[tharkun__]

I'd say many of these terms are way too vaguely defined and used. What exactly counts as "packaged" food? What's "processed" food?

If I process cabbage into Sauerkraut or Kimchi, does that count as bad, because it's "processed"? What if it's processed by some company? What if they process it differently?

Case in point, Sauerkraut. If I make that at home, the bacteria stay alive the whole time. They still multiply in my fridge right now and keep the Sauerkraut OK to eat if a bit mushy after being left in there for too long coz I don't eat it often enough. If I buy Sauerkraut in a glass it's dead. Sure, they also used bacteria to actually make the Sauerkraut. And then they killed off all of the good bacteria by pasteurization to be able to stick it on a shelf w/ a long best before date and to guarantee the texture and color. Not to mention the extra "ingredients" they put in there.

[californical]

Generally when people talk about the negatives of processed food, they mean either:

1. Something that was originally nutritious, but had some part removed due to processing. Sometimes they attempt to add vitamins back into it, like enriched flour, but the issue is that we don’t know what else might be missing, or how changing the structure affects the body (faster absorbing carbs for example)

2. Foods that are sanitized heavily. Obviously it’s in the name of safety, but there could be benefits to eating a little dirt sometimes (ie there’s tons of vitamin B12 in dirt, but who knows what else we could be missing)

3. Foods that have lots of artificial or derived chemicals. Many are probably fine but it’s hard to know how certain things affect our gut microbiome.

There’s so much we still don’t understand about our bodies, especially our gut and it’s bacteria. That’s why nutrition science changes constantly. “Fat is bad, no wait it’s good” etc.

It’s not entirely scientific, but I strongly recommend reading In Defense Of Food. It’s thought-provoking and hits heavily on the many inconsistencies in our primitive understanding of nutrition. The author also calls out interesting points about “whole unprocessed foods” and why nutrition science is hard (eg too many variables)

[theGnuMe]

No, if you process something minimally like Kimchi it is not bad. In fact fermented foods are generally seen as good for you. Yogurt, cheese as well.

So Kimchi is considered minimally processed. Flour has various processing levels to make bread. Enriched white is strictly worse than others.

Cookies with hydrogenated palm oil would be bad. Any oils beyond cold pressed extra virgin olive oil are supposedly bad.

Now the preservatives in store bought kimchi could theoretically be a bigger issue.. I don't know how many folks have studied them. I imagine they just pass through us but probably influence the microbiome etc...

Canned foods are worse than fresh or frozen.

[agileAlligator]

> I'd say many of these terms are way too vaguely defined and used. What exactly counts as "packaged" food? What's "processed" food?

Do you think this is some sort of a smart or incisive observation?

I am sorry if I come off as rude, but I have grown weary of people making such asinine comments, quibbling about terms and their definitions, when they clearly know what the parent comment is talking about.

[tharkun__]

It does come off as rude, yes. We see right here in all the threads the difference in opinion of what constitutes "processed" or "packaged". A lot of misunderstandings in the world stem from people using the same terms to mean slightly different things. So in fact I think it's very important to state this explicitly. It helps in business communication as well, when you're the third party and see that two people are saying the same thing with different words or using the same word to mean different things and they just keep arguing.

[agileAlligator]

I think most people know what processed food is when they see it. Asking what the definition of processed food is, is talking past the point.

[tekla]

This is just a excuse to be intellectually lazy. You just offload the definition to "you just know" and make it impossible to refute since it targets arbitrary definition.

[tharkun__]

Exactly!

And there's a case in point right in one the answers to my reply:

    So Kimchi is considered minimally processed

Minimally processed vs. processed. What does this actually mean to everyone? Who draws the line where?

As with the Sauerkraut example, home made Kimchi is minimally processed I would agree. Commercial Kimchi, like commercial Sauerkraut I would probably count as just "processed", not good for you. But agileAlligator may not see even commercial Kimchi/Sauerkraut as processed and he draws the line at "processed cheese", so that weird vegetable oil with "natural" color in it.

agileAlligator says

    Asking what the definition of processed food is, is talking past the point.

and I bet my other two questions above he'd see the same way. But he's not seeing that I'm not asking a direct question. I am not expecting any answers to those questions. I'm not asking for an actual definition. I'm "asking" so that people may ponder these and think back to previous conversations or look at some of the back and forth in these threads and recognize that people are talking past each other.