“Clean eating” is a popular phrase these days, but what exactly does it mean? Clean eating is built on a foundation of increasing consumption of whole foods – think fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, and lean meats – and minimizing consumption of highly processed, packaged foods.
Let’s take a look at the phrase “processed” foods. For a while, it seemed all packaged, processed foods were getting a bad rap, or bad wrap if you will! But food products are processed to varying degrees and with a wide variety of ingredients, so here are a few facts to help guide your purchase decisions.
Should We Care About Processing?
Unless you are surviving exclusively on farmers’ market produce or food from your garden, you are likely consuming processed foods on a daily basis. Processing can involve everything from pasteurization and refrigeration to vacuum sealing and fermentation. At its most basic, processed food is food that has been altered in any way, not just nutritionally.
Processing happens on a range, from minimally processed to highly- or ultra-processed. The intensity of the processing, such as hydrogenating oils, making protein isolates from whole foods, or the conversion of corn starch into high fructose corn syrup is what makes these products ultra-processed. The way to tell is therefore by looking at the ingredient list to see if such ingredients are present (we’ll provide some samples in the summary below). Ultra-processed foods are usually highly manufactured and are characterized by artificial ingredients and added sugars, fats, and salts.
Should We Care About Additives?
Ultra-processed foods, not just processed foods, include characteristic ingredients like additives to make the final product more palatable or appealing through the use of flavors, flavor enhancers, colors, sweeteners, or anything to retain the structure and increase product shelf life (generally artificial ingredients), and sugar, sodium, and saturated fat.
If you are into ‘clean’ eating, the topic of additives should certainly be your focus. However, scientific research into the health effects of many additives is not always clear-cut. The science is, however, very clear on high sodium, saturated fat, and sugar intake. To help identify products with these characteristics, read our previous blog on traffic light labeling. There is sufficient evidence here with a link to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and some cancers. If anything, your journey into a healthy lifestyle should start there.
Should We Care About the Number of Ingredients?
Some people abide by the rule of only eating packaged foods with less than a few ingredients listed on the label. At Eatiquette, we believe it’s more about the quality of ingredients than the number of ingredients.
For example, in our Eatiquette app you’ll find an unsweetened applesauce with 5 ingredients (apples, apple puree, cinnamon, nutmeg and vitamin C), but you’ll also find a brand of applesauce with only 4 ingredients, one of which is highly processed high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Choosing your applesauce based on its clean ingredients instead of strictly on the number of ingredients seems like the smarter, healthier choice.
Here is another example of a food product with a long list of ingredients that still deserves a place on your clean-eating plate: Maya Kaimal – Organic Everyday Dal: Green Split Peas (Water, Green Split Peas), Water, Onion, Coconut Cream (Coconut Cream, Water), Virgin Coconut Oil, Dried Spinach, Garlic, Cumin, Sea Salt, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Brown Mustard Seeds, Turmeric, Cayenne.
None of these 15 ingredients (three of which are water), are artificial and they are all easily recognizable. However, we do urge you to be careful when ingredient lists become very long. Some simmer sauces contain up to 29 ingredients. Once it gets that long, you can be sure that the product has plenty of additives. The average granola or cereal bar contains 30 ingredients. Over 26% of the products in our app contain more than 25 ingredients! That is food for thought, but material for a future post.
Should We Care About Pronunciation?
We’ve all heard the adage, “If you can’t say it, then don’t eat it.” Is this, like the number-of-ingredients rule, a rule that needs breaking?
Let’s take a look at most of our yogurt containers. . .you’ll see L. Acidophilus, L. Bulgaricus, S. Thermophilus, Bifidus, and L. Paracasei. These active live cultures are a struggle to pronounce but they’re great for your gut!
Ascorbic Acid, Citric Acid, and Tartaric Acid are other ominous sounding food additives you’ve likely seen in ingredient lists. The first is Vitamin C and the others are normal compounds found in natural foods too, be it that they are often ‘synthesized’, i.e. created in a lab, instead of derived from a grape or an orange. This in itself should not alarm you. Certainly, if you’re someone that also takes vitamins and supplements because you’ll find those ingredients in them too.
Now what about some of the ingredients in the popular plant-based meat alternative product Beyond Beef; there’s Methylcellulose (plant fiber derivative), Sunflower Lecithin (a natural emulsifier that takes the place of egg), and Calcium Alginate (a plant-based casing made from seaweed). This is certainly an ultra-processed food, and these ingredients are almost unpronounceable, but does that make them unhealthy?
Maybe these rules don’t need to be broken, maybe they just don’t need to be rules at all.
So When are Processed Foods Unhealthy?
If a long list of ingredients and easy pronunciation doesn’t say everything, then how do we choose our food wisely? Our app can help you with that! Here are some ingredients and suffixes to identify and avoid if you want to endeavor to eat healthier, ‘clean’ and transparent food:
- Avoid:
- High fructose corn syrup
- Artificial flavors
- Anything with -sorbate, -nitrate, -phosphate, -ose
- Colors
- Emulsifiers and thickeners (we plan to focus on these in a future post)
- High sodium content (colored Red in the app)
- High saturated fat content (colored Red in the app)
- High added sugar content (colored Red in the app)
- Any food product without a comprehensive, transparent ingredient list
Processed foods can be a part of a healthy lifestyle. Don’t fret over it too much, convenience goes a long way in keeping your life simple. Just be aware of what’s in your food, and open your Eatiquette app. If you’ve already downloaded the app but haven’t registered yet, then do that today!