What do you consider 'processed'?

[mrsfrenchy]

I'm making an effort to eliminate (or greatly reduce) processed foods from my diet, but occasionally i'm confused as to what is considered 'processed'

For example, is granola (like the kind you get in a bulk bin at a natural food store) processed? Yogurt? How do i tell which whole wheat breads are processed and which are not?

I know the basics--like I know that instant oatmeal and frozen dinners are processed. But there seem to be some other 'healthy' foods that I can't tell.

Help me out here please.

[laohaire]

Originally Posted by mrsfrenchy

I'm making an effort to eliminate (or greatly reduce) processed foods from my diet, but occasionally i'm confused as to what is considered 'processed'

For example, is granola (like the kind you get in a bulk bin at a natural food store) processed? Yogurt? How do i tell which whole wheat breads are processed and which are not?

I know the basics--like I know that instant oatmeal and frozen dinners are processed. But there seem to be some other 'healthy' foods that I can't tell.

Help me out here please.

It's all a continuum.

Personally, I consider granola to be processed - the oats and rice part at least. Some brands are more processed than others. I don't know much cause I don't eat granola (though not because I'm a snob about it being processed). It's less processed than Kellogg's cereal, though!

Yogurt - I think it's mostly processed. You can buy yogurt I'd considered unprocessed, but at the grocery store it's all homogenized, pasteurized, and often sweetened. Depends on the details. I do have a container in my fridge that was made fresh from a farm.

Whole wheat bread - a lot has HFCS, which is processed. If you're a purist, you buy artisanal bread or make your own.

None of this is meant to discourage you. I eat whole wheat bread from the store. When I'm rich I'll buy a breadmaker or purchase artisanal bread every week. (I tried making it by hand, I don't seem to have the knack though). I usually avoid sweetened yogurt, though. But even sweetened yogurt is, imho, much better than say... those frozen dyed popsicles that all the kids seem to live on all summer. It has nutrients and such (and hopefully no dye, but maybe some does).

It's a continuum, don't go crazy, just figure out what works for you. If a food makes you feel bad, eschew it. I do recommend reading the label for HFCS though, and trying to avoid that.

[WindyCityMom]

Number one rule for me is anything that comes in a package Now, I'm not talking about strawberries that come in one of those plastic box thingys.. I'm talking cardboard boxes, mylar bags, etc. AND mostly anything that has an expiration date pretty far into the future (I think there are some exceptions but i think YKWIM).

After that you can delve deeper.

Theres only ONE brand of bread that my local grocery carries that doesn't have high fructose corn syrup in it... it's called Natural Ovens or something like that.

[Magelet]

For example, is granola (like the kind you get in a bulk bin at a natural food store) processed? Yogurt? How do i tell which whole wheat breads are processed and which are not?

It depends on the granola. Look at the ingrediants. If it just lists ingrediants that you know, recognize, etc, (like sugar, oats, honey, sunflower seed oil) and only a couple of those, it isn't processed to me. If it has things like canola oil, cottonseed oil, corn syrup, things you can't pronounce, or tons of ingrediants, then it is processed to me. (even if it isn't processed, it still usually isn't very healthy imo. usually loaded full of sugars, and no liquid is added to the grains before they cook them, which makes them not very digestible.)

yogurt, again it depends. (and again, look at the ingrediants). milk, cultures, that are still live, it's not processed to me. milk, milk powder, pectin, sugar, corn syrup, fruit flavor, etc? clearly processed.

bread, again, look at the ingrediants. artisan bread usually wouldn't fall under the label of processed to me. most other bread would. bread needs three ingrediants to be bread, and shouldn't have more than... 5-6 unless it's a specialty bread like cinnamon raisin and it still shouldn't be tons (some breads have like... 20-30!) Basic bread is flour, water (or sourdough culture) and yeast. many others also add in salt (most do lol), sugar or honey (again, corn syrup would disqualify this), oil (check what kind, butter, coconut, olive, great. peanut sunflower ok on occasion but not as a staple, imo, but you could probably make them at home so not processed. not that you should, but you could with very simple equipment. canola, soy, corn, are processed). others might add in whole grains, a second or third type of flour, dried fruit, etc and remain unprocessed.

for most/many processed food is processed because you couldn't make it (or it's ingrediants) at home. so yes, you can purchase msg to make something with msg, but you can't make the msg without very highly specialized equipment and knowledge. also, the fewer the better.

ok, too much food talk while fasting lol.

