A Practical Guide To Food Processing And Health

Ever feel whiplash from the Internet’s hot takes on processed food? 

We cut through the noise with a grounded look at what processing actually means, how the NOVA system works, and why labels alone can’t predict your health. Instead of treating “processed” as a verdict, we focus on outcomes, patterns, and smart replacements that fit real life.

We start by reframing processing as a spectrum: freezing vegetables, canning beans, and pasteurization can improve access, safety, and nutrition. Then we tackle the tough bits, refining, added sugars and fats, and hyper-palatable products designed to override fullness—and show how dose and frequency drive risk. 

You’ll hear why protein powders, despite being “ultra-processed,” can support older adults, athletes, and busy people, and how plant-based meat alternatives often improve cholesterol and cardiovascular markers when they replace red or processed meat.

From there, we dig into context. Meals, not isolated foods, shape long-term health. A little ketchup that helps you eat more broccoli, a dressing that gets salad into your routine, or a plant-based burger at a family barbecue can be strategic choices when your baseline is built on whole and minimally processed plants. We also zoom out to the environment: plant-based alternatives typically use fewer resources and generate fewer emissions than beef and dairy, making them pragmatic for health and sustainability.

If you’re tired of food fear and ready for clarity, this conversation gives you a practical playbook: ask what a food replaces, consider the pattern over time, and use processed options with purpose. 

Build your plate around vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices, and deploy processed foods where they help you be consistent. 

If this helped you rethink your approach, follow, share with a friend who loves nutrition debates, and leave a quick review to support the show.

Go check out my website for tons of free resources on how to transition towards a healthier diet and lifestyle.

You can download my free plant-based recipes eBook and a ton of other free resources by visiting  the Digital Downloads tab of my website at https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/shop

Don't forget to check out my blog at https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/blog 

You can also watch my educational videos on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMpkQRXb7G-StAotV0dmahQ

Check out my upcoming live events and free eCourse, where you'll learn more about how to create delicious plant-based recipes: https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/

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Last but not least, the best way to show your support and to help me spread my message is to subscribe to my podcast and to leave a 5 star review on Apple and Spotify!
Thanks so much!

