Page 84 - Demo

Chapter 482Text box 1. Processed food: Purposes and DefinitionsThe availability of sufficient and healthy food has been an issue ever since people started walking the face of the earth. Primitive methods of food processing were necessary, in prehistoric times, for the survival of humans. Later, when humankind has systematically been able to breed improved versions of grains and to farm animals, maintaining the quality of the obtained foods has been an uphill struggle dealt with by applying primary storage methods but also processing techniques such as drying, salting, and fermenting. Food processing allowed to build supplies that sometimes – quite literally – carried communities through the harsh winter. In current times, food processing is much more diverse and industrialized and has become a major market sector that serves various purposes such as extending shelf life, improving nutritional value and safety, and increasing convenience and palatability (Huebbe & Rimbach, 2020). However, the highly mechanized and less traditional manufacturing processes have created a sense of ambivalence towards foods produced in a factory. Complicated facts about foods, which change over time, and the enormous complexity of the food production and consumptions system contribute even more confusion and scepticism to this bewildering situation. In 2009, a group of nutrition and health researchers at the University of São Paulo proposed a new way of categorizing foods that is based on the extent and purpose of the processing and coined a new food category of ultraprocessed food (Fraanje & Garnett, 2019). Next to subsequent study that used this categorization system and associated the consumption of ultra-processed foods with chronic non-communicable diseases (e.g., Marrón-Ponce et al., 2019; Martínez Steele et al., 2019), the classification system was also criticized for being impossible to use (Gibney et al., 2017), and there is an ongoing scholarly debate about whether the type and level of processing should be considered as a criterion for food classification and replace a more traditional food categorization that is based on nutrient value and food components (Eicher-miller et al., 2012; Jones, 2019; Poti et al., 2015). Among scientists that categorize foods based on the level of processing, there is no widely accepted categories and definitions, and there are discrepancies between various classification systems (Bleiweiss-Sande et al., 2019). Yoghurt can serve as an example. It is considered unprocessed or minimally processed, according to NOVA classification system (Monteiro et al., 2019); it is considered basic processed, according to a classification system of researchers from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (this classification system also has an “unprocessed/minimally processed” food category, Poti et al., 2015); it is considered ready-to-eat, according to the International Food Information Council (IFIC, 2010). In everyday talk the term “processed food” refers to foods belonging to the higher processing-level categories in the various classification systems: those foods that are mass-produced, contain industrially formulated mixtures, and few ‘natural’ ingredients, e.g. ‘ready-to-eat processed foods’, ‘prepared foods/meals’ (Eicher-miller et al., 2012), ‘ultra-processed food’ (Monteiro et al., 2019), ‘highly processed food’ (Poti et al., 2015).Efrat.indd 82 19-09-2023 09:47