Processed Foods and Your Gut

What are processed foods anyways? Plain and simple it is any food that has been altered from its original form. That would include chips, cereals, granola bars, steaks, pickles, sauerkraut, you could even say a washed vegetable has been processed. However processed foods should be viewed more through a scale. It starts as the food looking exactly like it was created that food is the least processed food, foods that look nothing like how they started out (i.e. flours, and at the very top foods that are made out of a particular food but taste like something else (i.e. Nacho Cheese Doritos-corn tortillas that taste like nacho cheese).

Avoiding processed foods in our current societal model is impossible for most people. The few that are able and knowledgeable enough to grow their own foods are still, generally, unable to grow everything they require to sustain a healthy & complete diet. And while that should not discourage anyone from attempting to grow the most food they can, it does require us to consider what kind of processed foods we should eat, if any and are all processed foods bad for us?

Before we start let us define processed foods. Differentiating between real food and highly processed foods might be a good place to begin with. Meaning, a washed carrot is a processed food but it is still real food, sauerkraut is a processed food made out of real food as opposed to most things that come in packages like chips, cookies, flours, cereals, etc.

But why is it that real foods are better for us than processed foods? Simply put real foods generally, have no additives whether those are preservatives, food colorings or sugars. This is important because all of those added items are things the consumer is not controlling or even aware of. Since food is medicine we have to consider all ingredients we eat because they have a profound effect on our gene expression and health outcome.

We also have to consider that when foods are processed they are made more readily bioavailable for your body. For example think of eating a handful of almonds (no skins, please) there is an inherit time of chewing the almonds and they spend a certain amount of time in your mouth where many signaling systems get activated and a cascade of events involving enzymes commence. Not only in your mouth but other processes initiate in the rest of the digestive system as well as hormonal signaling in your bloodstream with direct communication to your brain. As these almonds move through your digestive tract they will be broken down slowly and therefore not only absorbed slowly but begin the absorption process (insulin) spike as it reaches the lower parts of your system.

However, when we eat almond flour in the form of a cookie or breads these almonds the whole process changes. We now have pulverized the almonds allowing for more accessible surface to breakdown the food starting in your mouth (quicker & larger insulin spike) but also it has been heated and therefore bonds have been weakened or removed making the breakdown of this food so much quicker and faster in your digestive tract that although it is made from real food it is now processed and that process made it a more bioavailable food.

That same process of making food more bioavailable can also be a good thing. For example, when your ferment some foods it transforms them into some of the most nutritious foods on the planet by making nutrients bioavailable. These include things like sauerkraut and kefir. Fermentation can even make some foods that would be harmful to our gut biome like quinoa and corn.

Another good reason to eat real food as opposed to processed foods would be that processed foods are stripped of their nutrients. In many cases the packaging of these processed foods will state added VitD or added Calcium; when we eat a balanced diet with nutrient full foods there is no need to add nutrients. Unfortunately, most people are not eating enough real foods and there is a demand to add nutrients to these processed foods. But the most efficient way for your body to acquire adequate nutrients is by eating real foods.

We should also be aware that while some processes make foods better, like fermentation, some make foods, even real foods, worse for you. For example, studies have found that when frying chips at temperatures higher than 248F a chemical called acrylamide forms on the chips and this chemical is known to cause cancer. When we grill and make char marks(Maillard-reaction amino acids meet sugar) on our meat and vegetables that creates advanced glycation end products (AGEs) that when consumed lead to an increase in oxidative stress and inflammation which in turn lead to many other health problems. The increase in cortisol, used as the anti-inflammatory agent, can result in a reduction of insulin sensitivity. The reduction in insulin sensitivity becomes a driver to type II diabetes. And that not even considering the oils that are being used to fry these.

Your gut requires real food to feed itself properly when you feed it processed foods it prevent your microbiome from producing the right postbiotics, it feeds the bad bacteria, and it starves and therefore destroys your good bacteria. We depend on the good bacteria and their postbiotics to remain healthy.

Avoiding processed foods is impossible but avoiding those at the top of the processed foods continuum is absolutely doable. Treating processed foods in the higher end as condiments or even recreational drugs, meaning rarely if ever using them, is a good approach. Menu planning and food prepping turns real food into fast food. Also, when using real food full of nutrients and flavors the need for highly processed foods will go out the window. Top your salads with high quality olive oils, olives, and some good goat cheese and say god-bye to dressings!

Lustig, Robert H. Metabolical: The Truth about Processed Food and How It Poisons People and the Planet. Yellow Kite, 2021.