Processed foods, friend or foe

Hey everyone,

The cheap food that we continually enjoy today is largely processed. Almost anything you want can be packaged or canned. Various meats, fruits, and vegetables can be bought out of a can. Pasta, eggs, milk, and damn near everything else is packaged. This, in and of itself, is not a problem nutritionally. However, many of these are not the same as what they would have been even 50 years ago. For these food items to have a long self life, they have to be enhanced with preservatives. Many canned foods don't need these preservatives, but items in plastic do. However, most processed foods have been changed, none the less. Foods, now, are created to be made as cheaply and easily as possible. This has lead to the overuse of the vegetables corn and soy. If you don't believe me, look at the ingredients on the back of a package. More than likely you'll see high fructose corn syrup or soy. However, there are other corn derivatives, such as gluten, maltodextrin, natural flavorings, sucrose, and xanthan gum. I know those probably don't look familar, and that's because they are not natural. Processed food is meant to be cheap and easy to cook, but these foods contain ingredients that our bodies haven't encountered even two generations ago meaning that our doesn't know how to process them. They are also nutritionally deficient to their natural counterparts (white vs. brown rice). However, there is a simple solution. We can consume foods that are derived from whole wheat flour or is the natural product (e.g. rice, pasta, bread), or, better yet, we can make these items ourselves. Also, we can focus on foods with five or less ingredients, which becomes difficult. So, I would recommend eating food with ingredients that you recognize, if there are more than five ingredients exist. Now, it's probably difficult to not purchase all of these items, but a reduction is an excellent start. Processed food is a foe to health and diet.