The popularity of processed foods at recent time is increasing tremendously for its tasty level, flavor, texture and appealing. People are also so habituated to have processed foods for sugary and salt contents. US diet covers 60% with processed foods and it is alarming to learn that this processed food has a higher link with cancer according to new study.
Processed Foods
To make foods more appealing or add flavor, tasty and sweet, foods are processed with sugar, salt, soda, sodium and fat. The ultra-processed foods are with more calorie, sodium and sugar which are linked with diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. A processed food is also a type of food that is less original and raw and less healthy with sodium containing additives. Eating too much sugar is associated with higher risk of heart health. The type of processed foods is canned, cooked, freezing and dehydration. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s definition of processed foods as any type of food than a raw agricultural commodity and includes any raw commodity that has been subject to processing of canning, cooking, freezing and dehydrating.
Why processed foods: Processed foods are available at the grocery, restaurant and any market place where folks consume processed foods to meet up hunger. When you are staying outside, you may be busy and have less time in taking foods that contain health benefit. Processed foods are going to be options to meet up hunger. When kids are in the school or people in a hurry take fast food to beat hunger. There are most popular processed foods in the USA and we will discuss both sides of these foods.
Soft Drinks: Soft drinks are drinks which remove thirst at the moment when you desperately need to drink. These drinks are sugar sweetened and contain high amount of soda to enhance its sweetness. So it is one of the processed foods which cross many process with more ingredients like soda and sugar.
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Potato Crackers: When somebody is planning to travel by bus or train, they buy packets of potato crackers and keep it in the bag. When they feel hungry they start to eat as there is no way to take other foods while travelling by train or bus. Now, what are ingredients of potato crackers? Obviously Potato is one kind of veggie and it has been processed with salt and chance of taking much calories are much more.
Hamburgers: Hamburger is one of the popular foods in all state of the USA. beef burger, burger is like sandwich consisting of two or more cooked patties of ground meat, usually beef, placed with a sliced bread roll or bun. If oversize of patties, buns and toppings are linked with risk factors for human health because the patty is fried in the pan with oil, barbecued or flame boiled.
White Rice: White rice is not horrible for health but it contains less nutrition. Rice is also processed to white color. White rice may contain preservatives too. But most of us can chose foods made with refined white rice, flour, white bread and white pasta where in return nutrition amount is less and cause high blood pressure. Brown rice is the raw form that contains fiber.
Processed meats: Processed meat may have high amount of salt and preservatives. Meat is really one of the important foods for human health that contains water, protein and fat. At the grocery, processed meat may be available as lunchbox sandwich.
Cookies and snakes: Cookies and snakes are high in fructose corn syrup. These common ingredients are used in cookies and snakes. Even there are more foods, that you have never thought, may contain high fructose corn syrup and they are ketchup, jam, jelly, sweet pickle relish. High fructose corn syrup may enhance sweetness in the foods and it is one of the processed foods.
Fruit juice: Raw fruits are healthy for human health. Even many research recommends that for better health, fruit should be taken as raw. But this fruit may be processed to jelly or juices. When fruit juice is processed, sugar or soda are added to enhance sweeting texture.
Sugary cereal: Is cereal processed food ? It may be a healthy question and breakfast cereal is one of the important diet for the U.S people. Some company promote their products as saying that there is lot of health benefit of breakfast cereal. In America, cereals are often fortified with vitamins and there is often lack of vitamins for the breakfast. A significant amount of sugar is added with breakfast cereals. So the fact is added sugar at high amount is not good for health.
In the USA, processed foods intake is increasing day by day as it is easy to manage and afford at anywhere and anytime. But we can know some ingredients like soda, sodium, salt, oil is added with water, fruits, vegetables and meat. They may be worst processed foods list as there may be more added ingredients as it is not possible to know manufacturing process where they are also ingredients to last and sustain foods for long time.
Health risk of processed foods: In the USA, intake of processed foods is on the rise. In the same way, the risk of early obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular and cancer is also increasing. If you have already gained weight, so you should know why are processed foods bad and need to remove list of processed foods. If you are already diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, you need to avoid these processed foods. In broader way, we will discuss some health risks of taking processed foods.
