Just to clarify, some methods of food processing are healthy and beneficial to us, for instance, the process of pasteurizing or adding vitamin D to milk.

The term processed food in this article refers to alterations in food that removes any healthy components or adds some non-healthy components.

1. Processed foods are low in fibre.

Fibre also called roughage is the part of plant-based foods (vegetables, grains, fruits and nuts) that the body can’t breakdown. It passes through the digestive system without getting digested and hence, doesn’t add calories to the body.

Fibre, especially soluble, fermentable fibre has many health benefits, prevents constipation, encourages healthy intestinal bacterial growth and fibre in food help to curb appetite, this means you will feel more satisfied with lesser calories than you would with an equivalent quantity of processed food. This means the same quantity of food vary in their caloric value and the processed food gives you more calories and leaves you less satisfied, increasing your chances of eating more and hence getting fat. It’s unfortunate that the fibre in food is lost during processing or intentionally removed.

Unprocessed food rich in fibre helps curb appetite.

2. Processed foods are usually high in trans fats or processed vegetable oil.

Vegetable oils are unnatural concentrated source of polyunsaturated fatty acids. High intake of polyunsaturated fats has been proven to be a key driver to oxidation and inflammation in the body. Oxidation and inflammation and to prominent way by which many illnesses develop in the human body. This is even worse when the oils are hydrogenated because then they contain more harmful substances called trans fats. The remedy isn’t to avoid cooking with vegetable oils but to reduce consumption of junks, ready made and canned foods which contains a lot of the unhealthy components. Look on the ingredient label of any canned food, you be surprised to see that processed vegetable oils are almost always present in significant amount.

3. It requires less energy and time to digest processed foods.

Food manufacturer companies intentionally make their food easy to chew and swallow because it increases your chances of buying more, this is one of the major reasons they make it low in fibre.

This makes it easy to eat more calories and not only that, it takes less calories to digest processed foods compared to unprocessed whole food. Hence we consume more calories and burn very little, simply by eating more processed food.

4. Processed food are typically higher on sugar.

Processed food makes it easier to consume higher quantity of sugar, this is because sugar is added to improve palatability and overall taste.

Most people struggling with excessive sugar intake don’t get it from adding excessive sugar to their tea, coffee, pap or other foods that are regularly sweetened at home. They are almost always getting the excess sugar from sugar-sweetened beverages and junk food.