Today's guest blogger is Joel from Nutrifix.co, a nutrition blog and app designed to help you reach your health goals.
The phrase 'processed foods' gets banded around all the time, but do we really know what they are? With such a bad rep, should we be avoiding all processed foods?
Low: 3g or less
Low: 1.5g and below
Low: 0.3g (0.1g Sodium) and below
Low: 5g and below
Cooking from scratch will always be the best way to know exactly what is in your food. You can wave goodbye to your microwaves meals with tonnes of brilliantly easy healthy recipes on my Nutrifix app.
The phrase 'processed foods' gets banded around all the time, but do we really know what they are? With such a bad rep, should we be avoiding all processed foods?
Let's
take a look at what processed foods really are.
'Processed
foods' are any foods that have been altered from their natural state,
either to make them safe to eat or for convenience.
You
may be consuming a lot of processed foods without associating them
with the name 'processed'. Some common processed foods include:
- Breakfast cereals
- Tinned vegetables
- Bread
- Cheese
- Crisps
- Milk
- Soft drinks
- Ready meals
- Some meat, such as bacon
In
fact, processing includes anything that has been frozen, canned,
baked, dried, pressed or pasteurised. Therefore, lots of food has
been processed to make it safe to eat such as the pasteurisation of
milk to kill harmful bacteria.
So
why have they got such a bad name?
The
processed foods that are the ones to watch are those with excess
salt, sugar and fat added to them to make them taste more appealing
or improve their shelf life. The reason for this being a cause for
concern is that these ingredients may be in foods most people
wouldn’t associate it with, such as a sugar laden microwave meal or
salt in bread. This leads to people eating more than their
recommended daily amounts of sugar, salt and fat, potentially without
realising.
Processed
meats are any meats that have been smoked, cured, salted or had
preservatives added. Commonly consumed processed meats are bacon,
pate, sausages, ham and salami. Consuming processed meats has been
linked to higher risk of cancer or heart disease
due
to the high fat and salt content of them. In fact, the Department of
Health has even recommended that processed and red meats should be
cut down to 70g per day, that is the equivalent of 2-3 rashers of
bacon or 2 slices of roast beef.
So
what can we enjoy as part of a healthy diet?
Lots
of processed foods are perfectly healthy and even home cooked meals
may include processed foods; there is sometimes little you can do to
avoid them. For instance, olives are pressed and hence processed to
make olive oil, which is incredibly healthy. Tinned vegetables are
classed as processed from the canning process they undergo, however,
they are a great way to boost your 5 a say and have a much longer
shelf life and cost less than fresh vegetables. Frozen fruit and
vegetables also cost less than the fresh variety, the vitamins are
preserved and they can conveniently be used all year round. As
mentioned before, some food has to undergo processing to make it safe
for consumption, such as the pasteurisation of milk.
So
they certainly can be enjoyed as part of a healthy diet. Most
processed foods will say on the label how much fat, sugar and salt
they contain so it’s just about being aware of what is a lot and
should therefore be avoided.
The
guideline numbers which will tell you if something is high or low in
fat, saturated fat, salt and sugar
Helpfully
lots of food labels now operate by a 'traffic light' system which
classes foods high in that nutrient in red, medium in orange and low
in green. But for those that don't, here are the guideline numbers to
tell you if something is high or low in fat, saturated fat, salt and
sugar:
These
are all per
100g of
the food
Total
fat
High:
17.5g
and
aboveLow: 3g or less
Saturated
Fat
High:
5g
and
aboveLow: 1.5g and below
Salt
High:
1.5g
(0.6g Sodium)
and
aboveLow: 0.3g (0.1g Sodium) and below
Sugar
High:
22.5g
and
aboveLow: 5g and below
Cooking from scratch will always be the best way to know exactly what is in your food. You can wave goodbye to your microwaves meals with tonnes of brilliantly easy healthy recipes on my Nutrifix app.
Thanks
for this amazingly informative post, Joel. If anyone else would like
to write a guest post for me, please get in touch!
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