Processed foods do not always have a detrimental effect on he alth. Some processed products have a good composition. However, there is a group of highly processed and ultra-processed foods that have undergone so many processing processes that it has no nutritional value. Find out what exactly processed foods are and how they affect your he alth.
Processed foodis food that has undergone any processing, that is, processes that change the composition and properties of the product. Food processing can take place in households, e.g. when grinding raw meat and then preparing meatballs from it.
The food industry is based on food processing processes, producing semi-finished products or even ready-to-eat meals. Food can undergo a very different number of processing processes. Hence, a distinction is made betweenprocessed foods ,highly processed , and evenultra processed .
Food processing purposes are:
- making it possible to use it as food, e.g. roasting meat
- increased shelf life, e.g. freezing, pickling, smoking, preserving
- improved digestibility, e.g. cooking, extrusion
- meeting consumer requirements, e.g. adding yellow color to cheeses.
Processed foods - examples
Not all processed foods are harmful. Some of the processed products have good ingredients and are characterized by high nutritional value. However, there are groups of products included in the ultra-processed food category that have undergone so many processing processes that they basically provide the body with nothing but energy. Ultra processed foods include:
- colored drinks, carbonated drinks
- sweets: candies, bars, cookies, wafers, jellies, marshmallows, etc.
- ice cream
- chips
- crackers, sticks
- sweetened breakfast cereals
- hard margarines
- very cheap meat products, e.g. sausages for PLN 6 / kg
- ready-to-eat meals, e.g. breaded nuggets
- instant dishes, e.g. powdered soups, mashed potatoes to pour boiling water
- fast food
Processed foods - impact on he alth
Food with a high degreeProcessed foods, and in particular ultra-processed foods, are foods with little nutritional value and typically only provide sugar, s alt, low-quality fat and calories.
One study conducted in Canada showed that in the study group, almost 50% of the energy supplied to the body during the day came from ultra-processed foods. This allows us to loosely conclude that in highly developed societies the amount of highly processed food in the diet is very significant and, of course, too much.
It is well known that a he althy diet based on vegetables, fish, eggs, nuts and low-processed products with a short composition (e.g. whole grains, fermented dairy products) positively correlates with life expectancy, reducing the risk of heart disease, diabetes and obesity.
A he althy diet limits hydrogenated trans fats, sugar, glucose-fructose syrup, s alt, white flour and artificial additives - all those ingredients that are the basis of highly processed foods. There is a widespread belief among nutritionists and people interested in the topic that highly processed food contributes to weight gain and deterioration of he alth in many respects.
Studies show a relationship between the consumption of ultra-processed foods and obesity, higher fasting glucose, metabolic syndrome, increases in total and LDL cholesterol and the risk of hypertension.
One of the newest studies investigated the direct effect of highly processed foods on body weight.
Caloric intake and changes in body weight were analyzed. 20 people took part in the study - 10 women and 10 men. Each participant spent 28 days at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, United States, following a 14-day diet of low-processed and highly processed foods.
Both diets consisted of 3 meals and snacks. The individual meals in both diets contained the same amount of calories, carbohydrate, fat, sugar, and fiber. The participants were allowed to eat as much as they thought was appropriate for them. The conclusions from the study are very interesting and thought-provoking.
During the two-week high-processed diet, the respondents ate about 500 calories more per day than on the low-processed diet. Highly processed foods, the subjects ate faster and had a much greater problem stopping the meal. On a highly processed diet, participants gained an average weight of 1 kg, while on a low processed diet, participants lost about 1 kg.
Highly processed foods can also be associated withincreased risk of cardiovascular disease. A study from the University of Paris that followed the diet of 105,000 people for an average of 5 years found an association between the consumption of ultra-processed foods and the risk of cardiovascular disease.
The study found that a 10% increase in caloric intake from ultra-processed foods is associated with a 12% increase in the risk of congestion, heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases.
In this large, prospective observational study, higher consumption of ultra-processed foods was associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular, coronary, and cerebrovascular disease. However, these results need to be confirmed in other populations and environments, and a causal relationship remains to be established.
