This text was posted initially at www.MyPlantBasedProgram.com, the place Dr. Thomas Campbell gives medical consultations and an intensive group program.
For essentially the most half, it’s simple to know what an animal-based meals is and what a plant-based food is. Many individuals, nevertheless, are confused about what constitutes a “processed” meals.
Within the strictest sense, meals processing is any remedy of contemporary meals to create different meals merchandise, together with including substances resembling preservatives to delay shelf life. Heating, fermenting, freezing, most packaging – all are varied types of processing. For instance, frozen greens with no different substances are technically processed. 100% entire grain flours are processed, and Sauerkraut is processed as a result of the cabbage has been fermented. Something in a can is processed.
In the identical sense, more often than not when folks put together to eat contemporary substances at residence, they course of them. When you mix meals right into a sauce or a smoothie, or should you prepare dinner a tomato, you’re processing the meals.
From a dietary perspective, the higher method to consider processing is to consider whether or not you’re consuming an entire meals or only a fragment of the unique meals.
As you possibly can think about, this strict understanding of processing shouldn’t be very helpful, at the least not in a dietary sense. When you use this definition and need to eat a totally unprocessed eating regimen, you’d must stroll round in gardens and fields and simply eat all of your meals straight from the plant, unaltered in any method. That’s foolish.
From a dietary perspective, the higher method to consider processing is to consider whether or not you’re consuming an entire meals or only a fragment of the unique meals. Are you consuming a meals fragment or the entire meals?
Complete grain wheat flour has the identical elements of the entire wheat seed, or grain, but it surely has merely been floor up. Thus, from a dietary perspective, I’ve all the time thought-about entire grain flour to be successfully an entire meals.
On the flip aspect, issues like oil or sugar are basic examples of meals fragments. Soybean oil, for instance, is solely the fats that has been separated from the soybean. All the opposite elements of the soybean are separated and discarded, or used for a distinct product, and you’re left with simply pure, liquid fats. Sugar is generally comprised of sugar beets or sugar cane, and the sugar is a extremely separated fragment of the unique plant.
Concentrating and consuming only one fragment of the plant, whereas discarding all the opposite elements, results in some critical variations in diet, as proven within the chart under.
Desk 1. A meals fragment in comparison with the entire meals
The underside line? I counsel you consider meals as an entire meals or a meals fragment and take into account meals fragments as having been negatively processed however the remainder are usually OK. That implies that entire meals which can be technically processed, like frozen meals, canned meals, dehydrated meals or pre-ground meals, are OK. In fact, there are exceptions, and it’s not uncommon that I’ll advise a affected person to vary their consumption of sure processed meals like whole-grain flours, or blended entire meals. There are dietary variations that come up from processing. Complete wheat flour is completely different from wheat berries, for instance, simply as pure, unsweetened applesauce gives completely different diet than a strong apple. However these dietary variations are usually far smaller than the variations between entire meals and meals fragments, so retaining it easy and pondering of processing by way of fragment vs entire meals is a good place to start out.
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