| What's wrong with industrial processing It's going to be lower quality than unprocessed fresh food, for several reasons: 1) Food spends longer between harvest and mouth, so any nutrients that are lost over time will be reduced in the final product. 2) Food crops are of varying quality, and the highest quality will go directly to places people will see it (e.g. tomatoes in the supermarket vegetable section) and the lower quality (less ripe, overripe, blemished, part squished or bruised) will go to the industrial processing where it ends up not being noticable (e.g. XYZ in tomato sauce). 3) There's a lot of scope for badness to be included in processed foods. When dealing with trailer loads at a time, detailed checks are impractical so contaminants become more possible. Food processing is factory work which is generally low skilled, low paid and long hours, so there's more room for things like poorly cleaned machinery, accidental contamination by people, gross fooling around, a nod and a wink and sod the overbearing health and hygiene rules when workload is high. 4) Labelling laws in some countries only require ingredients of more than X amount to be included, so there is room for contents that you don't know about and therefore can't choose whether or not to eat. 5) Industrial processing is full of bizarre things. Who eats cotton? Nobody. So how come it's OK to put cottonseed oil in food? Why is nickel used as a catalyst in the making of margarine? Nobody uses nickel as an ingredient or as a material for cooking utensils. 6) It exists to make money, not to make you healthy. Food processing is better if it takes cheaper ingredients and makes a more expensive desirable product. They are hacking your perceptions, studying flavouring and colouring and mouth-feel and so on, to make something look and taste nicer, while not actually doing you more good (or even, less harm). and is there evidence to prove it? I think this comes under the side of "prove God doesn't exist". Humans lived for a long time without mass food processing, and now we have it it's accepted as fine and the suggestion is that we have to prove that it's bad. Surely the default state is to be without food processing, and supporters should have to prove why it's good? (Apart from the fact that it makes lots of money, that is). Is it possible to make up for whatever negative effects it (anything one is advised not to eat) has Who knows? Ask yourself why some 70 year olds are out hill walking, travelling, working, are healthy-albeit-old and some are demented, plagued with ill health, bedridden, seriously forgetful, suffering arthritis, heart disease, loss of balance, etc. Is it really all luck and genetics? |