Processed Foods - These two words are enough to keep most health and fitness enthusiasts running on the hills. These are the first foods people will tell you to avoid when looking to eat healthier, and there are reasons for this; foods that we often think of as "processed," such as potato chips, cookies, and candy, are more likely to have added sugars, sweeteners, and more calories for lower nutritional value.
But that doesn't mean that all processed foods are unhealthy or "bad." According to the USDA, "processed foods" are all foods that have been mechanically modified from their natural state. Pre-washed bagged spinach, pre-cut broccoli, canned beans, frozen fruit - all of these and healthier foods are technically processed. Many of us forget, which is why we were glad to see this recent Instagram post from dietitian Cara Harbstreet, MS, LD, of Street Smart Nutrition.
"Friendly reminder that processing is what makes most food edible," Cara wrote in the post. "Eating" processed foods "is not a bad thing." In the caption, he went on to explain that one of the main pillars of many diets was "the vilification of processed foods. Not only can I not settle for the holiest implication that eating unprocessed / pure / whole foods is somehow better." he continued, "but I can't understand this total disregard for all the ways that processing turns raw ingredients into edible, nutritious and tasty foods.
Cara told POPSUGAR that the term "treatment" is often taken out of context in the world of health and wellness. "While it once touched on steps to improve taste, storage stability or nutrition, it is now seen as a negative thing to avoid." Processing, he added, is what can make food "affordable, nutritious and accessible to everyone, at any time of the year." Surrounding it with negative connotations can introduce unwarranted feelings of mistrust, shame, or even fear.
"The purpose of this post was to remind people that food is not a moral choice, and that eating in a certain way does not make them 'good' or 'bad' anyone," Cara said. This is one of the guiding principles of intuitive eating, a practice that Cara refers to in her article. Foods, processed and unprocessed, are not all "nutritionally equivalent," he writes in the caption, "but ... they are morally equivalent." Do certain treatments change the nutritional content of a food? Yes, Cara wrote, "but it doesn't make you a bad person if you eat it, and it doesn't mean you're harming your health." It's an idea that can help all of us heal our relationships with food, whether it's processed or not.
Image Source: Getty / Granger Wootz
