Are ‘healthy’ Processed Foods Good or Bad?

1. Background

Are ‘healthy’ processed foods good or bad?

Are there really ‘healthy’ processed foods?

In 1950s, things began to change when the idea of faster and shortcuts foods became usual. Today, nearly 80% of processed foods in the world contain genetically modified ingredients. These processed foods are full of flavors, sweeteners and artificial colors, which stabilized with chemical preservatives and trans. Food then and now are not the same, because the processed foods the nutrition of food has changed that causes many cancer, disease and sickness increase compared to the past decade people who have clean and natural food habit.

According to International Food Information Council defined processed food is that processing any deliberate changes in food before available to eat, which is not in the condition of "raw food commodity". Processed foods can be as simple as drying and freezing to preserve freshness and nutrients or as complex as formulating a frozen food with right balance of ingredients and nutrients. The processed foods can be divided into several categories of the varying degrees of processing, which are minimally, medium and heavily processed foods.

Minimally processed foods are often merely simply pre-prepared for people convenience such as cut vegetables, bagged spinach and roasted nuts. Besides, those foods processed lock in nutritional quality and freshness include canned tomatoes, beans and tuna. Those foods with ingredients that added flavor and texture such as colors, spices and preservatives which include yogurt, salad dressing and juices. For the heavily processed food, which are those ready to eat food and pre made meals such as crackers and microwaveable dinners.

For “healthy” processed food, it beneficial to human body but it depends. For example, yogurt, juices, milk, whole-wheat food are processed food with iron, fiber, vitamin D and calcium while fiber may add in breakfast cereal. Besides, there are some minimally processed “healthy” food such as pre-cut vegetables are quality and convenience food for busy people today. These bagged vegetables are actually helping people eat more vegetables. (Giancoli, 2015) For those busy people, they might choose to pay more for the bagged vegetables to eat.