From The Heart #18: Rethinking Processed Food

What if “processed” isn’t the enemy, and the biggest health gains come from something far simpler, eating more real plants most of the time? 

We take a clear-eyed look at the processing spectrum, from chopping and freezing to fortification and engineered ultra-processed products, and map out where processing genuinely helps and where it quietly pushes us toward overeating.

We start by grounding the conversation in evidence: Canadians pull 60% of calories from ultra-processed foods while only 5 to 10% come from whole or minimally processed plants. 

We unpack the NOVA categories and explain how physical processing like cooking and freezing can preserve or even improve nutrient accessibility, why fortified foods such as iodized salt and calcium- plus vitamin D–enriched milks fill real nutritional gaps, and how pasteurization and shelf-stability reduce waste and improve safety. Then we draw the line between helpful processing and the formulations that add sugar, sodium, and refined fats while stripping fiber, exactly the combo that fuels cravings and calorie overload.

From there, we get practical. You’ll hear how frozen berries and canned beans can be everyday allies, why protein powders, plant or whey, can legitimately boost satiety and lean mass when your base diet falls short, and how legume and whole wheat pasta elevate fiber and protein without sacrificing convenience. We tackle context too: white pasta has a smart place before endurance efforts, while higher-fiber options serve best for weight management and metabolic health. We also touch on meat alternatives and why swapping red meat for plant-based burgers can lower TMAO and nudge cardiometabolic markers in the right direction.

The takeaway is simple and doable: push more of your plate toward whole plants, use minimally processed shortcuts that protect nutrients and budget, and reserve ultra-processed options for targeted needs, not default meals. 

If this reframed the way you see your pantry, tap follow, share it with a friend who loves nutrition debates, and leave a review to tell us your biggest “aha.”

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/

Go follow me on social media by visiting my Facebook page and Instagram accounts
https://www.facebook.com/plantbaseddrjules
https://www.instagram.com/plantbased_dr_jules/

