What does it take for food in its natural form to become unrecognisable as food ? Take the humble potato, the staple food of some countries for many years, so delicious and nutritious, it is often overlooked as a remarkably cheap and readily available food source. Potatoes contain vitamin B6 and C, potassium, iron, fibre and they are nutrient dense.
The human interference factor turns them into something like THIS.
Via a lengthy process in a factory, every beneficial scrap of nutrient has been removed, whilst it has been bombarded with highly processed oils, salts, flavour enhancers and packaged in plastic to make it last forever (almost). Delicious as it may seem to be, it is not nurturing the body, it is adding to the damage that can be done by highly processed food that our guts cannot effectively deal with.
Food that nurtures the body looks like it has just been harvested, it is very close to its natural state and will go off quite quickly.
Products that are processed in factories will last for months or even years because they have been so denatured that they no longer resemble what they started out as.
The bacteria that live in our gut are both good and bad. A balance (symbiosis) is required for proper functioning of the gut to keep us healthy and this is very easily upset by food that is highly processed with multiple additives that are far removed from what our ancestors would have eaten. With the industrial revolution came a change in our eating patterns that our bodies have not evolved to cope with and the addition of highly refined sugars, lots of salt, heat treated oils, chemical flavourings and preservatives allow for an imbalance of the gut microbiome and the leaking of these foreign objects into our blood stream causing untold damage to our health and mental wellbeing.
By removing highly processed foods from our diet, and introducing a broad range of highly nutritious but also quite cheap staples such as lentils, beans, chickpeas, peas, chia and other ancient grains , topped up with colourful vegetables , fruit, spices and herbs we will be introducing probiotics and prebiotics which will allow the gut bacteria to flourish and restore the balance.
When faced with a different way of looking at foods and not knowing what is nurturing and what is detrimental, it is useful to consider one thing . If your great grandmother would recognise it as food , it is probably ok.
This is where a lot of our food is made.
As opposed to here.
If you are interested in reading more about additives, here is a link to an article about E-numbers.
https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-e-numbers-and-should-you-avoid-them-in-your-diet-43908
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