“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” Genesis 1:29. “Thou shalt eat the herb of the field.” Genesis 3:18
For almost 6,000 years, man ate food that he grew, hunted for, or bartered for from local farmers. Food was simple, made from natural ingredients that were grown and harvested locally. People knew what they were eating. Food was either eaten raw or cooked, combining ingredients in their natural form to produce the final product. There was no question as to what people were putting into their bodies.
The term, “whole foods” was first introduced in 1946. Prior to that date, this term did not exist. Why have the terms “natural foods” or “whole foods” been introduced into our vocabularies? Why do we even need these definitions? Is not all food natural and whole?
A definition for “whole foods” is: “Foods that are unprocessed and unrefined, or processed and refined as little as possible, before being consumed. Whole foods typically do not contain added salt, carbohydrates, or fat.” In Canada, by law, a “natural food” is “not expected to contain, or to ever have contained, an added vitamin, mineral nutrient, artificial flavouring agent or food additive. A natural food or ingredient of a food does not have any ingredient or fraction thereof removed or significantly changed, except the removal of water.”
Based on this definition, it sounds like a lot of the foods that are available to us now are not “natural” or “whole”. Go down any grocery store aisle, and the option to purchase food that is still in its natural form is limited to a very small area of the store. The rest of the food products on the shelves would be unrecognizable to anyone born before the 1800s. What has happened to our food in the last 200 years or so? And what is the reason for this change? Before we look at the very recent phenomenon that we refer to as processed foods, let us look through history to answer these questions.
HISTORY OF FOOD PRESERVATION
Food naturally begins to spoil the moment it is harvested, within just a few days. Food spoilage is a complex process that involves several factors, including oxygen, water, light, enzymes, temperature, insects, and micro-organisms such as bacteria, molds, and yeast. Once food is spoiled, eating it can make you sick, and it would be unusable as a source of nutrition. The very cycle of the seasons creates periods of shortage and abundance of different foods at different times of the year.
From the beginning of earth’s history, food preservation methods were used to prevent food spoilage so that food products would be available year round, even during winter or non-growing periods of the calendar year. Food preservation enabled people to put food aside for use later. A food is considered preserved once it is stabilized with respect to safety and quality. Food preservation slowed down the spoilage of food, but it did not change the actual form of the food.
In hot climates, one of the earliest forms of food preservation was drying. Evaporation of water from the food by exposing it to the sun’s rays produced a safe and stable product. In the Middle Ages “still houses” were purposely built to dry fruits, vegetables, and herbs in areas that did not have enough strong sunlight.
In cold climates, food was preserved by freezing it. Natural ice was used to preserve food for extended periods of time. Any geographic area that had freezing temperatures for part of the year made use of the temperature to preserve foods. Cellars, caves, and cool streams were used. In America, icehouses were built to store ice and food that was placed on the ice. Finally, in the 1800s, mechanical refrigeration was invented and people could preserve food easily, any time of the year.
Preservation with the use of honey or sugar was used in ancient times. Fruits kept in honey were commonplace. In ancient Greece quince was mixed with honey, then dried and packed tightly into jars. The Romans improved the method by cooking the quince and honey, producing a solid texture. In northern climates without enough sunlight to successfully dry fruits, housewives learned to make preserves by heating fruit and combining it with sugar.
Pickling, a method of preserving foods in vinegar; curing of meat by the addition of salt; smoking of meat and fish; and, fermentation, by promoting the growth of beneficial microorganisms, were a few other food preservation methods used throughout history.
The ancient methods of food preservation remained unchallenged until the introduction of canning in the 18th century. Canning is the process of placing food in jars or cans, then heating it to a temperature that destroys microorganisms and inactivates enzymes. This method of food preservation, the use of high temperatures to produce safe food products dates to the 1790s in France.
Napoleon Bonaparte offered a prize to scientists to develop preserved foods for the armies of France. A French confectioner, Nicolas Appert, discovered that the applying of heat (above the boiling point) to food in sealed glass bottles preserved the food from deterioration. Around 1806, the French Navy successfully tested Appert’s principles on a wide range of foods, including meat, vegetables, fruit, and even milk. In 1820, an Englishman, Peter Durand, preserved food in cans based on Appert’s methods. Appert thought that it was the lack of air that preserved the food. However, in the 1860s, Louis Pasteur discovered that the reason for the success of this method was that the high temperatures killed the microorganisms that could spoil the food. This discovery led to the commercial sterilization of food products.
