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Jamie Oliver always talks about how processed food is awful, and we should stop eating it.

By processed food he means food which is pre-prepared and contains additives. He instead insists that food cooked from fresh local ingredients is much healthier.

By reading the ingredients lists on the foods you buy, understanding what you are eating and cooking more fresh food for yourself and your family you can become empowered to make the right food choices. Ingredients lists shouldn't be a long list of unpronounceable things you've never heard of. Avoid processed foods and you will see and feel the benefits.
-- source

An example of his claims is the following:

Well, I think it’s pretty simple really: forty years ago we ate mostly fresh, local food, and we knew where that food was coming from. But then fast and heavily processed foods crept in and totally changed our palettes and food businesses. And ultimately, this food is killing us. Obesity and weight gain are the most obvious symptoms, but the problem I have in telling this story is that there are also loads of skinny people suffering because the garbage they are eating is affecting them in a different, but equally dramatic way.

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Is there any evidence that food containing preservatives is worse for our health than freshly cooked food?

For example, if I were to cook chicken nuggets from fresh ingredients would it be healthier than using pre-made ones?

Sklivvz
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Sal Rahman
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    No discussion of this subject would be complete without reference to Dr. Weston Price's 1939 book, [Nutrition and Physical Degeneration](http://www.amazon.com/Nutrition-Physical-Degeneration-Weston-Price/dp/0916764206/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301194778&sr=8-1#reader_0916764206), in which the author establishes a clear relationship between the consumption of processed foods and the prevalence of degenerative diseases (e.g. dental cavities, arthritis) that he found to be rare or nonexistent in ethnically identical populations that had not yet deviated from their traditional diets. – Miles Erickson Mar 27 '11 at 03:09
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    You really need to add a link to a specific claim here - the question is completely subjective otherwise. – Sklivvz Mar 27 '11 at 08:57
  • @Monkey - "Diet sodas (also diet pop, diet, sugar-free, or light soft drinks, refreshments, or carbonated beverages) are typically sugar-free, artificially sweetened, non-alcoholic carbonated beverages generally marketed towards health-conscious people, diabetics, athletes, and other people who want to lose weight, improve physical fitness, or reduce their sugar intake" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_soda . My understanding is that whatever sugar replcement they use isn't exactly considered very healthy, though I never bothered to find out since I hate the taste in the first place :) – user5341 Mar 27 '11 at 11:14
  • @Monkey - see for example "DeNoon, Daniel J. Reviewed by Charlotte Grayson Mathis MD. "Drink More Diet Soda, Gain More Weight? Overweight Risk Soars 41% With Each Daily Can of Diet Soft Drink", WebMD Medical News (2005), accessed 2007-06-25" - http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20050613/drink-more-diet-soda-gain-more-weight. Sounds like there's a correlation but not a proven causation. – user5341 Mar 27 '11 at 11:24
  • @Monkey - gotcha. That is a valid criticism of the Q. I was merely commenting on the fact that "diet versions" has a fairly precise meaning in this context. – user5341 Mar 28 '11 at 03:45
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    Without processing, how would we make beer? – oosterwal Mar 29 '11 at 13:41

2 Answers2

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The fact that the food is merely "processed" doesn't make it bad (the classic example is pasteurized milk - it is also a "processed" food; another is properly frozen vegetables).

What CAN make processed food worse than non-processed food is four factors:

  • Addition of certain ingredients that aren't good for you either by their nature (trans-fats) or by the unnatural amount (sodium).

    The additives can be for preservation (e.g. sugar/sodium), or as replacement for easily perishable ingredients (e.g. trans-fats - see Wiki transfats article or http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309085373&page=423), or to give taste/color (e.g. MSG - which doesn't seem to have a firm scientific consensus on long term effects but a proven potential for short term ill effects in some people).

  • A combination of different ingredients may lead to unexpected chemical reactions producing resulting chemicals that may be harmful. A well known example is Sodium Benzoate turning into carcinogenic Benzene in certain conditions.

