In France, it is estimated that between 30 and 35% of the calories ingested by adults come from processed foods.. It is important to know that processed and ultra-processed foods break down the original natural foods. Due to this process, the body does not benefit (or very little) from nutrients essential to health such as fibersTHE vitaminswhere the antioxidants.
What is the difference between a processed food and an ultra-processed food?
- processed foods are made from fresh foods (fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, meat, poultry, fishetc.) or minimally processed (frozen fruits and vegetables or dried, dried legumes, rice, pasta, etc.). These foods are processed by adding sugaroil, salt or other ingredients usually used in cooking.
- Ultra-processed foods contain ingredients not found in the pantrylike the additives, which are added to increase shelf life or to enhance flavor. For this, industrial products such as crisps, cordons bleus, nuggets based on poultry, fish, or reconstituted meat, instant noodles, dehydrated vegetable soups, THE margarinesodas, etc., no longer have much to do with the raw materials from which they come.
How to choose your food well?
Many products found in supermarkets including in the dietetic, organic or vegetarian departments are processed and ultra-processed foods. While you are doing your shopping, it is not always easy to find out what are the right foods to put in your shopping cart, because product labels often lack clarity and are rather designed to make people want to buy and not to inform the consumer about the content and design of the product. 60 Million consumers alerted to lies and label omissions and recalls that many processed ingredients are harmful to health.
What are the dangers of processed foods?
Ultra-processed foods have already been singled out by dozens of observational epidemiological studies, which associate their consumption with the risk of chronic diseases, such as overweight, obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and depression. In addition, studies have also shown an association between the consumption of ultra-processed foods and the risk of breast cancer and cancer in general, inflammatory bowel diseases and specifically Crohn’s disease, hyperuricemia and steatosis. non-alcoholic hepatic.
How to recognize ultra-processed products?
In Europe, it is mandatory to mention on the label all the ingredients that are in the product. But the industrialists manage with reality. Here are some rules to follow to consume well, and stop falling into the trap of marketing. The mention “made in France” no longer means much, warns the magazine 60 million consumers, for example: “Paris mushrooms are grown in China, but assembled in a box in France”. In general, beware of misleading promises. A “fruit” yoghurt often happens to be “fruit flavored”.
Too long labels, imprecise quantities, additives, complicated names, the ideal is to favor products of which you understand and know all the ingredientspreferably those who have 5 components maximum. To help you, you can use certain indices: the nutri-score label for example, which summarizes thenutritional information of the product going from A to E. Or the Yuka application, which lists the risks and benefits of the list of ingredients.
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Read also:
- Can food apps make us orthorexic?
- Beware of health claims that are not always true!