[fruitfulmomma]

All food is processed. The issue is how much, how it is done, what is added to it, etc... Making cheese, yogurt, sour cream, etc... are all examples of good processing provided no extra junk is added to bulk it up but then you have cheese whiz.

You can make bread, yogurt, and granola at home if you want to reduce a few steps of the processing, but there are some good brands at the store too. With dairy products specifically Cascade Fresh is what we use and really enjoy.

[Smokering]

I buy packet yoghurt, the Easiyo kind (powder I mix with water and make in my yoghurt maker). It's "real" yoghurt in that it has real acidophilus cultures and so on in it; it's live, not junk thickened with gelatine and cornstarch. But it's still very processed - milk powder alone rates pretty high in the evil stakes, though I can't remember why off the top of my head. Something to do with oxidisation and/or bleaching? Whatever the reason was, I stopped using milk powder for cooking - but I still buy yoghurt mix. At some stage I want to get Caspian Sea yoghurt culture, which doesn't require heating to set - it's supposed to be pretty foolproof, you just mix it with milk and leave at room temp all day. Until then... I hope the packet yoghurt does more good than harm.

If you want to get really serious about things, then anything made with flour is suspect - white flour has had nearly all the goodness processed out (and may be bleached), wholemeal flour is usually rancid and full of phytates. It's possible to soak/sprout, dry and grind wheat berries oneself for fresh flour at home, which is doubtless much much healthier, and some MDC mamas do this. Again, it's on my "ideal life" list, but right now the best I can do is using wholemeal flour as much as possible and storing it in the freezer (and making sourdough to help eliminate the phytates).

Basically, optimum nutrition is the kind of thing some people find empowering, and most of us find horrendously frustrating. Just yesterday I realised, too late, that the ham I grabbed in a great hurry at the supermarket for homemade pizza has MSG in it. I always check bacon, but I hadn't even thought about checking the ham (and c'mon people, why put MSG in meat products?? MSG is supposed to simulate a "meaty" taste - if meat itself doesn't taste meaty, we have a problem!). I try to balance my knowledge with my sanity and budget, and from week to week it's anyone's guess which will come out on top.

...Off to cook gurnard for breakfast, which I think is good for the brain due to Omega-3s, but will probably turn out to have unacceptably high levels of mercury, or need to be consumed raw slathered in sauerkraut, or dried under a summer sun and then pickled in agave, or eaten no fewer than 12 hours apart from ingesting any B vitamins, or sourced only from a small family-owned company in Lithuania.

[velochic]

Originally Posted by fruitfulmomma

All food is processed. The issue is how much, how it is done, what is added to it, etc... Making cheese, yogurt, sour cream, etc... are all examples of good processing provided no extra junk is added to bulk it up but then you have cheese whiz.

I agree.

My rule of thumb, OP, is that the ingredients must be whole, real ingredients. Nothing that is "-olized", for example, and nothing that is not a food I recognize as a whole food. That's *my* personal level of tolerance. Ruffles pass that test. Pringles do not. Still, the first choice is homemade chips if that's what we're in the mood for.

[cristeen]

Short answer - if it is an ingredient that i could not make at home with standard kitchen equipment, then it is too processed for my tastes. Which doesnt mean i dont make the occassional exception for white flour, sugar or rice, but i dont make exceptions for things that no longer resemble the source, like HFCS, MSG, etc.

[SubliminalDarkness]

For me, anything that's been cooked/prepared is definitely processed. Granola would be processed. But depending on how that's made, I might not care. I do make my own granola, though, cause it's fairly easy and I like mine better than any I've ever purchased.