Diabetes: Diabetes is a chronic and metabolic disease characterized by high level of blood glucose or blood sugar which also cause heart damage, blood vessel, eyes, kidneys and nerves. Diabetes are highly seen among adults and about 422 million people diabetes and 1.6 million people die each year for this complication. In the USA, more than 100 million American have diabetes and this disorders spectrum is one the rise. So different research and study have recommended that high sugar sweetened foods or processed foods highly cause to diabetes.
To reduce the risk of diabetes type 2, CDC has formed National Diabetes Prevention Program to provide type 2 diabetes prevention framework in the U. S. This program highly focusses on awareness for lifestyle and pattern of eating habits in association with National Institute of Health (NIH). So better and healthy life, foods matter and processed food in moderation may help us live longer and healthier.
Early obesity: Overweight and obesity has been defined as excess fat gain which leads to different health complications. measurement of obesity is the body mass index (BMI), a person’s weight (in kilograms) divided by the square of his or her height (in meters). A person with a BMI of 30 or more is generally considered obese. A person with a BMI equal to or more than 25 is considered overweight. Childhood obesity is a big problem in the U.S. it is more critical for the low income family in the U.S.
Cardiovascular disease: Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading cause to 17.7 million deaths around the world. These deaths trigger for tobacco and unhealthy diet. Cardiovascular disease are disorders of the heart and blood vessels and also coronary heart disease. The high rate of deaths related to cardiovascular disease like raised blood pressure, increase of glucose and lipids as well as overweight and obesity.
Now processed foods have been leading cause of early obesity and overweight as it contains high amount of soda, sugar, fat salt which also increase risk of high blood pressure. In the United States, the most common type of heart disease is coronary artery disease which affects the blood flow to heart and can cause heart attack.
Cancer: Cancer is one of the generic term for large group of disease characterized by the growth of abnormal cells that can turn into tumors and neoplasms. Cancer can affect any part of the body and has many anatomic and molecular subtypes. Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally and accounted for 8.8 million deaths in 2015 according to World Health Organization.
A new research published in the BMJ has found that ultra-processed foods is linked to cancer. The research paper also discovered that people who eat more ultra-processed foods have higher risk of cancer. The ingredients of the processed foods are salt, sugar, soda and sodium additive components which affects the health in varied way. Even, you don’t know the manufacturing process of the processed foods. Due to intake of sugar sweetened foods like beverages, juice, soft drinks, the risk of facing heart disease and cancer also increasing. Worst processed food list should not be cause to unintentional and early death and it is not expected by anyone.
However, processed foods should not be part of daily diet as statistics show that the U.S. people take about 60-70% of foods per day which are processed. It has been big concern how American People should be healthy be removing and limiting intake of processed foods. The main focus should be how to avoid processed sugar from your foods. Yes, there is no way instead of fruits and vegetables as raw and drinking water in plenty instead of water added with soda, sugar. There are also healthy processed snacks which can be taken in moderation.
Here let’s get a glance of how to avoid processed foods and keep healthy foods:
In the world of busy time, we have less time to go to kitchen to cook foods with fruits, vegetables or rice. For this, we go to supermarket, grocery store and restaurant to buy beverages, frozen foods and soft drinks. We are habituated of learning in the market that is locally grown, grass fed meats, produced on organic way, pesticide free etc. Now the common warning message is sugar free, less sugar, sodium free or no salt etc. So here we can know some instruction on how to get healthy foods:
Read the ingredients on food label: when you are buying some foods in the super market or grocery store, there are lots of foods and processed foods. So read the ingredients on food label carefully to know about calorie count, sugar content and organic facts of processing in the farm. Also try to see any approval of processing foods from federal govt.
Visit any farmer’s market: Farmer’s market is one of the markets where someone may collect organic facts of food production and food processing. It is so safe and healthy to buy food products from farmer’s market as people get everything to know about farmer’s market instead of any supermarket where foods are processing and there is no access to know hidden processing system.
More choice on Raw: Most of the cases, our choice should be on raw fruits and vegetables and less choice on processed foods. Raw fruits and vegetables have antioxidants and phytochemicals which fight against diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular and obesity at early life.