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

Why Whole Plants Matter

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Yo, Plumbies Buddies, Happy Friday. This morning one was my surgical clinic. It just finished, and I was scrolling through my questions that I get on social media and through my email. And I got a very interesting question that I think everyone benefits from getting an answer. So this morning I posted a bunch of different charts on my Instagram and on my Facebook. My favorite plant-based sources of magnesium, calcium, iron. I posted about selenium, zinc, thyroid supporting foods, as well as plant-based protein sources. The caption read the average Canadian gets about 60% of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods, 30% of their calories from animal products, and only maybe 5 max 10% of their calories are coming from whole or minimally processed plant foods. And I mentioned that the probably evidence-based ratio would be somewhere as closer to 80% of your calories coming from whole and minimally processed foods. Now, when I'm talking about whole plant foods, I'm talking about fruits, veggies, legumes like beans, chickpeas, lentils, and soy products, whole grains, nuts and seeds, herbs and spices, whole grains, all consumed in a state as close to the way Mother Nature created them. Basically, I'm talking about foods that grow from the ground or from a tree or from a plant. Now, all foods can absolutely fit into a healthy dietary pattern. I mean, it all depends on your goals. Now, I consume a 100% whole food plant-based diet. I have been doing that since about 2012, but I do understand that that's not necessarily what people want to be doing here. Not everyone has the same goal. My dose of whole plant foods is 100% of my calories. Some people, it'll be 50%. The average Canadian, it's 5 to 10%. The max benefit is probably seen around 80%. So there's a lot of wiggle room. Anything over 5 to 10% of your daily calories coming from whole plant foods is an improvement and a step in the right direction. Moral of the story is that your health parameters will typically trend in the same direction as the increase in amount of calories you consume every day that are coming from whole and minimally processed foods. Now, your calorie, your your longevity, biomarkers, your the reduction in the rates of chronic disease, they all correlate with other things like reductions in stress, improvements in sleep quantity and quality, they increase with social connection, positive psychology, purpose, passion, living a life aligned with your bat your values, with muscle mass, with cardiorespiratory fitness or VO2 max, a whole bunch of different things will improve health parameters. But if we zoom in on nutrition, typically we see that correlation with the amount of calories coming from whole and minimally processed plant foods eaten in a state as close to the way Mother Nature created them. So one of the questions that I received on that post was well, what about canned foods? What about baked foods? Frozen foods are considered processed. I'm confused. What's processed, what's not? And this is where understanding the nuance in what the word processed means is very important, okay? Because a food being processed doesn't necessarily mean it's unhealthy. And let me give you examples. So, first of all, for research purposes, food processing exists on a spectrum, and the most common uh classification is called the Nova classification. That goes from whole foods to processed culinary ingredients like oils, butters, sugar, and salt. And then you get processed foods, which are whole foods combined with processed culinary ingredients. And then the fourth category would be ultra-processed foods. Let's say we define that as foods that are created outside of the home kitchen, foods in which you wouldn't be able to create in your home kitchen because of the advanced use of additives, preservatives, and other chemical compounds. Now I think we all agree that the less processed additives, colors, preservatives, artificial dyes in our foods, the better. But the dose makes the poison. What I mean by that is that minimal amounts of processed foods or ultra-processed foods can absolutely be a part of a healthy diet. I definitely minimize the consumption for myself. But that doesn't mean everyone needs to abide by those strict rules. Some people will be happier and healthier by just reducing a little bit, right? Food processing exists on a spectrum. Processing can mean anything from manipulating the physical components of a food or the chemical components of a food. So if we talk about the physical ones, if we chop food, cut food, cook food, freeze food, pickle food, it all these are all forms of food processing. But the chemical content of the food is not changed, or minimally changed. For example, if you boil certain foods, water-soluble vitamins like vitamin B or vitamin C might leach into the water, and then you might lose some of the vitamin content of, like, for example, vitamin B and vitamin C. That doesn't make the food unhealthy, right? But that processing actually did reduce some of the vitamins. Now we know that certain forms of vitamin, sort of certain forms of processing will actually increase bioavailability of certain vitamins. So it makes the food more nourishing. Same thing goes for freezing food, right? Certain berries or frozen produce actually contain more nutrients than their fresh counterpart because they're frozen at the peak of ripeness, and you slow down that degradation of certain of these fragile vitamins by freezing them. So, and over and over again, frozen produce, berries, for example, or veggies, have been shown to be as nutrient-dense as their fresh counterpart, and any change in nutrient profile would be considered minimal. Now, so we can alter the physical components of certain foods by, for example, boiling milk. By pasteurizing milk, we kill bacteria. This is a form of processing that actually made the food healthier. Now, processing often makes the food more palatable, more shelf-stable, it reduces food waste, it actually makes certain foods cheaper and helps fight food insecurity. So not all forms of food processing are bad, whether physical or whether chemical. Certain forms of chemical processing will actually add nutrients back in. So food fortification, enrichment, adding of nutrients either lost during the processing, or adding certain nutrients to foods that are commonly consumed can actually improve the health of certain populations, like iodizing salt or like introducing folic acid into whole grains or into cereals, for example, fortifying milk products or plant plant-based milks with calcium or with vitamin D. So food processing in terms of chemical processing can be either adding good ingredients to foods, it can actually be removing bad ingredients. And I use the term bad lightly, I mean removing certain nutrients that are not necessarily health favorable. So, for example, if you take not in a child, but in an adult, if you take high-fat milk, like 2% milk, and you produce skim milk out of it, you've just removed the saturated fat. Saturated fat is associated with increased cardiovascular risk through LDL cholesterol increase. So that's a type of food processing where you've probably put, you've probably made the food healthier. Now, certain types of chemical processing are great, they add good nutrients to the food, or they remove