NEW SOUTH WALES: If you follow wellness content on social media or in the news, you’ve probably heard that processed food is not just unhealthy, but can cause serious harm.
Eating a diet dominated by highly processed foods means you’re likely to consume more kilojoules than you need, and greater amounts of salt, sugar — as well as food additives.
But not all processed foods are equal, nor bad for you.
Here’s what to look out for on food labels if you want to buy processed, but convenient, foods.
What do the processing categories mean? Researchers use the Nova processed food classification system to group foods into four processing levels.
Group 1: Unprocessed or minimally processed foods are either in their natural state or have minimal processing.
They’re basic foods you could eat straight away, such as vegetables and fruit, or foods that only need minimal processing to make them safe and palatable, such as eggs, meat, poultry, fish, oats, other grains, plain pasta, legumes, milk, plain yoghurt, ground herbs and spices, or nuts with shells.
Group 2: Processed culinary ingredients are derived from group 1.
These are used in cooking to enhance flavour and texture, and include oils, sugar and honey.
Group 3: Processed foods are treated using traditional processing methods such as canning, bottling, fermenting, or salting to extend shelf life.
These include canned fruits, tomato paste, cheese, salted fish, and breads with minimal ingredients.
You could make these foods in a home kitchen.
Group 4: Ultra-processed foods are industrially produced with ingredients and additives not normally found in home kitchens, and have little, if any, group 1 items left intact.
These foods are engineered to be hyper-palatable, meaning you can’t stop eating them, and have long shelf lives.
Products include factory-made biscuits, snack foods, instant meals, frozen desserts, preserved meats, instant noodles, margarine, some breakfast cereals and sugar-sweetened drinks.
However, group 4 products vary greatly in their nutritional quality and the number and type of food additives used to manufacture them.
What’s the concern about eating lots of ultra-processed foods? About 42 per cent of Australians’ total energy intake comes from ultra-processed foods.
These are relatively cheap and are energy-dense, but nutrient-poor.
This means they can contain a lot of kilojules, salt and added sugars but are poor sources of nutrients the body needs such as vitamins, minerals and dietary fibre.