The health and wellness industry is booming with advice on food choices but regardless of which diet plan fits your lifestyle, all of them agree on this one food to avoid.
For ages, information on what to eat and what to avoid has been evolving, fluctuating and even sometimes conflicting.
Developing knowledge in nutritional science affirmed the fats we once thought were enemies to a wholesome diet turned out to be more complicated than that. We now know that there are good fats, fats that should me limited in our diet and ones we should avoid altogether. The same is said for carbohydrates and proteins.
Each food sits on a spectrum of healthfulness based on the nutrients it provides, the amount of toxins it contains and the extent of manufacturing that goes into making it available. There isn’t really a best and worst food to single out so what could be bad enough to bring all members of healthy living together advocating against it?
The ultimate thing to stay away from, the number one food you need to avoid is actually a whole food category in itself, mimicking to be the fuel our bodies need. Anything you eat from this sort will have you feeling sluggish, bloated, foggy headed; and if consumed in excess, can pose some serious health risks.
Refined foods are the #1 food to avoid. Foods high in sugars, fat and salt with additives and preservatives contain chemically made ingredients not recognized by the human body. The abundance of them accumulates and impacts our body’s ability to store energy as fat. It disrupts the balance between the food we eat and how much energy we burn.
What are refined foods and why should we avoid them?
Refined foods are overly processed food items with added salt, fat and sugars to create a long lasting product with appealing taste.
Refined foods achieve this with chemically produced ingredients that are foreign to the human body and confuse the digestive process.
The body’s internal system doesn’t recognize the building blocks of manufactured food and doesn’t know how to process them. And when not knowing how to burn off and utilize the food substance, the body will store it.
If not flushed out, those toxins sit and build up in the body creating illness and disease.
Isn’t everything we eat processed?
Technically yes, for most people. Unprocessed food is grown, harvested and cooked from scratch. Let’s take a look at what it means for something to be processed and what it means for something to be refined.
To process, according to the dictionary, is to preform a series of operations that attempt to change or preserve something. Processed food is food that transitions from creation to your home through a series of operations.
To refine, on the other hand, is to improve by making changes and removing unwanted components. Refined food is processed food for the purpose of removing perishable components, lengthening shelf life and creating a taste desirable to consumers.
In the case of food, let’s look at an example of processed vs. refined.
An Example of Raw to Refined
Tomatoes!
Tomatoes grown in your garden is as organic and process free as it gets. You can grow them, pick when ready and prepare as you please. They will eventually go bad if not eaten within a week or so.
Anyone not growing their own tomatoes will typically buy them at the supermarket. There, you have the convenience of purchasing them all year round, from fresh, dried or canned varieties. The processing that goes behind each variety offers a convenience to the customer taking out some prep work.
Tomatoes are conveniently available in the form of ready-made sauces that require no work on your end. These sauces, however, contain preserving ingredients not found in a household kitchen. This is so that the quality of the product holds up through manufacturing, packaging, delivery and storage on the shelves until you have purchased and eaten it.
The tomato found in the ready-made pasta sauce will not offer you the same nutritional benefits as raw tomato or even the minimally processed varieties. The healthy components deteriorate during the manufacturing process. This is why health and wellness gurus will often advise choosing home cooked meals over ready-made options.
How do you know the difference between helpful and harmful processing?
Almost everything in today’s society is processed to some degree.
Some processing of food is needed to consume the food or use it in our cooking.
Examples of minimally processed foods:
- Milk is pasteurized to destroy harmful bacteria.
- Oils are available through the process of pressing seeds.
- Vegetables are frozen at harvest to be accessible through winter at peak freshness.
There are processed foods that should be avoided, where nutrients are polished away and deteriorate through refinement.
Examples of refined foods:
- White rice
- Polished grains
- Breads
- Baked goods
- Meat products (bacon, sausage, etc.)
- Packaged foods (things in a can, box, bag, etc.)
- Ready made meals
Anything refined is a food to avoid, especially since any healthy ingredients noted in the label are not necessarily providing the degree of nourishment, as it’s raw equivalent.
Even foods that seem healthy are lacking their original nutritional elements because of refinement.
Refined Foods & Their Healthy Counterparts
Instead of… Choose…
white rice brown rice
white bread whole wheat, rye varieties
pearl barley hulled/pot barley
low-fat margarine unsalted butter
flavoured yogurt plain greek yogurt…and add your own fruits and flavors
A key indicator of refined foods is the ingredient label, keeping in mind that the healthiest foods have no label. When shopping, look for small ingredient lists with minimal ingredients that you can pronounce and identify.
Remember, a consistent diet of nutritionally dense foods will not derail from the occasional consumption of refined foods. Try your best to keep your food choices to as much minimally processed food items as you can.