Modern life means it’s sometimes really hard to avoid processed foods. Food companies have made great gains in marketing and stretching the life of foods. Today’s diseases like diabetes and heart disease are the major killers in our society; and they are on the rise. Sadly, there’s been an increase of young adults and teenagers getting them. Even worse: much of our food is processed to the point it has become a bad source of nutrition with harmful long-term effects on our health.
Food Processing
The major problem facing us today is the chemical processing many foods go through before being released into grocery stores. During this processing method, the food product is greatly refined and either a wide variety of chemicals are added, or a ton of sugar or salt: making it almost unrecognisable as food in some cases.
Food Additives
We all want to eat food that tastes great and our tastes are hard wired to enjoy either sweet, salty, or fatty foods. Food manufactures know our weakness and have spend huge sums of money studying just the right chemicals to make your food irresistible. Their ultimate goal is to make you super-size your meal; unfortunately,as a result this super-sizes your health risk. Did you ever notice how processed cheese melts so much easier than real cheese on your burger? What about margarine? It spreads easier and has a much richer yellow color than butter. Yet, we aren’t told about the unhealthiness of margarine.
Many people have eaten so much highly processed food made from oils and chemicals these days, that they actually taste better to us than the real healthy ones!
The 4 main food additives are:
- Food stabilizers and thickeners, which give the food the feel and texture that we want – a light crunch, sticky and chewy, or soft and moist.
- Food colorings give these products the attractive appearance that appeals to you and make you want to eat them.
- Preservatives keep it from spoiling fast, so that it has a great shelf life.
- Lastly, flavoring – essentially chemicals are added to make it taste like food again! In fact, they can make it taste better than natural food. Compare a grape and a grape-flavored candy and you will know what I mean.
Read more: Harmful Food Additives and Ingredients To Avoid
Health Risks and Dangers
Processed foods have been directly linked to many diseases which are spreading across our nation at an alarming rate. Some of the diseases have been publicized by the CDC to highlight their potential as major killers in the future. At best, they can affect your health severely by inducing high blood pressure and contributing to obesity. The results of eating processed foods are well documented and listed here:
- Insulin Resistance
High consumption of sugar or high-fructose corn syrup can cause you to become insulin resistant; leading to diabetes. - High Triglycerides
Ingesting high triglycerides puts you at a much greater risk of heart disease. - LDL Cholesterol
LDL or bad cholesterol causes blockages in your arteries that lead to cardiovascular diseases such as heart-attack or stroke. - Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD)
Fat build up in the liver can cause inflammation and scarring in the liver. Ultimately, if ignored, it can even cause liver failure. (source: http://www.patient.co.uk) - Cancerous
Processed meat products increases your chance of contracting cancer, due to the high quantities of preservatives present (source: http://www.cancer.org)
Shocking Fact: processed drinks like coke are actually very detrimental to your health. Its high sugar content (10 teaspoons of sugar) should cause you to vomit from the excess sweetness, but the phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing your body to keep it down.
All the evidence is in, and no one can deny the horrible effects of replacing real food with refined, heavily-processed items which have been enhanced for flavor, color, texture, and preserved for an unreal shelf life. Even for its convenience and low-cost, one should consider the possible high-cost medical bills in future from a result of eating them. Therefore it is important to cut down on processed foods or, better yet, refrain from them entirely.
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