Also, in the late 1800s, Clarence Birdseye discovered that quick freezing at very low temperatures made for better tasting vegetables. After some time he perfected his “quick freeze” process and revolutionized this method of food preservation.
In the years that followed World War II, Americans practiced at-home food preservation less frequently. This is partly the result of the movement from farming to other occupations. Once the products used for preservation had to be purchased, it was economical to simply buy food that had already been preserved.
Food preservation had declined among agricultural families as well. This was due in part to the cheaper costs in commercially preserved food vs fresh foods. As is the case with most families, those living in rural areas also were feeling the pressure of increased responsibilities that demanded more time outside of food preparation. This significantly reduced the time that could be invested in activities such as canning, making preserves, etc.
This switch from people preserving their own foods to purchasing already preserved foods led to the surge in the food processing industry.
HISTORY OF PROCESSED FOODS
In contrast to food preservation, food processing actually alters the form of the food by various means. The definition of food processing is: The transformation of raw ingredients, by physical or chemical means into food, or of food into other forms. Food processing combines raw food ingredients to produce marketable food products that can be easily prepared and served by the consumer.
Increases in technology that allowed for processing of foods were first developed in the 19th and 20th centuries. Food processing instead of food preservation began to be used as technology increased. Food processing became more and more of an industry as techniques improved. Throughout the 1900s, the food industry produced thousands of products as the desire for ready-prepared meals grew.
How is food processed? Methods of processing food can be divided into two main categories—chemical and physical.
Physical processes include sterilization, pasteurization, blanching, emulsifying, extruding, dehydrating, microwaving, and irradiation. Chemical processes include binding the water that is present in food with drying ingredients such as glycerol, glycols, sorbitol, sugars, and salts to prevent decomposition brought about by moisture. Stabilizing the pH balance of the food product by chemical means also prevents spoilage. Finally, many chemicals are added to food for various reasons which we shall find out about later in the article.
Much of food processing is a mechanical process that uses large mixing, grinding, chopping and emulsifying equipment. These processes can introduce a number of contamination risks. When food is highly processed, the nutrition in the food becomes less available to us.
Not all processed food is a bad choice. Some foods need processing to make them safe. Other foods need processing to make them suitable for use, such as pressing that needs to be done to make oil. Freezing fruit and vegetables preserves most vitamins, while canned produce can mean convenient storage, cooking and choice to eat all year round, with less waste and cost than fresh. Many foods are now processed with methods that are also food preservation methods, to prevent spoilage. The packaging that our food comes in protects it from the air and light. Controlling the temperature of the food by freezing or refrigerating it slows down the chemical reactions that spoil our food. Finally, to fight the microorganisms that can spoil food, chemicals known as preservatives are added to food. However, much of food processing does not improve the quality of the food in any way, and, in many cases, decreases the quality of the final food product.
Some of the many examples of processed foods include: bread, cakes, cookies, breakfast cereals, canned soups, meat substitutes, potato chips, corn chips, microwave-ready meals, milk, soft drinks, juices, olive oil, and margarine.
BENEFITS OF PROCESSED FOODS
Food processing ensures food product safety, by removing potential toxins and stopping microbial growth. This in turn extends the shelf life of the food. Most of food processing history is based on preservation of the food product, either to control human health concerns or to extend the product shelf life. It was quite evident that foods, after a short period of time, without some form of preservation, could create illness if eaten. The goal in processing foods was so that the products would ensure the health and safety of those who ate them, by inhibiting microbial growth.
In extending the shelf life of the product, it provided people with the ability to purchase many of the seasonal foods on a year-round basis. Because processed foods are usually less susceptible to early spoilage than fresh foods, they are also better suited for long distance transportation from the source to the consumer. Modern supermarkets would not exist without modern food processing techniques, and long voyages would not be possible. This improves the availability of certain food products that are not grown or processed locally.
Processed foods are cheaper overall than meals made wholly from raw ingredients. Manufacturers could make larger profits, and consumers could purchase cheaper food. With many families struggling to make ends meet, fresh foods are often not affordable.
Processed foods also free people from the large amount of time involved in purchasing, preparing, and cooking “natural” unprocessed foods. For example, most of us do not have the time to bake our own bread, so we purchase bread from the local supermarket. Buying frozen vegetables means shopping once a week as opposed to every few days, as fresh produce will spoil in a short amount of time, even in the refrigerator.
