On Friday, March 26th, ABC broadcast “Jamie Oliver Food Revolution”. It is a show where British chef Jamie Oliver tries to change the eating habits and ideas of the people of Huntington WV which had been labeled the most unhealthy city in the US. The primary villain in this drama is processed food.
Processed food, also known as “convenience foods” are those items that are either frozen, canned, or boxed and require little to no preparation time. If you didn’t have to do much to cook the food then it is a processed food.
What is wrong with processed food? Except for the time saving – everything.
Not all convenience foods are created equal. Most convenience foods on the market today are laden with saturated fats, sodium and sugar and provide little to no nutritional value. Even foods touted as fat free or low fat are usually poor alternatives to an already low-nutritional value food such as fat free ice cream and olestra-laden potato chips.
Convenience Foods: A quick and healthy guide for those on the go
Due to some personal health issues I wanted to eat better so I decided to cut down on fat. I also wanted something easy to fix so I naturally looked at processed food.
The one thing I noticed is the sodium content of those foods were off the chart. A well known “healthy” version of a TV dinner had more salt in it than a Big Mac although the fat content was lower.
It is much harder to avoid the huge amounts of salt than it is the fat in processed food.
The hard truth is if you really want to eat healthy it must be freshly made by you in the kitchen where the fat, sugar, and salt can be strictly controlled. There is no short cut right now.
A side benefit is that the cost of the ingredients of freshly made food combined can be cheaper than the processed food one is replacing.