What’s the difference between a can of chickpeas, a tub of protein powder, and a bag of salt and vinegar chips?

They all fall under the umbrella of “processed” foods.

And often, all processed foods are lumped together in the “bad” or “toxic” category. But, nutritionally speaking, those three examples are absolutely not equal.

So the questions remain:

• Should we avoid all processed foods?
• Are they really all bad for us?

"If you can't pronounce it, don't eat it"

If you spend any time on wellness TikTok or Instagram, you’ve probably seen influencers fear-mongering about how everything in a package is poisoning you. They’ll point at ingredient labels and say things like, "If you can’t pronounce it, you shouldn’t be eating it."

This is such a bizarre take! Most people can’t pronounce perfectly healthy things, like Lactobacillus rhamnosus (a type of probiotic) or ferric orthophosphate (which is literally just iron).

Yes, we should be mindful of nutrient content, added sugars, excess sodium, and a bunch of additives. But panicking over a fortified vitamin or a tiny bit of dye in an occasional fruit gummy completely misses the forest for the trees. A trace amount of food colouring isn't going to influence your health nearly as much as the totality and quality of your diet over the long term. (Obviously, I'm not talking about severe sensitivities or allergies you may have to some of these ingredients!)

The Real Problem with UPFs (No, it's NOT Willpower)

According to the Heart & Stroke Foundation, Canadians are consuming A LOT of UPFs! This is a problem as high consumption of nutrient-stripped UPFs like sodas, hot dogs, chips, and candies are to "blame for over a third of heart and stroke deaths in Canada".

If we want to have a real conversation about why ultra-processed foods are linked to long-term chronic diseases (like heart disease and stroke), we need to focus on the actual culprits.

It’s the fact that these highly-engineered food products are completely stripped of their original nutrients and fibre, and then pumped full of added sugars, salt, additives, and refined fats (like palm oil, which is devastating to the environment and contributes to deforestation).

Not only that, these foods are engineered in labs with the perfect ratio of sugar, fat, and salt to MAKE YOU WANT THEM MORE!

When you find yourself at the bottom of a chip bag, it's not because you have no willpower--it's a massive success of corporate food engineering and marketing.

Let's talk about diet culture for a hot minute here. Diet culture loves to assign moral value to these foods, making you feel like a "bad" person for eating them but we have to look at the system: produce is expensive, we have people living in food deserts, trying to stretch their dollars at the end of an exhausting 40-hour work week, and UPFs are ubiquitous. Shaming individuals for buying the only shelf-stable food that fits their grocery budget is incredibly privileged and out of touch.

Here are some of the REAL issues with UPFs like candies, chips, and commercial cookies:

• It's easy to eat A LOT of them: these foods are literally engineered in labs with the perfect ratio of salt, fat, sugar, and additives to make you want them more.
• They lack essential nutrients.
• They displace nutrient-dense foods--when you fill up on these, you don't eat your protein, whole grains, and fibre that you need for your hormones, heart, and brain.

I go through all of this in more depth in my latest podcast episode over on Phase to Phase: The Hormone Health Show.

What Does "Processed" Actually Mean? The NOVA Food Classification System

To make sense of the nuance, researchers use the NOVA Food Classification System. It splits our food into four categories based on the extent and purpose of the processing:

1. Unprocessed or Minimally Processed Foods: The purpose of processing here is just to make whole foods safe, storable, and digestible (no added fats, sugars, or salts). Think fresh veggies, but also frozen berries, steel-cut oats, and plain fermented tempeh. These are your foundational foods.
2. Processed Culinary Ingredients: Things we use to cook and season Group 1 foods. Think olive oil, butter, salt, and maple syrup.
3. Processed Foods: When you combine Group 1 and Group 2 and package it. The purpose is to increase durability and taste. Examples are canned beans, salted nuts, canned fish, and freshly baked bread. These are convenient, accessible, and totally fine for your health!
4. Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs): The primary purpose here is to create highly profitable, hyperpalatable products designed to replace other food groups. Yes, this includes soft drinks, packaged cookies, and chips. But because the category is so broad, it also includes protein powder, Fairlife milk, and mass-produced frozen pierogis. Obviously, a fruit yogurt or a scoop of protein powder is not in the same nutritional tier as a can of cola. There is nuance here!

The Truth About Processed Foods: Building a Strong Dietary Foundation for Your Hormones, Heart, and Longevity

Should you strive to minimize and avoid the hyperpalatable kinds of foods in your daily life? YES!

Should we all consume LOADS of veggies, fruits, whole grains, lentils, beans, nuts, andseeds to create a solid dietary foundation? YUP!

Should we have better policies in place to make fresh produce more accessible and affordable for families? HECK YES!

Can we have some flexibility and enjoy the odd candy or cookie? Also, yes!

If you are looking to shift your diet without completely overhauling your life or your budget, here are a few realistic, non-shamey ways to pull it back:

• Add more nutrient-dense foods to what you normally eat: throw spinach into your pasta, hemp seeds into your oatmeal, extra lettuce in your wrap, berries in your smoothie, etc.
• Use frozen and canned goods for convenience: canned foods get a bad rap, but canned lentils, chickpeas, and black beans are affordable, shelf-stable Group 3 foods--they're especially great for the end of the grocery week when there's not much stuff in the fridge!
• Try to cook more at home: this gives you more control over what's going into your body--not everything has to be from scratch (use meal kits, mix and match, use pre-made burgers to throw into a home-made wrap or stir-fry, etc.).
• Be wary of "health-washing": deceptive food marketing is all around us, like "natural" dyes in candies or real cane sugar in soda (instead of high-fructose corn syrup)--a hyperpalatable sugar-laden food is still just that. Focus on decreasing the quantity and frequency of these kinds of ultra-processed foods overall, while opting for lots more nutrient-dense foods.

Remember: the goal isn’t to eradicate every single processed food from your life; the goal is to build a dietary foundation that offers diversity, prioritizing whole foods and nutrient-dense processed foods, while leaving room for joy, nostalgia, fun, and tradition.

I’ll end this post with a public service announcement: "My name is Anne Hussain, I am a Naturopathic Doctor, and I periodically enjoy salt and vinegar chips, Pakistani Nimco Potato Sticks, and sour fruit gummies."

Make sure to listen to the full episode on UPFs here and share it with someone who needs to hear this.

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References:

• NOVA Food Classification System Adaptation: Food, Nutrition & Fitness I: The Digestion Journey Begins with Food Choices (Compiled in 2018 by EduChange with guidance from NUPENS, Sao Paulo)

• Heart & Stroke Foundation on Ultra-Processed Foods