Comment by 2001zhaozhao
2 days ago
I think "highly processed foods are bad" is best seen as a general rule and no more than that. However, it is a good general rule and following it is probably the easiest way for people to eat healthy.
In general, the more processing steps involved, the more things companies can do to make the food more delicious, cheaper to produce, etc., at the expense of customers' health. There is also a significant correlation between "highly processed food" and "contains way too much refined grains and oil".
However, it's absolutely possible to process the food heavily and add lots of ingredients and still maintain a healthy food if you actually care about the customer's wellbeing. It would just result in a product that is less competitive in the short term, so companies have little to no incentive to do it.
Totally there’s correlation, and to some extent causality. And it’s mostly right. But it’s also wrong. You can pick healthy packaged food in the supermarket. Durability doesn’t require additives in many cases.
Mainly, it will be very hard to change the cooking habits of people in this sense. Chopping your own vegetables is much harder than buying the right (processed) food that doesn’t change anything else about your habits. It sounds super “free” - I doubt it will have large scale impact on the US average diet. Better regulate your food.