Modern food processing also improves the quality of life for people with allergies, diabetics, and other people who cannot consume some common food elements. Food processing can also add extra nutrients such as vitamins. In climates where the sun does not provide adequate Vitamin D in the winter months, foods enriched with Vitamin D prevent vitamin deficiencies.
DRAWBACKS OF PROCESSED FOODS
Any processing of food can affect its nutritional density. The amount of nutrients lost depends on the food and the processing method. On average this process reduces any given nutrient by 5%-20%. Vitamin C, especially, is depleted by processing. When a food containing Vitamin C is heated it can result in up to a 50% reduction.
As we learned in the Messenger health series about bacteria, research also highlights the importance to human health of a rich microbial environment in the intestine. Food processing endangers this environment by removing healthy microbes from our food as well as unhealthy ones.
Many processed foods have “additives” that are not obtained from natural sources. A food additive is any chemical substance that is added to food during preparation or storage and either becomes a part of the food or affects its characteristics for the purpose of achieving a particular technical effect (as compared to a nutritional effect). So, why are they put in the processed foods? Once a food is processed, it often loses many of the characteristics that made it appealing as a food in its natural form. Therefore, additives are used to improve the appeal of a processed food. These purpose of these additives include: flavor-enhancing, often with sweeteners that don’t add a lot of calories to the food; preventing or delaying the spoilage of food (to increase shelf life); improving the texture; adding colour or removing colour by bleaching to make it look more appetizing. Some additives prevent the food product from clumping, other additives thicken or gel foods so that the ingredients stick together. The list goes on. . . Each country has a list of “permitted” chemical agents that can be added to processed foods by law.
The health risks of any given additive vary greatly from person to person. Approved food additives (e.g., sweeteners, preservatives, stabilizers) are permitted at specified levels for use in food products. Certain additives can also result in an addiction to a particular food item.
As the effects of chemical additives are learned, changes to laws and regulatory practices are made to make processed foods safer. Over time, additives that were once allowed by law have been determined to cause detrimental health effects, including cancer, therefore many additives that have been used in the past have now been banned. But, for many years, people ate processed foods with these additives, without realizing that they were damaging their bodies.
Other ingredients such as salt, sugar, and fat are also added to processed foods to make them more appealing and to prolong shelf life. Salt in bread and sugar in cakes contribute to the food’s structure. Eating processed foods regularly will contribute to consuming more than the recommended amounts of these ingredients.
Sugar, from sugar cane, is an expensive food product. Manufacturers have developed many sugar substitutes for processed foods to keep costs down. Saccharin, one of the earliest sugar substitutes, developed in 1879, was shown to cause cancer in rats, and was banned from food products for many years, however it is now back on the approved list as it could not be proven to cause cancer in humans. There are now many more sugar substitutes used as additives to sweeten foods, and research is continually being done on them to determine whether they are harmful to human health. When a sugar substitute begins to receive bad press, researchers search for new additives to replace them. The manufacturers of Aspartame, which was once widely used, and is now considered an unsafe sugar substitute, has created a new sugar substitute called “Neotame.” Neotame is 13,000 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar), therefore very small amounts are needed to sweeten food. This is a bonus for the manufacturer in terms of lowering the cost of producing food. Current research shows that it is safe, but this was also the case with many other additives that are now proven to be unsafe.
Recent news items have revolved around food processing manufacturers and fast-food restaurants promising to remove the chemically-produced colour additives from their foods and replacing them with colour additives obtained from natural sources. Artificial Red Dye No. 2 that was in wide use for many decades was banned in the 1970s. Now research is showing that some of the other Red and Yellow Dyes cause harmful effects. Other additives that are used as preservatives and antioxidants (to prevent oils from becoming rancid) are also being proven to be harmful to our health.
Could we be consuming additives now in our processed foods that will be found to be harmful at some point in the future?
Life in 2015 has provided us with many conveniences to make our life easier, to free up time that in the past was spent in tasks that were necessary for our existence; we now have more time with our families, we have more leisure time, more time to rest, and to worship. But conveniences come with a cost to our overall health. How can we live in a world that provides us with food that contributes to a more comfortable life, without compromising our health? Do we need to consume processed foods? And, when necessary, how do we choose the processed foods that are least likely to damage our health? God provided us with the perfect diet at creation. Ultimately, we need to rely less on processed foods and eat more of the natural, whole foods that will be our diet in the New Earth.