  • The quality of ingredients in processed food may not be as high. When you get a hot dog, there's no way for you to examine the meat which went into it for quality as you would the meat you buy from the store. This is because the processing pretty much destroys most indicators of food quality by changing ingredients' texture, mixing them with other ingredients etc... This allows the manufacturer to use lesser-quality ingredient to contain costs (not necessarily pig snouts of urban legend, but just lesser quality cuts etc...).

  • The processing destroys good/useful/healthy properties of food. E.g. heating destroys vitamins.

user5341
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    This answer is [not properly referenced](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5/must-answers-be-referenced). Please add citations to support your claims! :-) – Sklivvz Mar 27 '11 at 09:09
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    @Sklivvz - added more – user5341 Mar 27 '11 at 17:11
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    http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/289/wikipedia-as-a-source – Sklivvz Mar 27 '11 at 17:46
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    @Garet The site misrepresents how pasteurisation works. It also ignores that modern milk is instead micro-filtrated (at least here over in Europe …) and it gives a false reason *why* this is done (the reason isn’t to hide toxicity but to prolonge durability). Finally, it overpays organic milk’s pesticide freeness (there are other toxic substances in abundance in organic milk, e.g. dioxins) but that’s only to be expected for a organic food site. – Konrad Rudolph Mar 28 '11 at 12:54
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    @Konrad, @Garet - but natural milk is TASTIER! :) (spoken from experience). But yeah, Konrad is correct. – user5341 Mar 28 '11 at 15:56
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    @Konrad In North America, pasteurized milk is always distinguished from microfiltered ... and most is just pasteurized. –  Mar 28 '11 at 16:03
  • @Matthew Possibly true but are you sure that you aren’t confusing microfiltration with homogenisation? I’m asking because I know that a lot of people do …. That said, as far as I know microfiltration started relatively recently, only a few years ago milk was exclusively pasteurised. – Konrad Rudolph Mar 28 '11 at 16:09
  • @Konrad Not unless the "Microfiltered" label doesn't actually mean microfiltered :P –  Mar 28 '11 at 16:20
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    @Konrad: I see what you are saying, actually here in the US I haven't even seen the microfiltered milk =/ I do know there are some studies on the parts taken out of milk during processing that showed them to be very nutritious but then there's others that talk about our bodies not being intended for milk after childhood. So,... I'm not really sure and withdraw from milk :P – That Realtor Programmer Guy Mar 29 '11 at 02:29
  • @DVK: very tasty o_o! – That Realtor Programmer Guy Mar 29 '11 at 02:30
  • Same as other, interesting answer, but not enough references. – Zonata Mar 23 '16 at 06:09
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There are many flavors of problems associated with processed food. Some stem from the ingredients which more often have:

  • High-fructose corn syrup (ridiculous how many things have this..)
  • Hydrogenated ????? oil (vegetable, soybean, peanut,..)
  • High sodium

The above are related to preservation mainly. Some companies will use lesser-known alternatives which essentially do the same things. The first two hurt by generally making bodies fatter when the same meal could usually be made without them. Peanut butter is a good example - natural varieties don't use hydrogenated oil whereas other use hydrogen to make the peanut butter and oil bond more permanently so you don't have to stir it.

The molecular effect of hydrogenated oil is to make peanut butter more like plastic than protein mixed with fatty acids in the oil. Your body stores this plastic-like substance in your cells and can give them trouble. High fructose syrups simply have gobs and gobs of sugar with a long shelf life. These syrups signal your body to store fat as well.

