lifehacker... when you process food, you're not processing it for the purpose of eating immediately. Instead you're processing it to ship all over the country, or even the world. To do this, you obviously can't let the food expire or it will be useless when it arrives. Because fiber causes the food to go bad much faster, it needs to be removed.
....., many processed foods are even worse off because of their low fat content. Sure, low fat content sounds good, but just because you eat fat doesn't mean you retain it. Your body can efficiently process and excreted fat, so fat intake isn't a huge issue by default. Nonetheless, the past 40 years brought us a low-fat craze. Fresh food can still taste good without a higher fat content, but processing low-fat food makes it taste like crap. Companies understand this, and so they add a bunch of sugar (and often salt) to fix that problem. This process essentially exchanges fat your body can actually use for fructose-produced fat that it cannot.
These are the main reasons why processed food is often an enemy if you want to stay healthy. This isn't always the case, but it is far more likely than not. Check the sugar content on the back of every package of processed food you own or see at the grocery store and you'll see it for yourself.
Healthier Sugar Consumption
Okay, so some sugar isn't really bad for you but some sugar, like fructose in high amounts, is unhealthy. Since fructose is plentiful in many processed foods, how can you eat better and still enjoy the sweet things you like? What follows are some suggestions. Some require a bit of sacrifice and will be difficult—but more effective—and others are easy enough for anyone to incorporate in his or her diet. If you want to try and curb your sugar intake, be reasonable about what you can accomplish. Failure is a lot more likely if you try to pack in large amounts of change at once . When you cut back on anything slowly, it feels much easier and is more likely to stick.
Stop Drinking Sugared Beverages
Of anything you can do, this is the most important. Fructose-heavy soda is remarkably problematic because, for reasons discussed above, you can keep drinking it while your body isn't recognizing your sugar intake—so your body remains hungry. On top of that, a lot of soda (Coke is a great example) contains high amounts of sodium. Why would you want salt in your soda? You wouldn't, but it makes you thirsty and prompts you to buy more soda to drink, so it's great for the companies that make it. It also makes you pee (as does caffeine if your soda has that) so you'll feel the need to drink more as well. This is masked by simply adding more fructose to the drink, which is another obvious problem.
