Year: 2019

June 04, 2019 at 03:00AM by CWC As much joy as family dinners and meals out with friends can be, we are a culture of snackers. We eat protein bars while walking to work. We drink our vegetables in smoothie form in the car. We snack while we cook dinner—and again after dinner too (or is that just me?). And even if your Sunday meal prep game is on point, it’s nearly impossible to be so masterful at advance planning that you’ll never been in a situation where you just need a snack like, right now. And in those situations, your only option is processed food—essentially a dirty word in wellness. The legal, official definition of a processed food is “any food other than a raw agricultural commodity and includes any raw agricultural commodity that has been subject to processing, such as canning, cooking, freezing, dehydration, or milling.” So basically, if it’s not a raw food in the produce aisle, it’s been processed in some way to get to that grocery shelf. Diets high in processed foods are linked to poor health outcomes, including unwanted weight gain and increased risk of cardiovascular disease and early mortality. But it’s also important to note that some foods are more processed than others: A snack bar with a long ingredients list that includes artificial flavorings and oils (or, ahem, an order of chicken nuggets at your fav fast food joint) are inherently more processed than just a bag of salted peanuts—and thus not are

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