With more and more people switching to vegetarian and vegan fake meats, I'd be interested in understanding what is the wisdom on highly processed vegetable-based foods.
But, Humans tend to take things too far, and inventing new ways of processing is really fun! So, most food today is over-processed. It’s acceptable to grind, dice, tear, smash, smush, squeeze, ferment, spice, salt, and cook veggies, lightly. Any more than that is risky territory.
I would hardly qualified lets say smoked bacon as processed food in that sense. But all of those microwave ready meals et al. large content of it is cheap filler masqueraded as actual product.
“Microwave ready meals” are typically just pre-cooked meals prepared for reheating - they’re probably not the best meals in terms of ingredient quality or cooking methods, and low-quality ones might have some plant starches as filler, but most of them are pretty straightforward.
Actually, most meat nowadays is injected with huge amounts of sodium. It’s like we’re all eating log term storage foods-even that raw meats.
But I just took a look in my freezer at two bog-standard ready meals I have there just in case - macaroni and cheese, and a beef lasagne. They’re each about 1.5g of salt, and there’s nothing notable about the ingredients.
NHS guidelines in the UK are <6g of salt (2400mg sodium) per day. US guidelines are 2300mg. Salt and sodium are not the same; 1.5g of salt is about 600mg sodium, or about 1/4 of the recommended daily limit. That seems entirely reasonable for a main meal.
Smoked bacon is exactly the sort of thing they warn to eat sparingly because it is a highly processed food. It doesn't really matter that we've been making it for some time, it is still highly processed. I'd argue that most of it has added chemicals and things like the meat you describe upfront. Even without, the actual curing and smoking is what makes it more harmful.
Hm cooked food maybe; processed food, not really, at least according to the current definition of it.
https://www.foodindustry.com/articles/the-4-categories-of-pr...
I just really believe, that for the most part my body knows the best whats good for him. I just have to really pay attention. So sugar might taste good, but my body does not feel good, when eating too much of it. Meat is good, but only if it is good meat and not too much (meat that did not suffer too much and pushed with medicaments).
So balanced diet, lots of vegetables ... the classical recommendation, seems right.
I already addressed the first part in another comment in this thread. I wanted to point out that the "protein" argument is dated and uninformed. Protein is everywhere, grains, nuts, seeds and vegetables. It does not need to be "extracted" through some external process, it occurs naturally and can be used by your body. Also no one "struggled" with this, huge populations of the planet have been getting protein from plants for a long time before modern fake meat.
Easy less processed food, and lots of fruit, veg, fiber, and protein from whatever source you like. That's the key to a healthy diet.
You have to try really hard to be unhealthy if you eat unprocessed meat, veggies, grains and stick to the basics. It's what millions of years of evolution engineered our body for. Not 300gr of smoked bacon every morning and 1L of fruit juice per day.