What's in a Name: The Processed Food Debate

In my post on my philosophy of life and cooking, I mention that I no longer eat processed foods. I made this comment the other evening when someone told me they were looking to avoid processed foods, which eventually led to the debate about what exactly is processed. I suppose that at it's most literal interpretation, a processed food is anything that is not in its natural form. So a whole potato straight out of the ground and in the grocery store produce section is unprocessed, but the person at the farmer's market who has already sliced the potatoes for your convenience is offering processed food. In this way, I'd say 90% of the fruits and vegetables I eat are not processed. But what about grains? My whole wheat bread and Cheerios are clearly processed, but what about my multi-grain oatmeal, rice, quinoa, couscous, bulgur, barley, etc.?

I'm not one to affix hard and fast labels to things- I believe in flexibility of terms. Yes, I tell people I'm vegan, but a few times a month I'll consume animal products. There is the camp that vehemently believes I am not vegan, nor am I even vegetarian, and I should stop using the term to describe myself. I think that's silly. Nine times out of 10 I am vegan and I make a conscious effort to avoid meat, dairy, and other products that might have animal products. What am I, then, if not vegan?

I treat "processed foods" with this same spirit of flexiblity of terms as well. Are my grains processed? No, because they contain grain and only grain. Nothing articifial, no "natural" flavors, no preservatives. My frozen veggies? Nope, as long as they only contain veggies. Beans/nuts/legumes? My soy milk is definitely processed, but my dry beans/legumes are not. I only buy naked nuts, so I don't consider them processed, even if they've already been chopped for me. My canned beans are sort of a toss up, but something about me washing off all of the extra stuff that's added to them makes me less likely to consider them processed- they are still whole beans with nothing injected in them (I hope). Peanut butter? Not processed- I only buy the stuff without salt or sugar added.

Processed foods also have little nutritional value and for the most part provide more unnecessary ingredients than necessary ones (by necessary I mean required for my body to stay nourished):

* Potato chips are not healthy despite being made from a vegetable.
* Do fruit loops even contain fruit? A small trace of fruit even?
* White rice has the healthiest (and tastiest) part removed.
* Oreos contain nothing that my body needs.

So, if a product has whole grains/fruit/vegetable/beans/nuts/legumes and lacks additions like partially hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup or other sweetener, I generally feel that it is not processed. Fortification with essential vitamins and nutrients, while not the best way to consume those, does not constitute processed unless other ingredients, like sugar, are also added.

It's pretty hard to completely cut out processed foods. Afterall, who has time/patience to freshly bake their own bread each week (I've seriously considered it). But in the same vane that I am vegan, I also don't eat processed foods. Still, you want a definition:

processed food- any food which has had crap (that's the official term) added to it or is otherwise prepared in a way to significantly detract from the health benefits of the food in its natural state.