There is still a lack of research that will unequivocally prove that it is the degree of processing, and not only the content of nutrients, that is responsible for the negative he alth effect of processed foods.
Processed foods - food processing methods
Processed food is not a modern invention. Processing processes have been used for thousands of years. Classic processing methods are e.g. peeling, slicing, grinding, cooking, s alting, drying, pickling and many more. However, new processing methods have appeared that significantly interfere with the natural product and do not always add value to the food product.
Industrial food processing includes mechanical operations, heat and mass transfer operations, and chemical processes. Mechanical processes are comminution (cutting, crushing, milling, homogenization), mixing and separation of mixtures (concentration by sedimentation and filtration, separation by sieving, hydraulic and pneumatic processes).
The processes of heat and mass exchange are used to accelerate or slow down chemical reactions and biological processes in raw materials, to fix them, change their state of aggregation and cause mass transfer through evaporation, sublimation, extraction or diffusion. Thermal processing methods include:
- blanching - short-term heating of raw materials to a temperature below 90 ° C, which protects raw materials and plant semi-finished products against adverse changes and increases their digestibility
- pasteurization - heating up to 100oC, ensures full inactivation of enzymes and microbiological purity of processed raw materials and finished products with no loss of nutritional value
- steaming - softening of plant tissues
The processes of heat and mass exchange include :
- concentration - increasing the concentration of liquids by evaporating liquids in order to obtain syrups or enable crystallization, e.g. in sugar production
- cryoconcentration - water freezing and its mechanical removal
- membrane concentration, ultrafiltration - reverse osmosis with the use of semi-permeable membranes and high pressure allowing the penetration of particles of specific sizes
- drying - removing moisture from the product in order to increase durability and obtain the expected food parameters, drying is carried out using many techniques
- extraction - separating ingredients from the mixture with solvents, e.g. oil from oil seeds
- sorption - consists in the physical absorption of a specific substance, the so-called sorbate by other bodies - sorbents, has been implemented for the purification of sugar juices during the production of white sugar, obtaining carbonated water, purifying and decolorizing solutions with the use of activated carbon and in obtaining aromatic substances used in food production
- distillation, rectification - consists in separating a single component or several components from a liquid mixture, using the parameters of volatile components evaporation
Chemical processes used in food processing are:
- hydrolysis - breaking the chemical bonds of the raw material with the addition of water in the presence of catalysts, used mainly in the hydrolysis of starch and proteins, in the production of amino acids, flavor spices, and recently also in nutritional supplements for sportsmen
- oxidation - reactions in the presence of oxygen usually adversely affect the properties of food, leading to browning of tissues or rancid fats, but oxidation is used in the processing of starch and in the production of gluconate and gluconic acid from glucose
- hydrogenation - hardening of fats by saturating a large part of unsaturated double bonds of the hot oil with hydrogen gas
The term food means any product that is edible to humans and which, in colloquial terms, constitutes food. A distinction is made between unprocessed foods and processed foods. Unprocessed food is one that has not undergone any treatment, any process that would in any way change the chemical composition, appearance and properties of the product. Unprocessed foods include all fruits and vegetables, shelled nuts, raw meat, milk straight from the cow, etc. So these are products where nothing has been added and nothing has been taken away.
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We can't avoid processed foods these days?
Source: x-news.pl/Dzień Dobry TVN
About the author
Aleksandra Żyłowska-Mharrab, dietician Food technologist, dietitian, educator. A graduate of Biotechnology at the Gdańsk University of Technology and Nutritional Services at the Maritime University. A supporter of simple, he althy cuisine and conscious choices in everyday nutrition. My main interests include building permanent changes in eating habits and individually composing a diet according to the body's needs. Because the same thing is not he althy for everyone! I believe that nutritional education is very important, both for children and adults. I focus my activities on spreading knowledge about nutrition, analyze new research results, and make my own conclusions. I adhere to the principle that a diet is a lifestyle, not strict adherence to meals on a sheet of paper. There is always room for delicious pleasures in he althy and conscious eating.