[Grace and Granola]

I agree that it's a continuum and that everything at the grocery store has been processed to some degree, which makes it all the more confusing!!

I would start out with a few simple rules, like don't buy anything containing ingredients you can't pronounce/don't recognize as being food.

Buy as many "whole foods" as you can. This meaning foods that look as close to their original state as possible. ie. carrots from produce rather than carrots in a can.

I recently heard someone on tv say to buy things that you can't keep more than 2 weeks. Seems like a good rule that will help you stay away from crazy processing/preservatives.

Also, I like the idea that even if something is "processed" like yogurt or bread, those are things that you could make at home. Just look at the ingredients on those types of things and if they have ingredients in them that you couldn't buy, then you couldn't make it at home. For example, you could make plain yogurt. But you probably could NOT make strawberry cheesecake yogurt which contains high fructose corn syrup and red dye 40.

I would urge you to just start reading labels. Even things like granola that are supposed to be healthy often contain those weird ingredients that make them more processed than if you made the granola at home. Read ingredients.

[mamadelbosque]

Depends on your point of view. I buy rudi's organic honey whole wheat bread, which *I* think is pretty decent. I buy Dannon yogurt, because I *love* yogurt, have *never* had succes making it and quite frankly don't like the organic brands available around here (or at least, not the ones that aren't fat free/vanilla... I like *PLAIN* *FULL FAT* yogrut. Of which Dannon is basicly the only choice... aside from brown cow, which I hate. ). I dno't consider either of those things processed. Nor most granola at the store either... though we buy/eat kellogs/general mills/etc as well. Course, I also buy canned beans, tomatoes, pineapple, peaches, etc too, cause we like them, and *IMO* they are far from 'bad' for you. But it just depends on your point of view.

[luv2homeschool]

It is interesting to see so many people's point of views. We are trying to be much healthier in our eating habits, but we aren't going to be making our own yogurt...too much work!

I find most organic foods I buy have normal ingredients in them. Our yogurt in from Trader Joes and is organic. It has sugar, but no dyes or HFCS. We make our own baked french fries with potatoes and salt. I still buy organic pasta but make my own sauce. The kids still like cereal, but I figure a little bit of junk is okay...I cannot get dd6 to eat eggs for breakfast!

I like to think if I recognize the ingredients and the list isn;t long, it is close to being natural.. not everything.

[mrsfrenchy]

Originally Posted by luv2homeschool

The kids still like cereal, but I figure a little bit of junk is okay...I cannot get dd6 to eat eggs for breakfast!

Well, I agree that a bit of junk is okay occasionally, but I just thought I'd say that DD1 loves granola with some yogurt on it for breakfast (we get the organic pourable yogurt to make it like cereal http://www.organicvalley.coop/recipes/features/yogurt). Especially if you get some of the frutier yogurt without nuts--she devours it.

[smpayne]

I am just starting this process of weaning my family off of processed foods. I know I will never be able to get rid of everything, just for the fact that both dh and I work and live in a Mega city. So I have started with the obvious and reasonable things. I find that slowly, I am making more progress and even starting to get the point across to dh.

I have started to watch the labels closely. Plain yougurt sweetened with jam or fruit, unbleached white flour (have to introduce whole wheat slowly), and shopping at the farmers market for local produce. Keep my dh out of Costco. I started changing my thinking - can I make this at home?

My biggest problem right now is bread. One of my kids won't eat home made bread, the other will eat too much of it. After 1 month of homemade bread, I can't even touch the cheap stuff anymore, turns my stomach, but $4 a loaf really hurts.

I have been experimenting and learning how to make my kids favorite stuff from scratch. I made chicken nuggets the other day and they weren't really hard and tasted great. I will admit that de-boning a whole chicken was so not worth the extra time, next time I will just wait until they have boneless on sale. Anyone have any suggestion on what oil to use for deep frying?