The Dangers of Processed Foods
The Dangers of Processed Foods
How to Remove Them From Your Diet?
Processed food, as we know it today, arrived in the first half of the 20th century. That's when food engineers figured out how to use modified potato starch to form pork, ham, sugar, water and sodium nitrate into a pliable gelatinous blob that would fit into a rectangular tin emblazoned with the word "Spam." Two World Wars, the Space Race and increasing consumer demand for fast meals with a long shelf life that could support the lifestyle of the expanding middle class financed the scientific efforts necessary to give us spray drying, evaporation, freeze-drying and a sophisticated understanding of how to make a decent tasting cupcake you can put on a shelf and still eat two years later. By the early 2000s, Americans were getting more than half of their calories from chicken nuggets, artificially sweetened canned food, potato chips and other manmade concoctions.
Nutritionists didn't create a language to describe this trend until 2009. That year, Carlos A. Monteiro, a professor of nutrition at the University of Sao Paulo, introduced the "NOVA Food Classification system," a novel grouping of foods based not on their nutritional content but according to the extent and purpose of the physical, biological and chemical processes applied to them after they were separated from nature.
He coined the term "ultra-processed" (as opposed to "minimally processed" or simply "processed") to refer to "industrial formulations made entirely or mostly from substances extracted from foods (oils, fats, sugar, starch and proteins), derived from food constituents (hydrogenated fats and modified starch), or synthesized in laboratories from food substrates or other organic sources (such as flavor enhancers, colors and food additives used to make the product hyper-palatable). Monteira excluded foods that had been exposed to simple processes like drying, fermentation, pasteurization or other processes that might subtract part of the food (frozen vegetables, dried pasta or eggs). He also carved out exceptions for products manufactured by industry with the use of salt, sugar, oil or other substances added to natural or minimally processed foods to preserve or to make them more palatable, but that could still be recognized as versions of the original foods - usually foods that had just two or three ingredients (such as beef jerky, or freshly made bread).
Ultra-processed food, by contrast, was meant to include Frankenstein-like creations that were often made up of added sugar, salt, fat and starches extracted from natural occurring foods and then blended with artificial colors, flavors and stabilizers to hold it all together. Soft drinks, hot dogs, cold cuts, packaged cookies and salty snacks like pretzel rods all qualified, as did many frozen dinners and canned entrees.
"They are not food," Monteiro says. "They are formulations. They contain chemical compounds that do not belong to food - that should not belong to foods."
Fructose, one of the most commonly used sweeteners, is now present in many foods at concentrations unheard of in nature, according Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist affiliated with UC San Francisco and author of Metabolical, about the dangers of processed food. In recent years, studies have shown that fructose destroys or inactivates several key enzymes needed for the healthy functioning of mitochondria, the power plants in human cells that convert simple sugars into ATP, the form of energy we use to carry out the functions of the human body and brain.
Sugar isn't even the worst problem in the American diet. More damaging still is the consumption of processed grains, used in corn flakes, white bread and many other products. These grains are stripped of their outer shell, known as the "bran," and their inner germ, which contains fiber, fatty acids and nutrients, leaving only the carbohydrates. The human body digests these liberated carbohydrates much faster than when they're locked inside the grains.
"Instead of sitting in the stomach and gradually being broken down into glucose, it begins to break down as soon as it gets to your mouth and is almost fully digested by the time it has moved through the stomach, and all absorbed by the time it gets to your small bowel," says Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and dean of the nutrition department at Tufts University.
This rapid digestion starves the gut bacteria, which we rely on for healthy functioning of the digestive system, leading to increased gut permeability that in turn may allow bacteria and toxins to enter the bloodstream and cause widespread inflammation, a factor in a wide variety of diseases such as celiac disease, diabetes, asthma, Alzheimer's and cancer.
After researching processed foods for this article as well as other articles I have written, I discovered this is big business; you may be shocked to learn that Ultra-processed foods have something in common with nicotine: Some of the biggest producers of processed foods were, from the 1980s to the end of the 2000s, known as Big Tobacco. In 1985, RJ Reynolds acquired Nabisco for $4.9 billion, and Phillip Morris acquired General Foods in a $5.75 billion deal that was then the largest takeover in U.S. history outside of the oil industry. Phillip Morris added Kraft to its portfolio in 1988 and rebranded itself as Altria in 2003. (RJR flipped Nabisco to Phillip Morris in 2000, which in turn spun off Kraft from its international tobacco business in 2007.)
Nobody is under any illusions that solutions will come easy. In recent years, public health officials have launched major campaigns to deal with what many consider to be the lowest hanging fruit: regulations to reduce soda consumption through taxes and limitations on how federal and state food assistance can be spent, among other measures. The food industry, which has poured tens of millions of dollars into lobbying, campaign contributions and influencing public opinion, has fought back ferociously.
What you can do - Start the “process” of removing processed food from your diet. In recent years evidence has emerged linking the pathological brain activation patterns seen in drug addicts to those seen in many obese research subjects and compulsive overeaters.
I hope this article is a solid wake-up call for anyone reading it. I feel it is imperative that we realize we must be our own advocates at all times. I will leave you with a quote from author Michal Pollan: “If it came from a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, don’t.”
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Kim Duke is a certified personal trainer and owner of Core Performance Fitness and Training, located at 55 Bristol Lane, Ellicottville, NY. Kim resides in Ellicottville where she raised her two sons, Zach and Nik. For more information about her studio visit her Facebook page or www.coreperformancefitness.com. Kim can be reached directly at 716-698-1198.
