Are All Processed Foods Unhealthy?

It’s beaten into you everywhere you look – cut down your processed food consumption if you care about your health at all. Pick up a fitness magazine and it’ll be right there in bold print in every weight loss article. You’ll see health infomercials advocating for a decrease in the consumption of junk or man-made foods, and the government and health authorities seem on a war path to rid out diets of anything processed.

This would certainly seem to make perfect sense. To the layman, these foods are highly processed, our bodies don’t like them, and on the whole, they’re pretty high in calories, making them far from diet-friendly.

But it really isn’t quite so simple. Let’s take a look.

Defining Processed Foods: More Complicated Than You Might Think

How would you define a processed food?

If you would class as a processed food anything that’s been changed from its natural state, you’re not far from wrong. This makes classifying processed foods seem easy, but hold it right there.

Most proponents of clean eating (eating only unprocessed foods) base their diets around meat, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables and whole grains, plus a few extras such as oils, spices, maybe some dairy products. These would all seem to be unprocessed.

When you think about it though, all these foods are processed to a degree. The meat and fish you buy will have been given hormones or been fed man-made food if it’s farm-raised, and even 100 percent wild meat will be preserved in some way. As for veggies, unless you grow your own, they’ll all have pesticides of some sort sprayed on them. The same holds true for nuts and seeds.

And when was the last time you saw ready to eat brown rice and pasta growing in the wild!? Whole grains may be less processed than white carbs, but they’re still processed.

And that’s the issue with trying to demonize processed foods – almost everything we eat is processed.

In fact, when you take the "altered by man" principle to an extreme, the very act of cooking or cutting foods would could as processing it, as well. Paleo folks might advocate for "caveman" diets, but even they'd never suggest eating meats raw.

Are Processed Foods Higher in Calories?

Many folks just assume that processed foods are higher in calories, and should therefore be avoided. Once again though, this is definitely not true.

Take a classic example, and one of the most hated food substances on the planet – artificial sweeteners.

Food doesn't get much more processed than aspartame or acesulfame K. Yet when you compare it to a supposedly more natural sweetener such as honey, agave nectar or even natural maple syrup, artificial sweeteners are a clear winner. Because they’re so sweet you don’t need much at all, so use only minuscule amounts, leading to a much lower calorie intake, which will undoubtedly benefit your weight loss.

Another good one is fruit juice vs diet drinks. 100 percent fresh-squeezed fruit juice is almost completely unprocessed (unless you count the actual juicing, of course!) and diet drinks are processed to within an inch of their life. Yet a standard glass of OJ will have around 25 grams of sugar and 100 calories – a glass of diet Coke, 3 calories.

Suddenly processed foods don’t seem so bad.

Safety Concerns Regarding Processed Foods

Despite the above evidence, many people still deem processed foods as unhealthy. But the fact is, these foods are safe to eat. Food testing is rigorous in the Western world, and any products you find on your supermarket shelves will be safe to eat for people who don't have allergies to any of the ingredients, or medical conditions that make particular foods a bad choice.

Processed Foods as Part of a Healthy Diet

Armed with this information you may now feel it’s time to go and indulge in all those processed foods you’ve been missing out on.

Hang tight just a second though.

Calories

The argument about processed foods being higher in calories holds a lot of truth. Sure, not all of them are (as per the artificial sweetener example) and there are plenty of high calorie unprocessed foods like nuts, olive oil, coconut, pineapple and grass-fed beef, but on the whole, most of your typical processed foods are calorie bombs.

Burgers, fried chicken, pizza, fries, cakes and cookies are all about as processed as you’ll get, and would be enough to give any calorie counter a heart attack.

If you do decide to incorporate processed foods into your diet, make sure you keep a real close eye on the calories. They’ll add up much sooner than you think.

The Satiety Factor

In theory, if you need to eat 2,000 calories per day to lose weight, you could get these calories from unprocessed foods such as veggies, low-sugar fruits, animal products and grains, or from processed foods and still lose weight.

The theory is great, but for most people this doesn't work in practice.

2,000 calories of ice cream, pies and hot dogs isn't a lot of food. 2,000 calories of chicken breast, eggs, lean steak, Greek yogurt, blueberries, brown rice, broccoli and carrots can be a huge volume of food and is much more likely to keep you feeling full all day long.

By eating mainly unprocessed foods you’ll also get more vitamins, minerals and fiber, as well as less sugar, carbohydrate and trans fats, and likely feel much healthier and energetic.

The Bottom Line

It might be against the grain and contradict a lot of what you've read, but eating processed foods won’t kill you, and will have no adverse effects on weight loss. This comes with one big caveat however.

Moving away from weight loss and looking at general health, clearly you’re better off eating more unprocessed foods, but again, once in a while, in moderate amounts and as part of an overall healthy diet, processed foods won’t have any detrimental effect.

The best approach to take is to stick to mainly unprocessed foods most of the time – say 80 to 90 percent of the time, then add in small amounts of processed foods to fill up the rest of your calories if you feel the need to.