A lot of the food we eat these days is minimum preparation type of stuff.
Gone are the days when the housewife would spend hours in the kitchen and at the stove in order to prepare the family's meals.
These days a lot of food is all ready made up and packaged for sale in the supermarket and we just take it home and heat it through, either in microwave or oven, or, it is ready manufactured to buy and eat straight away.
These, straight from the shelves, foods are the groceries,cakes, biscuits, crisps, cans of fizzy drinks, ham, cheese, bread, snacks and confectionery.
When you think about it you will realize that these foods are all far from being natural, some more than others.
They have been interfered with, manipulated, designed, refined or manufactured in some way, usually to make them more appealing to a consumer.
Yes, to a food manufacturer we are not human beings really, just consumers! The two major concerns with such foodstuffs are that they may be harmful to us because of their manufacturing process or because of the unhealthy preponderance in their make up of carbohydrate and fat.
1.
Manufacturing If we take white bread as an example of a manufactured food I wonder how many people know that it is made from flour that has been bleached with chlorine chemicals and flour that has been "refined" causing the wheatgerm to break down and stripping it of it's nutrients? During this process about 70% of the vitamin and mineral content is removed, and, up to 90% of its fiber.
Vitamins and minerals are added back in a process termed "enrichment".
The food is not enhanced as such by this but merely improved somewhat over what it might have been.
Other foods that processed and may then harbour harmful chemicals are milk (hormones),crisps and french fry snacks (acrylates), cooked meats such as ham and luncheon meat (nitrosamines) and many ready prepared meals ( monosodium glutamate, artificial sweeteners, colourings and flavourings).
There many other foods with ingredients of questionable origin and safety.
2.
High carbohydrate foods Very many supermarket foods are extremely high in carbohydrate or carbohydrate and fat combined.
This undoubtedly contributes to many peoples' excess weight problem.
Carbohydrate in the form of sugars is put into products such as ketchup, baked beans, salad dressings, cereals and yogurts as well as the more well recognized items such as cakes and biscuits.
Many of these types of foods are often displayed in the middle area of supermarkets to distract customers passing by and encourage them to buy with their attractive looking pictures on the packaging.
High carbohydrate foods tend to be more affordable for many people than high protein foods.
Pasta, bread and potatoes are much cheaper than meat for example.
This factor may well contribute to many peoples' reliance on carbohydrate dense foods.
These foods encourage people to put on excess weight, often gradually without them even realizing it.
Once the weight has been gained it is difficult for many to remove, and it leads for some to development of conditions such as diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
These conditions may then predispose to further heath risks such as heart disease and stroke..
It is most important therefore for everybody to try to stick to a healthy diet as much as possible, ie a diet which relies mainly on natural foodstuffs and avoids too many processed and junk foods.
Gone are the days when the housewife would spend hours in the kitchen and at the stove in order to prepare the family's meals.
These days a lot of food is all ready made up and packaged for sale in the supermarket and we just take it home and heat it through, either in microwave or oven, or, it is ready manufactured to buy and eat straight away.
These, straight from the shelves, foods are the groceries,cakes, biscuits, crisps, cans of fizzy drinks, ham, cheese, bread, snacks and confectionery.
When you think about it you will realize that these foods are all far from being natural, some more than others.
They have been interfered with, manipulated, designed, refined or manufactured in some way, usually to make them more appealing to a consumer.
Yes, to a food manufacturer we are not human beings really, just consumers! The two major concerns with such foodstuffs are that they may be harmful to us because of their manufacturing process or because of the unhealthy preponderance in their make up of carbohydrate and fat.
1.
Manufacturing If we take white bread as an example of a manufactured food I wonder how many people know that it is made from flour that has been bleached with chlorine chemicals and flour that has been "refined" causing the wheatgerm to break down and stripping it of it's nutrients? During this process about 70% of the vitamin and mineral content is removed, and, up to 90% of its fiber.
Vitamins and minerals are added back in a process termed "enrichment".
The food is not enhanced as such by this but merely improved somewhat over what it might have been.
Other foods that processed and may then harbour harmful chemicals are milk (hormones),crisps and french fry snacks (acrylates), cooked meats such as ham and luncheon meat (nitrosamines) and many ready prepared meals ( monosodium glutamate, artificial sweeteners, colourings and flavourings).
There many other foods with ingredients of questionable origin and safety.
2.
High carbohydrate foods Very many supermarket foods are extremely high in carbohydrate or carbohydrate and fat combined.
This undoubtedly contributes to many peoples' excess weight problem.
Carbohydrate in the form of sugars is put into products such as ketchup, baked beans, salad dressings, cereals and yogurts as well as the more well recognized items such as cakes and biscuits.
Many of these types of foods are often displayed in the middle area of supermarkets to distract customers passing by and encourage them to buy with their attractive looking pictures on the packaging.
High carbohydrate foods tend to be more affordable for many people than high protein foods.
Pasta, bread and potatoes are much cheaper than meat for example.
This factor may well contribute to many peoples' reliance on carbohydrate dense foods.
These foods encourage people to put on excess weight, often gradually without them even realizing it.
Once the weight has been gained it is difficult for many to remove, and it leads for some to development of conditions such as diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
These conditions may then predispose to further heath risks such as heart disease and stroke..
It is most important therefore for everybody to try to stick to a healthy diet as much as possible, ie a diet which relies mainly on natural foodstuffs and avoids too many processed and junk foods.