for a long time, and which we now see have positive health correlations, good for us, so this is a reason to generally prefer the whole food to replacing it with just a vitamin (or perhaps protein powder) -- although this does not make vitamins or protein powder bad, just using them as your main source of those things. Thus, in my view a good diet does have a variety of whole foods or things that are made from whole foods (because that they are processed by someone else -- like the salad in a jar I bought from Farm Fresh yesterday (a vending machine) or, say, a wrap from Pret or those soups from Safeway we were discussing recently -- doesn't somehow remove the nutrients. Depending on the item it might, or might not, mean there's more of something you wish to consume in smaller amounts so may mean you need to cut back on that from other sources or not have whatever it is daily.
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
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    I don't think most people intentionally try to create conflict when they make such statements. Food beliefs are core beliefs for some people because they can have some moral undertones and people want to believe the choices they make for their life are thoughtful and impactful. Challenging these thoughts and choices almost feels like a personal attack. When the core beliefs of someone are being challenged it's natural and expected to put up walls and blind yourself to some of what is being said to avoid this uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. This can manifest in genuine misunderstanding, or in defensiveness.

    That's why I'm trying (and failing) to think of ways to communicate without directly opposing, but meeting in the middle and redirecting the conversation to a point of agreement. For example, I have stopped telling people junk food isn't junk or that cheating isn't cheating. I just use the words they chose to use. Not going to derail a discussion for semantics because that never ends well, but then I then try to redirect the conversation to something we both agree on like nutrients or share strategies I have come across to manage all kinds of what one would call cheating...etc.

    @AnnPT77 is right, though. Careful language may not have the expected impact when so many terms are poorly defined and gut-feely. "I feel this food is good for me, so it's good, I'm making the right choice. That other food doesn't feel right because the chemicals in it didn't grow on trees, so I will call it processed (because that's a bad word), unnatural, and not a choice I would want to make for my family"

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