We eat processed food is every day and yes we all know it’s hard to say no to processed food. So why processed food? Highly processed foods are those which are made by industrialized materials.
Any type of packaged cookies, sodas, noodles, sausages and nuggets are processed food and we have it in our regular life. Researchers have made it clear that processed food make you gain more calories which are not good for your body. They also found that the people who are dependent to processed food have more risk to get affected by heart diseases. But they also found it that the energy bars, cereals and yogurts can be healthy.
Let’s see the reasons for the harmfulness of processed food.
Contents
Added sugar:
Processed food is high in sugar and also the high-fructose corn syrup, and we all know how harmful it is to consume excessive sugar. We are familiar with the fact that added sugars are basically empty calories that don’t produce any nutrition. It can have effects on your metabolism too which can lead to insulin-resistant, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, etc. Also sugar can lead you to the most harmful diseases like cancer, diabetes and heart diseases. You may not put much sugar in your drink but you are consuming it through the sugar-sweetened beverages and processed foods.
Addictive:
The harmfulness of processed food can’t be defied when it’s about of addiction. No wonder processed foods are very addictive and the reason behind it is, crunchy foods and crackers are altered by chemical as “Hyper rewarding” which makes you to eat processed food more and often you battle the processed food addiction. Science has already proved the fact of the reward value that has the effect in our brain which makes us eat more than our body needs. This is called the “Food reward hypothesis of obesity.” Well no matter if it’s processed food or not, overconsumption is harmful for health but in case of processed food it’s more harmful because of the high calorie it contains.
Artificial Ingredients:
One of the significant reasons of the harmfulness of processed food is the artificial chemicals. We can see on the packets of processed food writing about so many ingredients that we don’t even familiar of.
These are the artificial ingredients containing chemicals like preservatives which prevent foods from rotting, colorants for color, flavor to give food a specific flavor, textures for a particular texture and many more. So why processed food can contain so many chemicals, which are not even mentioned in the label.
Though all those ingredients are tested, these artificial items can be harmful for your body.
Refined carbohydrates:
Processed foods are usually high in carbohydrate but the problem is with the refined carbohydrate because it breaks down fast in the digestive tract and affects the blood sugar also the insulin level. There’s a phenomenon called “Blood sugar roller coaster” which happens to your body when you consume high-carb foods. It can lead to many chronic diseases. Many of us get fooled by the label “Whole grain” but no, it’s nothing but processed food. So the bottom line is that, the carbohydrates you find in processed food are basically simple carbs which are refined and harmful for your health.
Fiber and Nutrition fact:
why Processed food is very low in nutrition than the unprocessed foods. It contains less anti-oxidant, vitamins and minerals than the real foods. On the other hand, the fermentable fiber and soluble fiber has so many health benefits. Study has shown that fiber can help us to consume lesser amount of carbohydrates by satisfying us with adequate amount of calories.
Real food is much better than processed food in every possible ways because of a lot more reason and these were the fewer reasons among them. Only real food can help you to have a healthy life of course with a balanced diet as we have mentioned before that, overconsumption can be harmful no matter what food is it.