How processed food hurts your health

Many of the foods we eat are no longer in a natural state. Fish often come from fish farms instead of algae-rich wild waters and many fruit and vegetables are robbed of their fibre and nutrients. What's more, unhealthy doses of salt or sugar are often added during processing.

This is what you need to know about how processed food hurts your health.

Here are a few ways that modern processing technology can make food less healthy:

• Adding heart-threatening trans fats and saturated fats.
• Adding blood pressure-raising sodium (salt).
• Adding blood glucose-elevating sugars.
• Removing natural fibre.
• Removing vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
• Adding chemical preservatives, flavours, colours and sweeteners.
• Including so many varied additives that the risk of contamination is increased.
• Replacing naturally balanced nutrients with a more limited range of man-made vitamins and minerals in fortified foods.

Processed food arrives at the store in a sealed package, and in a form different from its original, natural state. This includes most canned, frozen, bottled, boxed or dehydrated food items such as soup, frozen pizza, candy, bottled pasta sauce and savoury snacks.

Of course, not all pre-packaged foods are a problem. Milk, yogurt and cheese all arrive at the store in their final packaging after some type of pasteurizing process, and some very healthy organic spaghetti sauces and energy bars have few, if any, unnatural, unhealthy ingredients.

The problem is mostly with foods that have been dramatically altered for convenience, taste or a longer shelf life. These are the foods with lengthy ingredient lists that include chemicals the typical person has never heard of. Among the additives we typically consume each day are food dyes and colourings, preservatives, emulsifiers, acidity regulators, gelling agents and more.

North American food processors use up to 2,800 different additives, all of which have gone through extensive studies before being put on the market. Nonetheless, many additives are not specified on the label or are listed simply as "flavouring."

Food additives are not new: natural ingredients such as salt, vinegar and sugar have been used for hundreds of years to help preserve food. The worrying fact is that modern food processing relies more and more heavily on additives, and their use has increased greatly in the past 50 years. Everyday foods often have pumped-up nutritional profiles — breakfast cereal with added vitamins and minerals, and orange juice with bone-building calcium.

All of these beefed up products look like health superstars, but do you need them?

The answer is yes and no. While fortified and enriched foods may help to fill nutritional gaps, they aren't better than a healthy, balanced diet, according to nutrition experts. Here's what you need to know.

• Fortified foods should still be nutritious in their own right. Look for natural nutrients first and consider fortification a bonus. Choose calcium-rich skim or 2% milk and whole-grain, high-fibre breakfast cereals (if they have added nutrients, it's a plus). A little extra nutrition is fine but it shouldn't be the reason to choose a food.
• If you are eating a good healthy diet, you should not need to take a daily multivitamin (unless a medical or allergic condition means you are not eating certain foods). But you do need fibre, good fats and the hundreds of protective phytochemicals in fruits and vegetables — and they don't come in pill form.

Remember this information about processed foods the next time you're out shopping to help you make healthier choices.