Processed Food

There are 3 ways you receive the majority of your food. It is unprocessed, semi-processed, and over-processed.

When you go to the grocery store to buy food, you'll find it in three categories. The first category is unprocessed. This will be your fruits and vegetables. If you buy things like whole grain, it would be unprocessed. Now by far, this is the best food for you. It has no preservatives and it was not processed in a machine. Fruits and vegetables are some of the only unprocessed food in the store.

Now not all semi-processed food is bad, nor is it all good. For example, milk is semi-processed. After you a cow is milked, the milk is processed. It is pasteurized and homogenized. The pasteurization kills any bacteria and the homogenizing process stops the milk from separating. Then next we come to meat, it will be cleaned and cut up or ground. This category also includes whole grain foods. It contains flour, sugar, butter, and some cheeses. These items are products used to make other products. Like flour and sugar to make bread.

Now over-processed foods are the foods we need to avoid. For example, fast food from a restaurant is over-processed. Another example is fish sticks. These products used a lot of preservatives to give them shelf life. Think about it like this, when you go fishing and catch fish. All you have to do is clean out the insides, clean off the scales. and cook it. this is unprocessed. Now if you buy the same fish in the grocery store, it has been semi-processed. It will be skinned, deboned, and washed in a preservative-laden solution. Now the third example is fish sticks. This fish will be boiled, chopped, and filled with preservatives. This fish(unlike the fish you caught yourself) will also be full of sodium as salt is one of the most used preservatives.

The best way to eat healthily is to buy the least processed food items and make your own product. Fish sticks can be made at home by cleaning your fish. Then you boil it and chop it. Now you cool the fish, then shape them into sticks. Freeze the sticks. Then dredge them in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs. Now, these can be stored in the freezer, baked, or shallow fried in a pan. If you want to start cooking more products at home, I sell cookbooks and cooking classes. Together we can learn to eat more healthily and live better lives.