Yes. I wanna kill something. And what I wanna kill is the term “processed food.” I wanna drive stakes through its eyes, pound it flat with a sledgehammer, then flip it over and pound it even flatter. I’d stake it to an anthill except that I like ants a little too much. The term must die. It’s a lie, fake science, fake health, fake everything. It’s also racist, classist, and elitist. I’ve heard it enough. I do not want to hear it again.
Some background: Five or six years ago, when I was on the verge of turning 60 and my blood pressure was inching up, I saw my GP. The first thing he said was, “We have to get you off of processed foods.” He hadn’t asked me anything about my diet. He didn’t define what a “processed food” is. He didn’t know that I was eating processed foods, whatever they might be. He didn’t know what I ate at all, but he was so sure that hypertension is caused by processed foods that he didn’t consider his advice absurd. I was so taken aback by the lack of logic that I didn’t even call him on it. I will not make that mistake again.
I just wrote him off, and soon had a better GP. This one simply handed me a prescription for lisinopril, which has been doing the job just fine ever since.
Still, everywhere I go, I see cautions against eating “processed food.” Nobody ever defines the term. Everybody who uses it assumes that its definition is obvious and universally understood. I dunno… Is cooked food processed? Is pasteurized milk processed? No? Then what does “processed” actually mean?
Crickets. (Which some consider health food. Unless the crickets are killed first, in which case no, because that would be processing them.)
If it’s about salt, say that it’s about salt. And provide numbers. I did the science on myself and found that salt does not affect my blood pressure at all. (Obviously, YMMV.) There’s actually significant evidence that it goes the other way. In fact, there’s evidence that eating more salt causes you to lose weight.
If not salt, then fat? Research finding that most fats are not only harmless but necessary and beneficial is piling up. Eating fat gooses your metabolism, especially if it’s been awhile since you’ve eaten carbs. Eating a high-fat, zero-carb breakfast is one of my major strategies for keeping my weight under control.
Sugar? I’ll definitely buy that. But it’s funny how nobody mentions sugar as a key element of processed foods. Chemicals? Which chemicals? Give me a list. Be specific. You and I are made of chemicals. I eat nothing but chemicals. And so do you. We need a precise technical definition here.
All that said, little by little, I’m beginning to get a clue. I may even have a definition for you: Processed food is any food that my tribe disapproves of. Yes, here and there I’ve heard snarky pseudo-definitions on the order of “any food containing more than five ingredients.” Good luck if you want six different vegetables in your vegetable soup. I counted the ingredients in Bugles earlier today: Corn meal, coconut oil, sugar, salt, baking soda. That’s it. Bugles are health food! (What’s scarier, to me at least, is that they’re over fifty years old, and I remember their introduction.) “Processed food” is in fact one of the most important entries in the Encyclopedia of Virtue Signaling.
“Processed food” is also, in some circles, code for something eaten by working-class people, who admirably don’t care what our fackwot Harvard-educated elites think of them. Harvard, by the way, was bought off by the sugar companies decades ago to make the case that sugar was safe and fat was evil. Ever since I learned that, I’ve considered Harvard a fake university, and The Atlantic agrees with me. The gist here is that you really really don’t want to be lumped in with people who work with their hands, so never admit that you even know what fish sticks or TV dinners are.
Ok, I know, shut up, Jeff and cut to the chase. Here’s the deal: The term “processed food” is an undefinable nonsense term used by snobs who try to make it look like they know something about health but are actually obsessed with distancing themselves from those yukky working classes. It’s just that simple.
Want to prove me wrong? Go find me a precise, technical, unambiguous, and widely accepted technical definition of “processed food.” You must meet all four points, without exception. (If you don’t, I will shoot it down in nuclear flames.) Otherwise, I think my conclusion stands.
