by Marbella Perez Imagine your great grandmother coming back to life and asking you to take her grocery shopping. You instinctively take her to the nearest supermarket. As you enter the supermarket, your grandmother’s eyes open wide as she observes the plethora of products neatly arranged in shelves and freezers. There are so many colorful boxes and cans, but where is the food, your grandmother wonders. She roams a few aisles, unable to find anything even close to what she normally eats. Finally, she spots some bread. She grabs a bag and reads the label. Baffled, she asks you, “What is azodicarbonamide and what is it doing in my bread?” Chances are you’ll keep walking and pretend you didn’t hear the question, as you have no idea what azodicarbonamide is (it’s a chemical that makes flour look whiter, makes bread dough stronger, and is known to cause asthma and allergies.) The bottom line is: your great grandmother has a point, why is this even in the bread we eat? The short, oversimplified answer to this question is that not very long ago, a series of technological advances met with a culture that increasingly valued speed and profit, leading to the creation of the modern food industry. The trademark of today’s food industry is processed food and the purpose of this article is to tell you why you shouldn’t eat it. Before diving into the many ills of processed foods, allow me first to define what I mean by “processed foods.” The dictionary defines “processed” as anything that has undergone “mechanical or chemical operations in order to change or preserve it.” Under this definition, all foods are processed. However, what we care about is not whether or not the food is processed, but about its degree of processing. Consider vegetables that have been washed, cut up, and put in a bag or olives that have been stored, washed, crushed, pressed, decanted, and bottled as olive oil. Evidently, these foods have undergone processing, but they are still whole, naturally occurring foods with no added ingredients. These are not the foods I will be talking about. Now consider wheat that has been crushed, ground, mixed with flavoring agents, vitamins, minerals, sweeteners, preservatives, salt, and water in a big pressure cooker, dried in an oven, flattened between metal rollers, thrown in hot air to remove moisture, toasted and packaged into a ready-to-eat breakfast cereal. Now these are the kinds of foods I will refer to as “processed foods.” They have undergone chemical processing and contain refined and artificial ingredients. If the distinction is still not clear, consider author Michael Pollan’s rule of thumb for identifying processed foods: if the food contains ingredients that are “unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than five in number, or high-fructose corn syrup” they are most likely highly processed.
Now that we’ve established a definition, let me give you three reasons why you should avoid eating processed foods. First, processed foods are bad for your health. They are a cocktail of refined carbohydrates, added fats, and artificial chemicals. Each one of these components degrades your body in important ways. Refined carbohydrates are sugars and cereal grains that have undergone industrial processing (for example: table sugar, white rice, and white flour). The industrial processes strip the grains of their nutrients and fiber and reduce them to basic sugars (i.e, simple carbohydrates). Simple carbohydrates enter your body like a bomb of quick energy causing sugar and insulin levels to skyrocket (insulin helps your cells absorb sugar). What’s worse, the more your body gets exposed to these kinds of insulin peaks, the more insensitive it becomes to insulin and the less able it is to absorb the sugar floating around in the blood! This leads to a condition called insulin resistance which contributes to the development of the infamous type 2 diabetes and unforgiving heart disease. The fats in processed foods are just as bad. Most processed foods contain vegetable oils (just because they have the word vegetable in them doesn’t mean they are good for you) and trans fats. Vegetable oils refer to processed seed oils such as soybean, sunflower, or corn oil. Trans fats are fats taken from these oils and solidified to make foods like margarine, snacks, and packaged baked goods. Both of these fats contribute to chronic inflammation, a risk factor for all kinds of diseases (heart disease, dementia, neurological problems, respiratory failure, and cancer). Finally, the artificial chemicals in processed foods (such as preservatives, flavor enhancers, and sweeteners) are a relatively new addition to our diets and our bodies were not built to digest them. Time will tell what their long term effects will be. For now, ongoing research has linked particular food additives with a number of conditions including asthma, digestive disorders, and cancer. Considering all these facts, it is no wonder that the leading causes of death worldwide, and particularly in developed countries, are diet related chronic diseases. The second reason why you should avoid processed foods is because they make you fat yet fail to nourish you. As I mentioned before, industrial processes remove the nutrients and fiber from natural foods in order to increase shelf life and avoid pests (because little animals actually like to eat nutrients). We end up eating a mass of concentrated sugars that don’t even make us feel full because the fiber has been removed. This leads to overeating and paradoxically, undernourishment. Finally, you should stop eating processed foods to avoid supporting an industry that is bad for our bodies and the environment. Have you ever wondered why processed foods are so cheap? It is not a miracle bestowed upon us by the wonders of modern culture; no, there is a price and it’s a big one. The lower costs of processed foods represent lower costs somewhere else in the long chain of events that brings food from the farm (or factory or labs) to the supermarket. Consider the following real scenario. China is one of the main consumers of pork worldwide. In order to meet the Chinese population’s demand for pork, Chinese farmers feed their pigs genetically modified (GMO) soybeans which they get from Brazil. In order to meet China’s demand for soybeans, Brazil must cut down several hectares of rainforest and turn this land into a monoculture soybean farm. The rainforest used to give us oxygen and serves as the ecosystem for a variety of species. Monoculture farms only give us GMO soybeans grown with fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, which pollute the soil and nearby water. The soybeans are then transported to China in large bulk carriers which pollute seawater and damage marine ecosystems. Is this really the kind of system you want to support? The price of cheap processed food is actually very high if you consider how it pollutes the planet’s natural resources, how it degrades our bodies, and how it deforests the earth. To conclude, processed foods wreak havoc on our bodies by making us chronically ill, undernourished, and fat. Moreover, they take a huge toll on the environment. With this said, do you still want to eat them? a
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Authors
The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
|