Processed Foods: Benefits and Drawbacks in Detail

In food processing, harvested crops and butchered animals might be used as a raw ingredient in making & packaging the food products, which are marketable, attractive, and have the long-shelf lives. Here attractive means that the food product tastes & looks good. For marketable, it should match the types of food demanded by the consumers. The food products having the long-shelf life will reduce costs of the wastage for distributors, producers, and retailers.

Growth in food processing

The food processing goes back when fire got discovered & cooking invented. There are different various ways where food is cooked and are different types of the food processing. The food preservation started in prehistory, and ‘long shelf-life’ of foods was made by drying it in the sun & preserving it with salt. The salt preservation was very common with sailors; soldiers or other travelers till canning got invented in early 19th century.

Prehistoric techniques of cooking & preserving the food stayed unchanged until our industrial revolution. The enhancement in modern technology of food processing started in early 19th century with response to the growing needs of military.

Commercial refrigeration, making use of toxic refrigerants that made this technology unsafe in our home, was used for 4 decades before first domestic refrigerators got introduced in the year 1915.

Fridges in our home gained huge acceptance in the year 1930s when the non-toxic & non-flammable refrigerants like Freon were invented. Visit belred.com to know the answer to ‘how long does freon last?‘.

Expansion of this food processing industry of 20th century was because of 3 needs: first was food to feed troops efficiently in World War II, second was food that can be consumed in conditions of the zero gravity during the forays in outer space, and third one was pursuit of convenience requested by the consumer society.

To react to such needs the food scientists invented spray-drying, freeze-drying, as well as juice concentrates among many other food processing technologies. They introduced coloring agents, artificial sweeteners, and chemical preservatives. To know more about how the process happens, visit TellPizzaHut for more details.

Advantages of the processed foods

Initially, the processed foods helped in alleviating the food shortages as well as improve the overall nutrition just by making the new foods accessible worldwide. The modern food processing will deliver several additional benefits:

• Processing will improve taste of your food, although it can have an opposite effect.
• De-activating pathogenic micro-organisms that are found in the fresh vegetables & raw meats (like salmonella), decreases food-borne diseases as well as makes your food safer.
• Nutritional value of the food is increased by an addition of the extra nutrients & vitamins during food processing.
• Because the processed foods are very less susceptible for spoilage than the fresh foods, storage, modern processing, and transportation will deliver a wide range of food from across the world.

Processed foods are very convenient. People are freed from such time-consuming jobs of preparing & cooking foods, which are in the natural state.

Processed foods Drawbacks

Processed foods undoubtedly are a boon. However, all isn’t light and sweetness.

• Nutrients are deliberately removed from the food during its processing to improve the taste, appearance and shelf-life. Some examples include pasta, bread & ready-made meals.
• Result is no calories. The processed foods generally have the higher calories ratio to other necessary nutrients than the fresh and unprocessed foods. They’re energy-dense whereas being poor nutritionally.
• Normally speaking, the fresh unprocessed food may have higher part of naturally fibre, minerals and vitamins than same processing by the industry. Vitamin C gets destroyed by heat & fresh fruit will have more of vitamin C than the canned fruit.

An only solution is selecting the processed foods that you buy with complete care and by reading labels on your food packaging – or focus on your diet on the fresh and frozen produce if.

TOPIC: Processed Foods: Benefits and Drawbacks in Detail