Peace, love, plants!
Dr. Jules 

Transcript

Section A

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Yo, Black Base Buddies, welcome back to Fuzzle Three of the Podcast. This is going to be amazing. We'll be talking about all of the different pillars of lifestyle medicine, from nutrition to exercise to stress to sleep and everything in between. Yo, Blind Based Buddies, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today I'm gonna be talking about processed foods, because few topics in nutrition are more misunderstood. Now, if you spend even just a few minutes online scrolling through health content, you quickly get the impression that processed foods are the enemy, they're always bad, they're always unhealthy, they're often talked about as if it's one single thing, one clear category that should either be completely avoided or completely feared. But framing it that way really misses the point and kind of distorts your reality. Now, you probably find it weird hearing me say that processed foods are not always bad since I consume a pretty much 99% whole food plant-based diet. I mean, I do indulge. I just finished eating a plant-based pizza made by my wife. But food processing isn't just one concept, it exists on a very wide spectrum, and lumping everything and every food together under the same label actually creates more confusion than clarity. Now, at the most basic level, processing simply means changing a food from its original state. That change can be a little, that change can be a lot, and that change can be physical or chemical or mechanical. And importantly, some forms of processing are not only harmless, they're beneficial. Take freezing vegetables, for example. It actually preserves nutrients and reduces food waste. And canning beans and other types of food similar, it actually improves accessibility, it increases shelf life. In other cooking techniques or food preservation techniques like blanching, cooking, pasteurizing, it actually improves food safety. Fermentation can even enhance the availability of certain nutrients and make them more digestible. These are all forms of processing. But on the other hand, at the same time, there are forms of processing that actually remove fiber, strip away vitamins like B vitamins or C vitamins, and really dramatically alter the food structure in ways that actually makes the food easier to overconsume or less healthy. And this is where that nuance matters. Now, I admit I eat a 100% whole food plant-based diet on 99% of my calories and days over weeks and months and years, and I've been doing that for more than a dozen years now. But processing in itself is not inherently good or bad. And what matters is how a food is processed and what happens when people consume it regularly over time. Now, refining grains is actually a form of processing, and so is adding sugar and salt and fat for shelf stability or palatability and all of that is our forms of processing. Grinding, isolating, emulsifying, restructuring foods are all forms of processing. And the real question is not, is this food processed? But rather, what does this food do to human health when it becomes part of someone's regular diet? Now, protein powders are a great example of why simple labels they just fall apart. Protein powders are classified as an ultra-processed food. On paper, they fall into that most criticized category, but when it's used appropriately, and I use protein powders regularly, they're generally associated with neutral or even positive health outcomes, especially in older adults, athletes, or people who struggle to meet protein needs because of decreased appetite or trouble chewing or chronic conditions that make them require more protein. Plant-based meat alternatives, they're demonized every single day online. Whole foods like red meat are promoted while plant-based meat alternatives are dismissed as being ultra-processed. I agree, yes, they are processed. And if we look at the Nova processed food categories, they actually fit into the ultra-processed category. And we'll talk about the Nova categories in two minutes, but yet study after study shows that when people replace red and processed meats with plant-based alternatives, even the ultra-processed ones, health outcomes and health parameters get better. Studies show that people who eat instead of red meat, plant-based impossible meats or beyond meat burgers, their cholesterol drops, their cardiovascular risk markers improve. Even inflammatory markers. That doesn't mean that plant-based meats are a health food in the same way as vegetables or legumes are. But it does mean that context and replacement matter. Not promoting that people eat ultra-processed plant-based meats. I'd rather you make your own walnut oatmeal and bean burger and home if you have the time and energy to do so. But when I'm at the pool with my kids on a July Sunday morning and everyone wants to have a barbecue at noon, I throw a plant-based meat alternative on the barbecue so I can keep socializing with everyone and have a chat and talk and enjoy the weather. I mean, people are so polarized and extreme about everything, they're basically stepping over dollars to pick up pennies or, as they say, majoring in the minors. Now, this is where the NOVA classification gets misunderstood and very often actually creates more confusion. Class 2 includes processed culinary ingredients like sugar or salt or oils. And class 3 includes foods that we make by combining class one and class two ingredients. So a potato would be class one. And a potato that's been diced and fried in oil and salt is now a class 3. Class 4 includes ultra-processed foods that as a whole are typically foods that you cannot reproduce or remake, recreate in the comfort of your own kitchen using typical kitchen tools. So that's where you're not going to be making Beyond Meat burgers in your kitchen that look like the Beyond Meat burgers that are sold in stores. And so they're a class 4 ultra-processed food. But that doesn't mean that it's absolutely 100% always linked to negative health outcomes when we actually study people who eat them regularly. Now, that Nova classification is a system that helps researchers study patterns, but it doesn't tell the whole story and it doesn't really tell you whether something is healthy or not in general. Now, red and processed meats are classified as carcinogenic according to the World Health Organization at super low doses and at low intakes, but they still fall under NOVA classification class one. Meanwhile, protein powders are a class 4. Now that alone should be telling you that processing by itself can't define health impact or outcomes seen in research studies. And when most people criticize processed foods, they're usually not talking about frozen vegetables or canned beans or tofu. They're usually talking about hyper palatable, calorie-dense, nutrient-poor products that were basically engineered in a lab to be eaten quickly and in large amounts. These are the foods that are designed to override your satiety signals, your fullness signals. And these are foods that combine refined carbs where the fiber and phytochemicals have been stripped away, added fats, added salts, added sugars. And these foods are made to eat past your fullness signals. They kind of almost bypass your wiring. Those foods are absolutely a problem when they dominate the diet. The dose matters. Ultra processed foods, which are actually unhealthy, well, they're unhealthy when they're consumed at high dose. I'll give you an example, okay? Let's say you eat a typical diet, and the typical diet for most people is about 