Processed foods including ready-made meals, baked products, and processed meats, can cause serious negative health effects on one’s body. There are two ways of processing food:
Mechanical processing includes grinding beef, heating vegetables, or pasteurizing foods. This method does not make foods unhealthful necessarily if the processing does not add chemicals or ingredients.
Chemically processing includes foods that often only contain refined ingredients and artificial substances, with a tiny amount of nutritional value. They tend to have added chemical flavored agents, colors, and occasionally sweeteners.
Some of these processed foods include:
• frozen or ready meals
• baked goods, including pizza, cakes, and pastries
• packaged loaves of bread
• processed cheese products
• breakfast cereals
• crackers and chips
• candy and ice cream
• instant noodles and soups
• reconstituted meats, such as sausages, nuggets, fish fingers, and processed ham
• sodas and other sweetened drinks
Highly processed foods are usually cheap and tend to taste good but their risk to one’s is high. Some of these processed foods contain
• added sugars which cause Type II diabetes, Obesity, and Inflammatory diseases in the long run
• refined carbohydrates which cause rapid spikes in blood sugar and insulin levels, ultimately leading to an increased risk of type II diabetes
• trans fats that lead to increased inflammation in the body.
There is a need to balance one’s diet and make it more health-minded. One can start by replacing highly processed foods with whole foods, such as grains, nuts, seeds, lean meats, fruits, vegetables, and legumes to counter the effects of some of these processed goods.
