I kinda believe it but it’s real “chemicals!!” sort of generality. I can imagine a granola bar being less bad than like… my grandma’s paté
Look down the aisles of a store. If it's in a box, or a bag, it's probably based on processed carbs.
Disclosure: Biased diabetic who has struggled with management, and now "strictly" (with the best of intentions) limits processed carbs. Bread of any kind, especially. Toss the hamburger bun, for example. And it's worked, with help from meds.
https://www.lhsfna.org/index.cfm/lifelines/may-2019/the-many...
It's not that it's "processed" necessarily. Your grandmother processes fresh pumpkin to turn it into pumpkin soup, and that's still healthy, nutritious, and delicious.
The problem with food from Cargill. Nestle, Pepsico, Kraft, Unilever, Kellog, General Mills and the like is the added sugar, added fat, and added salt in every can, box, jar, bottle and packet they sell in supermarkets.
Read the labels. They'll tell you how much sugar, fat and salt is in every 100g of product.
If its more than 2g of sugar per 100g, you're being manipulated to crave and buy more.
Check the ketchup and the breakfast cereal labels. Compare the sugar in those to the sugar in Coke. What do you find?
How much sugar is listed in the label for your granola bar?
Take sausages. These have been around for ages but are, technically, processed. Are these now bad? They seem to pass the lindy test.
high salt and/or sugar content foods, whether processed or not, is probably not great for you.
It's just that "processed foods" usually have extra flavourings added (such as salt) to enhance it, for sale purposes.
So instead of targeting processed foods, the targeting for healthy eating should be portion size and amount, followed by freshness.
The vitamins may have leached into the water, but toss that water into a soup and you're good.
I don't think freshness matters much at all. Flour certainly doesn't need to be fresh to make good bread.
People underrate canned veggies in regards to healthy eating. They're really not bad at all from a health perspective, and can often taste very fresh.
Pineapples, pears, peaches are great canned. Artichoke, corn, beans, string beans, spinach, and tomatoes are also good canned products in my experience.
I'm not hating on fresh: big leafy Romaine Lettuce is best fresh, as are onions. But certain foods hold really well in a can, and its extremely convenient to mix-and-match storage strategies. (Ex: Use that Romaine Lettuce for salads this week, and canned corn next week)
Yes, fresh eggs taste better. But fresh flour? Not really. grains, beans, flour, rice... these "preserved" foods can last months or even well into a year or longer.
Not a great example to make your point because processed meats (specifically, cured meats) are carcinogenic. [0]
> Are these now bad?
Colorectal cancer has always been bad. The difference is that we have more data now.
If you don’t change your assumptions and biases with new data, you will be stuck in the past. Blood letting would have passed the lindy test throughout the 18th century.
[0] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2015/11/03/repo...
Your linked source claims processed meats can cause a 18% increased incidence of colorectal cancer. The CDC [0] says rates of those cancers are 36.5 per 100,000, or 0.03%. Since some of those people undoubtedly eat processed meat, lets assume the cancer rate is 0.025% for people who don't eat processed meats.
For me, those numbers really dont move the needle - its highly unlikely to get colorectal cancer and abstaining from processed meats doesnt really change the rate much at all. There are probably other good arguments in favor of not eating these foods, but cancer doesnt appear to be one of them.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/colorectal/statistics/index.htm
One obvious difference is time and fineness. The machine will grind it significant smaller than your teethes. And processed meat from machines has far longer time to sit and change.
Some other reasons are that processed food is usually not just the meat itself. but a mass that is mixed and enriched with several other elements. And in the money-driven food-industry they are usually not the most healthy things.
From what I gather you shouldn't consider that as a strict rule. It's more a rule of tendencies. Less processed food tends to have more fiber, less sugar, less calorie density. There are exceptions, and obviously it's sometimes debatable what counts as "more processed".
But despite these inaccuracies, it's probably a good simple guidance in a field where there's a lot of uncertainty.