bad ones like removing trans fats or making a food low sodium or removing cholesterol or saturated fat. Certain forms of chemical processing will increase shelf life, make food more tasty, which are positives. But these processing techniques may add sodium, sugar, or saturated fat or oils to make the food tastier. So it makes it tastier, and that's great, but it does increase calorie density, right? So the goal is to understand that processing is not always bad, and certain highly processed foods are actually associated with positive health outcomes. Now, for example, protein powders. Protein powders, whether whey or plant-based proteins, are associated with increased satiety, reduction in calorie intake, improvement in body composition, increased lean mass, and are very tasty and convenient ways of increasing protein if you're not hitting your targets with your diet. So that would be a good example of a highly processed food that actually improves health, right? So just because it's processed doesn't make it bad. It is the, or I would say the reason that a lot of processed foods are associated with a bad reputation is because some parts of processing simply make the food irresistible and easy to overeat. And if you overeat calorie-dense food, you are more likely to be in a calorie excess and to over time accumulate excessive body weight or body fat. So no one's gonna die because they ate a bag of Doritos, but eating regularly ultra-processed foods that is tough to a limit will absolutely typically be associated with increased obesity rates or increased overweight and increase in certain metabolic biochemicals or biomarkers, like increased maybe cholesterol, increased high blood pressure for some people, maybe even increased insulin resistance if you're consuming ultra-processed foods that are void in cali in nutrients but high in calories. So when someone says, ah, canned foods are their old, are they processed? Absolutely, canned food is a processed food. But we can't be comparing canned beans to a chocolate bar, right? Ultra processed protein powder is can't be compared to a piece of cake or a muffin that you bought at the corner store. So processing exists on a spectrum. Certain forms of food processing are bad, certain forms are good, depends on your goal. Now, for example, I encourage a lot of people to eat whole wheat pasta or legume pasta or edamami pasta or chickpea pasta because it increases your intake of protein and of fiber, and you're consuming whole grains or legumes in pasta form. So that's great. But that doesn't mean that eating white flour pasta is gonna kill you. It's just eating white flour pasta has less nutrition, less fiber, less capacity of making you full for longer. And because the food is simply less optimal, maybe you eat more. But for a lot of people, that's the point. Now, before I run a marathon, I'm gonna eat a lot of carbs the day before, and I'm gonna eat white flour pasta. That doesn't mean I'm unhealthy. That means that I understand that my goal is to load up on carbohydrate so I can perform better during my run, right? But I typically tell people to try to stay away from white flour pasta because the people I'm speaking to are typically not marathon runners, they're people that suffer from chronic disease. Most people that come to see me come to see me with chronic disease, and they want to get healthier. And for a lot of people, switching towards foods that are higher in protein, higher in fiber, this will increase the amount of the thermogenic effect of food. So it'll they absorb less calories, they feel fuller for longer, and typically there's more nutrient density in these foods, right? So ultra-processed foods can absolutely be a part of a healthy diet. And for a lot of people, that'll keep them sane, but that can keep them healthy as well. Like I rely on these foods when I want dense sources of energy. Now, I understand that a lot of people suffer from overweight or obesity. So for these people, maybe an individualized decision to maybe minimize ultra-processed foods would be reasonable. So there's a difference between processed foods, ultra-processed foods, or something modified physically or chemically, and both of them can be either good or bad. So when I'm talking generally about ultra-processed foods, with 60% of Canadians' calories coming from ultra-processed foods, I'm really singling out hyper palatable, calorie-dense, and nutrient poor ultra-processed foods that typically contained added sodium, added sugars, added fats, and that processing has typically removed fiber, certain B vitamins, and obviously this makes the food calorie-dense, nutrient poor, more likely to overeat, right? So that's the nuance. So frozen produce is excellent. Canned food in general, if it's canned beans, is excellent. There is nuance. I'd rather you eat as much whole foods as you can because we see health parameters correlate directly with the amount of daily calories people get from Whole Foods. That, but that doesn't mean that it needs to be 100%. I want to be authentic and genuine and transparent and honest. I eat a whole 100% whole food plant-based diet. I think the world would be better if more people trended towards more plants, not only for health, but for the health of our planet, reduction in carbon footprint, and reducing the exploitation and abuse of animals in factory farms, which I feel is a horrible industry. But that being said, if we stay in the lane of health, processed foods, depending on what type of processing we're talking about, can absolutely be associated with better health outcomes. The other example, other than protein powders, would be, for example, meat substitutes. Now we have studies like the Swap Meat Study that have compared organic grass-fed beef to beyond meat or impossible burgers or meat substitutes. And in terms of reduction of TMAO or of sometimes cholesterol, blood pressure, a weight, we see improvements from people who switch to whole grass-fed organic red meat towards processed plant-based meat substitutes. So just because it's processed doesn't mean it's bad. It needs to be studied. There's a lot of nuance, a lot of nuance that I can't put in a 30-word post on Facebook. But that's why I wanted to come here and just to make sure to clarify that. So I hope this helps. Basically, what I'm saying is that processing of food exists on a spectrum. Some processing can be good by adding good things or by removing bad things, and some processing can be bad because it increases calorie density, it makes it tastier, it makes it more difficult to stop eating it. But processed foods can absolutely exist and and have a place in someone's diet. Now, I do consume plant-based protein powders as an athlete. It makes it much more convenient for me to increase my protein content. And I do know that's an ultra-processed food, but it's an ultra-processed food associated with positive health outcomes and helps me recover from intense exercise workouts. And I work out like 10 hours per week. So just be mindful that there is nuance. Not all the nuance can be can be spoken about in one small post. So I just wanted to come here and talk in much more detail. So I hope this video helped you. Let me know if you had any questions and basically increase the amount of whole plants on your plate, foods that grow from the ground, from a tree, from a plant, eaten in a state as close as the way Mother Nature created it. Cool. Right on. Happy weekend.