How to eat right if there are only semi-finished products around

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Imagine a picture of healthy food: lots of vegetables, maybe some lean meat or eggs from domestic chickens, all made with love at home. Now count how many of your breakfasts, lunches and dinners in the last week looked like this? Close to zero? Well, you are not the only one.

The modern world, fortunately or unfortunately, is full of processed food products - semi-finished products, canned food and all those products that have undergone industrial processing. Of course, someone will say that you can skip buying semi-finished products and eat only natural products, such as apples, not apple pie. But the point is, food doesn't get worse just because it gets processed.

Now is the time to stop blaming yourself for your love of convenience foods and openly admit that processed food is not always bad or harmful.

Don't get hung up on the product being recycled

The hardest part is determining whether the food has been processed or not. Let's take chips, for example. A clearly processed product. Now let's look at a regular potato that still has soil on it. It's raw. So far, everything is easy.

But, if we take raw potatoes, peel, boil, add garlic and oil, and then more oil and more garlic … So, so, here we have a processed product. You might argue that there is still a difference between chips and potatoes that you yourself dug out of the ground and cooked in your own kitchen.

The problem arises when you try to draw a line between foods that are 100% processed and those that cannot be said to be. Which category would you categorize beef that has been chopped into pieces? Frozen vegetables? Canned beans? Bread that the local baker made? And what about the bread baked at the factory?

The hardest part is determining whether the food has been processed or not.

For a more accurate grasp of the complexity of the question, watch Megan Kimble describe her year without processed foods:

“In order to follow my plan throughout the year, I decided for myself that I would consider unprocessed the food that I can cook in my kitchen. If I wanted to make sugar at home, I would need a centrifuge, a clarifier, and some anti-caking additives. To collect honey, you just need to learn how to get it out of the honeycomb. I didn't brew beer, but theoretically I could. I gave up the lemonades, but bought a SodaStream siphon to make my own soda."

Of course, it is more difficult to place equipment for the production of sugar at home, and the process is more time consuming than preparing a honeycomb. It all depends only on your desire. After all, the nutritional value of sugar and honey is almost the same.

If we go to extremes and look at processed food from the position of "this is all evil and very harmful", many products would fall outside the border of what is permissible, and this should not be so. Frozen vegetables are as healthy as fresh ones. Pasteurized milk is being processed and it just gets better. There is no reason to avoid eating canned pasta sauces, or cassette eggs, or grilled chicken.

But wait, what about McDonald's fast food, chips or yoghurts that last for years?

Decide what's important to you and discard the rest

If some of the things listed above are causing you anxiety, it is probably for a reason: high sugar, high chemical additives, calories, or high amounts of fat. Before you decide which processed foods you want to avoid, think a little about what really matters to your health goals.

To do this, let's look at a list of the most common allegations of processed foods.

1. They contain a lot of sugar. And there really isn't much good about it. Moreover, sugar can be found not only in chocolate bars and muffins, but also in other seemingly innocent products, such as bread or pasta. Excess sugar intake can be avoided by reading the ingredients carefully.
2. These products have a high sodium content. This is often the case: Processed foods are the main source of sodium in our diet. This is not comparable to the amount of salt that we add when cooking ourselves. The advice in this case is the same: read carefully what is written on the label. If you are sensitive to salt or have high blood pressure, these foods should be avoided.
3. They are high in fat. This also applies to snacks like chips and restaurant food. Fat is not always a bad thing. They are necessary for the body and are not as harmful to you as sugar. The fat content is also listed on the packaging, usually with subcategories: saturated fat (which won't harm you in any way) and trans fat (which no one likes). Note also that manufacturers themselves are increasingly moving away from adding trans fats, even to processed foods.
4. They are addictive. They won't write this on the label. Companies need to make money, so they will do anything to get you to buy their products again. Most foods like chips or chocolate bars are pretty darn well thought out. The combination of high fat and sugar content is the go-to recipe, often with a good dose of salt to boot.
5. It's all chemistry. Everything around us is made up of chemical compounds. Of course, the composition of some products is long, and the names of the ingredients are sometimes difficult to pronounce and understand. But, if the name is difficult to pronounce, this does not mean that the substance is something dangerous. For example, tocopherol - a preservative that can often be seen in vegetable oil - is actually a common vitamin E. Dyes, fragrances, preservatives are not automatically something terrible. Usually these are substances that are absolutely safe for health.
6. They are bad for the environment / economy. You vote with your wallet. If you do not want to buy the products of large companies and prefer to give your money to a small local bakery, then nothing prevents you from doing this. Or maybe you are against the unnecessary use of plastic packaging or the harmful effects on the environment of a plant that produces huge volumes of products. Well, you have the right to dispose of your funds at your own discretion. But still separate these things: food does not become more unhealthy from this.

When you weigh the pros and cons and think it over carefully, it will be easier for you to shop because you know exactly what to avoid. For example, if you decide to give up sugar, you can calmly walk past the soda section, but you may well linger at the counter with chicken wings.

Prepare for a tough decision

Once you have a clear plan in mind, it's time to think about how to implement it. For example, there is often a situation when you are hungry and there is nothing at hand - you have to buy something from a vending machine. You shouldn't feel guilty about one chocolate bar if you decide to avoid fatty foods.

Of course, the ideal is to skip processed foods altogether. But do you have the ability to cook from scratch every day? Probably not. In this case, it makes more sense to use processed foods that are still useful.

You can buy a pack of cutlets, a canned sauce, and make some great spaghetti. There is nothing wrong.

It would be great to cook food every day from vegetables grown in your favorite vegetable garden. But a city dweller hardly has the time and opportunity to do this every day. It may be a hobby, but not your usual daily activity.

Fortunately or unfortunately, we live in a world of processed foods. And it's perfectly normal that we use it. But it's better to do it wisely.