60% of their calories from ultra-processed foods, you get about 30% of their daily calories from animal products, and maybe 5 to 10% of their calories are coming from whole plants. Whole, minimally processed plants. And by plants I mean fruits, veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds, herbs and spices, whole grains, the whole shebang. Now, if someone eats 90% of their calories coming from animal products and ultra-processed foods, and then decides once a week she's gonna eat a stalk of celery, that doesn't make her healthy, right? It's the pattern of what you're doing most of the time or most of your calories over the long term that'll determine your health outcome. So, much in the same way as a stock of celery eaten once a month is not gonna make you healthy, having an ultra-processed piece of pizza every now and then, or plant-based ice cream in my in my context, is not gonna make you unhealthy. Now, as a general rule, building a diet around mostly whole foods is still one of the strongest foundations for health. But much as we're promoting that processed meats or red meats are super healthy foods online, we're demonizing processed foods that are perfectly fine. Just in general, just eating more whole foods is good. They tend to be more filling, they tend to be more nutrient-dense, and they're typically harder to overconsume. But that doesn't mean that all processed foods are harmful, and it doesn't mean that all whole foods are automatically beneficial in every single context. Now, we're fortunate to have outcome data. Outcome data is research where we feed people certain foods and we see what happens over time. Now we're no longer guessing outcomes based only on theory. We can actually look at what actually happens when real humans eat these foods over time. So if you look at people that substitute their red meat and their processed meat for an ultra-processed NOBA classification for class beyond meat burger, their health parameters still get better. This type of fear-based labeling really creates confusion when people are trying to make healthy choices. Not to I don't want to ignore talking about these. For example, ultra-processed plant-based meats are so much easier on the environment compared to dairy farming practices or trying to produce calories from red meat. The amount of water and land and greenhouse gases are just infinitely better when producing these scary Nova class 4 ultra-processed plant-based meat alternatives. But they're better for your health, they're better for the environment, and ethically, they just make more sense. I know it's complicated. You need to think not only about the food, you need to think about the dose, you need to think about the frequency, the amount. You need to consider foods eaten in context. We don't eat foods, we eat meals. And so that little ultra-processed ketchup bottle that's making you eat more broccoli is a good thing, right? Some people are dressing, oh, salad dressing. Yeah, they can be calorie dense for for a lot of people, they help them eat salads, right? So, and once your salad is locked in, maybe try to find a better, more nutrient-dense calorie dressing if it's really something you want to do. Uh, I actually have recipes on my website that are made from whole cashews, by the way. But the moral of the story is that you need to know what this food is replacing. So when someone says I go from eating bacon to eating plant-based sausages, that's a move in the right direction. If you go from eating oatmeal with berries and hemsies every day to eating plant-based sausage, your health outcomes may deteriorate or get worse. Deteriorate is too harsh of a word. But the moral of the story is that food is eaten in a context over long periods of time. So eating a beyond meat burger here and there is actually not that much of a big deal. And it actually, when compared to eating processed meat, is actually a step in the right direction. So reducing foods to good or to bad, it actually creating categories, it feels simple, but it rarely helps people make better decisions for their long-term health. And a more productive approach is to focus on patterns and context and long-term health outcomes, which we now have in nutrition research. Now, processing matters, but it is a small piece of a much bigger picture. Now, no matter what, my take-home message is always going to be the same: build most of your meals around whole or minimally processed foods like vegetables and fruits and whole grains and legumes and nuts and seeds and use herbs and spices to improve taste. And use processed foods strategically, but not automatically. Ask what that processed foods role is in your overall diet. And if it's to replace red meat, great. And if it's to add convenience and taste to your morning smoothie, but and finding an easy way of adding an extra 20 grams of protein, then great. Just be cautious with ultra-processed, hyper-palatable foods that are designed to be easy to overeat, especially when these foods displace more nourishing options. And for a change, I want you to think in terms of replacements. What is this food replacing in my diet? That matters as much as what that food is. And I want you to try to avoid fear-based nutrition rules and look for long-term health instead of just processed food labels. Now, focusing on dietary patterns is better in terms of just trying to be perfect in the short term, and consistency will matter a lot more than eliminating entire food categories if you're trying to make small, incremental, and positive changes in your diet. And just basically remember that processed doesn't automatically mean bad or harmful, and whole food doesn't automatically mean optimal. Context matters, and if you're not sure, always consider talking to a registered dietitian where she's able to individualize and personalize recommendations based on your context and your goals and your medical history and your medications and your allergies and everything. When nutrition decisions are grounded in evidence rather than fear, they become easier to sustain over time. The most important thing is just start low, go slow, and eat a diet that you know you can sustain over time. Now, if your diet is creating friction with your life, you either change the wrong thing, change too quickly, or what you weren't ready to change to start with. Now, everyone wants to create health in their life. But I know our convenience matters and cost matters and shelf life matters, and our environment is constantly nudging us towards the unhealthy choice. And we should definitely be removing guilt around having a piece of cake at our daughter's birthday, or having a piece of pizza, or a beyond meat burger at the barbecue. But we really need to consider the overall pattern. One food will not make you unhealthy, it's a pattern of how you're eating day in, day out over time. Right on. I hope this makes sense. The whole goal of this episode wasn't to convince people to eat ultra-processed foods, to just educate you in knowing that processed food is a very wide category, and Twinkies and protein powders are in that same category, classified as a class 4 ultra-processed food according to the Nova classification. But just keep in mind that that category was created as a research tool to categorize how people eat and not to determine health outcomes. Right on. I hope this makes sense. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you at the next episode.com to find free downloadable resources. And remember that you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Dr.JulesCormier and on YouTube at Plant Base Dr. Jewel.