Are there benefits to processed food?
Published 12:00 am Thursday, August 14, 2014
- A reality salt check on processed foods
A group of nutrition experts recently put out a polarizing paper defending a class of food that doesn’t tend to get much love: processed food.
The basic point of the paper, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, was that despite the prevalent negative views on processed foods, the extent to which a food is processed doesn’t necessarily correlate with it being less nutritious.
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Think about yogurt or whole-grain bread. Both are highly processed, but haven’t lost any of their nutritional content, said Connie Weaver, the paper’s lead author and a nutrition professor and head of the nutrition science department at Purdue University.
“Or, you can take a food that’s formulated to have a lot of fat and sugar and salt in it and hardly any nutrients, and that can be a poor nutritional choice,” she said. “It’s not about the extent of processing, it’s about the formulation of it.”
The paper also pointed out that there is a lot of confusion around the definition of a processed food, which the paper defined as a food that’s been manipulated through at least one of more than a dozen processes, including washing, grinding, mixing, freezing, concentrating and irradiating. That said, the authors wrote that although there are minimally processed foods and ultra-processed foods, those terms are subjective and arbitrary, and definitions that account for nutritional content would be helpful.
Not everyone has access to raw fruits and vegetables — because of the climate in their region, their economic situation or other factors — so processed foods are a necessary way to ensure more people have access to essential vitamins and minerals, the paper says.
Ultimately, the authors call on food manufacturers to develop processed foods that contain less sugar, salt and fat. And the good news, they say, is that companies throughout history have tended to respond to what the masses demand.
When a prominent dietary guidelines committee in 2000 called for foods with less fat, for example, the industry responded with 300 new low-fat foods. The problem was, they were high in sugar, Weaver said. Now that consumers want less sugar and no artificial sweeteners, manufacturers need to develop new alternatives.
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“There’s a lot of effort to try to reformulate, but if the consumers don’t choose it with their dollars, they have to try something else,” she said.
A mixed reception
Not surprisingly, others in the nutrition world had mixed feelings about the paper. Some critics argued the authors should have done more to highlight the difference between a minimally processed food, like baby carrots, and highly processed foods, like Froot Loops.
David Katz, the director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center, responded to the paper in a statement criticizing the fact that its sponsor, the American Society for Nutrition, receives much of its funding from companies that make processed foods.
Nonetheless, he did agree on one point.
“I believe, as a public health pragmatist, that we will indeed have to trade up processed foods rather than expect to see a sudden, massive shift to [fresh] produce,” Katz said.
Weaver emphasized that the paper had no direct links to food manufacturer funding. Further, most societies function through industry support, she said.
“I think it’s a reality that the private sector works with the public in order to have professional opportunities — annual meetings and journals and things that otherwise would be so expensive they couldn’t participate,” said Weaver, who personally receives funding from food manufactures as well.
Diane Stadler, an assistant professor of health promotion and sports medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, said she recognizes some of the authors, including Weaver, as well-respected researchers in her field. Although Stadler said she personally has not formed scientific partnerships with industry because she doesn’t want to be perceived as having compromised integrity, such partnerships have become a necessary part of performing expensive scientific research.
Stadler called the paper “important” and agreed that more processing does not necessarily mean less nutrition, although many of today’s highly processed foods tend to be less nutritious. Spaghetti noodles, for example, are a highly processed food that have been ground, reformulated and have a long shelf life, but do not contain a lot of sugar, salt or fat, she said.
A crucial point the paper makes, Stadler said, is that a large proportion of the population would not have access to adequate amounts of vitamins A, C, D and E, folate, calcium, magnesium or iron if processed foods were not fortified and enriched, meaning nutrients were added to the foods.
Between 2003 and 2008, processed foods contributed 55 percent of Americans’ dietary fiber, 48 percent of calcium, 43 percent of potassium, 34 percent of vitamin D, 64 percent of iron, 65 percent of folate and 46 percent of vitamin B-12, according to the paper. On the flip side, they also contributed 52 percent of Americans’ saturated fat, 75 percent of added sugars and 57 percent of sodium.
If fortification and enrichment were not happening, large pockets of the U.S. population would be at risk for health issues related to nutrient deficiencies such as goiters, enlargements of the thyroid gland caused by a lack of iodine in the diet, she said.
“The vitamins and minerals added to bread and cereal products are there for a reason,” Stadler said. “It’s to prevent the nutrient deficiencies we have overcome by fortifying those foods.”
The bottom line is that many people still consume only one serving of vegetables per day, Stadler said.
“What do we do to preserve the nutritional health of individuals that aren’t going to meet the recommendations of eating five to seven fruits and vegetables a day?” she said. “Because we know that happens, and we can’t just say it doesn’t matter. We need to provide opportunities for people to consume those nutrients in a variety of ways. One is through food fortification and enrichment.”
Biotechnology confusion
The arguments the paper and its supporters make almost echo those made by supporters of producing foods using genetically modified organisms (GMOs), a broad term meaning an organism whose genome has been altered for the purpose of improved crop production at lower cost, for example. The term GMO has become highly politicized due to concerns over potential impacts on human health.
One of the paper’s authors, Ruth MacDonald, a food science and human nutrition professor at Iowa State University, has also advocated against the labeling of GMO foods, an issue Oregon voters will take up in November. In an interview, MacDonald said it’s a fair comparison.
There is a lot of confusion among the public around the intersection between biotechnology and agriculture and how biotechnology influences the food system, MacDonald said.
“There is the reaction of, ‘Oh, if it’s got technology in it from the agricultural perspective, then it cannot be healthy,’” she said. “There is no evidence that that’s the case. GMO technology doesn’t make food unhealthy. In fact, it can make it safer and more available.”
With GMO and processed foods alike, it’s important to talk about what exactly they are, why they are happening and what the benefits are, MacDonald said.
Similarly, with processed foods, people automatically tend to assume they’re unhealthy, but that’s not necessarily the case, she said.
“I think we all agree that with all the factors we’re trying to address in the food system globally, we need to be able to preserve and process food to reduce the waste that happens abundantly throughout the world and to use the technologies in an intelligent way,” she said.
— Reporter: 541-383-0304,
tbannow@bendbulletin.com