In addition to these there are a few other things to consider:

  • Processed foods have severely "injured" molecule chains giving lower quality and amount of nutrients than whole foods or freshly cooked foods.
  • Vegetables and meat in processed food is often of low nutritional quality due to factory-like mentality vs. farms and ranches
  • MSG is more common
  • Usually no enzymes survive processing (The US's general populace for example has a rather large enzyme deficiency)
  • Fresh tasting food is really good :P

References update

  1. High fructose corn syrup (and high levels of fructose in general) lead to obesity and other health issues by stimulating cellular mechanism
  2. Hydrogenation's affect on nutrients
  3. High sodium in processed foods
  4. Break of complex carbs in processed foods.
  5. Processed foods destroy nutrients
  6. Amino acids are body cannot produce are called "essential amino acids."
  7. "In other words, if your diet is predominantly based on cooked and processed foods, what seems to be relatively large protein consumption may be effectively considerably smaller." and other information.
  8. This talks briefly of high-fructose corn syrup and MSG in processed foods.
  9. Enzyme deficiency and poor digestion.
  10. "Simply cooking or processing food can destroy many of the natural enzymes"
  11. Extra reference with various related points.
That Realtor Programmer Guy
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    This answer is [not properly referenced](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5/must-answers-be-referenced). Please add citations to support your claims! :-) – Sklivvz Mar 27 '11 at 09:11
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    What do you mean by "injured" molecule chains? That makes no sense chemically. And enzymes you eat are broken down into amino acids and digested, we humans produce our enzymes ourselves, we don't take them up with our food. – Mad Scientist Mar 27 '11 at 09:14
  • @Skliwz: I'll find the various references, @Fabian: by injured, I mean complex nutrients are broken down into less beneficial nutrients. It is true we break things down as we digest them but this is to a varying degree for different chains and some chains and enzymes we need from food sources. CoQ10 for example is not easy for our bodies to synthesize but is very crucial to cellular health. – That Realtor Programmer Guy Mar 28 '11 at 04:37
  • I semi-understand the first 4 downvotes b4 the references, but is there a problem with them too? Do I need to format this differently or something? Trying to understand the flow of skeptics.SE – That Realtor Programmer Guy Mar 29 '11 at 02:31
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    @Garet Eh, FWIW I think it’s a good answer after you’ve added the references. – Konrad Rudolph Mar 29 '11 at 08:58
  • I've just had 6 total downvotes x_x, not sure why some after the references. Maybe people really like processed food :P Thanks much for the advice, I'll definitely keep references in mind rom the start in the future! – That Realtor Programmer Guy Mar 30 '11 at 15:24
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    Not sure why there are so many downvotes. A comprehensive treatment is Pollan's book In Defense of Food, which is pretty sound scientifically (but not only about processed food). http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=12064069216328450826&hl=en&as_sdt=1,5&as_subj=bio+med+soc – Ruben May 29 '11 at 11:23
  • @Ruben: people really like their mcdonalds ;p – That Realtor Programmer Guy May 31 '11 at 12:55
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    @Garet I thought it's only cool if it's dangerous?! – Ruben May 31 '11 at 14:14
  • It IS dangerous~!~ haven't u seen supersize me? ;p – That Realtor Programmer Guy May 31 '11 at 21:35
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    The quality of the references is really low. Try to find some journal articles etc. that have real clinically relevant research to back those claims. For at least the health effects of sodium there exists fairly wide base of research. You really need solid evidence to back these claims. I'd also appreciate some discussion on how much these claimed problems matter. – Illotus Jan 09 '12 at 16:47
  • -1 for reference 9 alone. This is a scientifically muddled advocacy site not a reliable source. "No enzymes survive processing" appears to be based on some unreferenced and very muddled theory that isn't clear about what an enzyme is. – matt_black Jan 15 '12 at 17:06
  • @matt_black not sure why you wouldn't just delete it in that case. Many references added by request.. Just for reference, enzymes are living organisms which, in general, do not survive industrial processes such as grinding, freezing, drying, preserving, etc. Some do survive but in general it is easy to see how there would be primarily dead enzymes in processed food. – That Realtor Programmer Guy Jan 16 '12 at 23:38
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    @GaretClaborn Your biochemistry isn't very good. Enzymes are usually just proteins or structures built on proteins that perform a biological function by catalysing some important reaction. They are destroyed even more effectively by your stomach acid as they are by any industrial process or cooking. – matt_black Jan 17 '12 at 00:17