Day 1: Post Script

What is "unprocessed" food? One may argue it means food that is not packaged, but then again, apples and oranges are not "packaged" when we buy them - we pick out how many we want. I guess it's unfair to assume that all packaged food is processed and all unpackaged food is unprocessed, because sometime, somewhere, food must be packaged in order to be sent to stores. If you really wanted 100% unpackaged and unprocessed food, you'd have to shop at farmers markets, local butcher shops, or just grow it yourself.

Still, the main focus of this experiment or diet is to eat food that has not been genetically modified, pesticide sprayed, artificially sweetened, or preserved. WHOLE foods as you might say. According to a LIVESTRONG.COM article:

"An unprocessed food diet shuns foods that come in boxes, cartons or wrapped in plastic and boast a long list of ingredients. Instead, fresh fruits and vegetables, lean protein, unsaturated fats and whole grains are the basis of this diet. For example, a fresh tomato is an unprocessed food, but ketchup is processed."

(Read the rest of this great article HERE)

I assume that one of the best ways to really see what is processed or not is to read the ingredients. Anything that I don't know what it is, anything that isn't a natural ingredient, has probably been processed and or preserved unnaturally. For example, the granola I purchased today listed its ingredients as follows:

unprocessed Oats, organic Soy Oil, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, honey.

Seems pretty legit to me! Though I am trying to avoid soy as much as possible as it's not a high quality protein and for men it actually increases E [estrogen] counts and reduces T [testosterone] counts, causing all sorts of genital / testicular / prostate problems. For women, maybe not!

Here's another interesting thing I read:

"Weston A. Price was a holistic-minded dentist who travelled around the world in the 1930s, studying the teeth and overall health of primitive cultures who subsisted on diets that were close to their ancestral diets. He found that the closer people stayed to eating whole, unprocessed foods, the stronger and healthier they were, with few signs of disease and tooth decay. His research can be found at The Weston A. Price Foundation."

- Courtesy of http://drbenkim.com/articles-whole.html


Until next time - to your health