The Effects of Processing Food

Effects of Processing Food

We as humans eat food not only to satisfy our hunger and provide are body with energy, we also eat to ensure our bodies have the vitamins and minerals that we need to maintain our health. Foods are rich in these vitamins and minerals and even after they are processed we still receive some nutrients from the food or we wouldn't be here. Almost everything can affect the nutritional value from the weather when a plant based food was grown, to the way the food was packaged to how we cook the food before we eat it. So what are the true effects of processing on the foods we eat?

There are several different methods of processing foods such as heating, blanching, dehydration, smoking, salting, and adding sulphines. Each of these ways of processing takes out different nutrients from food. Heating food has both beneficial and non beneficial aspects to it. Heating food can increase the digestibility of certain proteins like legumes, which is beneficial to us. On the other hand heating food destroys other nutrients like vitamin C which we need in our diets. Like heating, dehydration also has beneficial and non beneficial aspects. The non beneficial aspects come from the heating process involved in dehydration. Was the food has been heated the moister is then removed from the food, in removing the moister from the food actually increases the nutrient concentration for that food which is beneficial to us.

Unlike heating and dehydrations blanching and adding sulphites do not have any beneficial aspects. Blanching food is a process where a food is put in boiling water to start the cooking process then placed into an ice bath to stop the cooking process. "One of the major objectives of blanching before freezing or drying is the destruction or inactivation of enzymes that can affect the colour, texture, flavour and nutritive value of foods during storage"(Morris, Barnett and Burrows, 2006). Like blanching adding sulphite to foods, while helping prevent browning, causes the loss of thiamine within the food. Salting and smoking of food usually go together. Salting is when the liquid is extracted from meat, in doing this the water soluble proteins , vitamins and minerals are also extracted from the meat. Once salted the meat is smoked which further reduces the nutrients due to heating. Below is the USDA Table of Nutrient Retention Factors (2003) showing the nutrient losses to food when frozen, dried, cooked and reheated.

Typical Maximum Nutrient Losses (as compared to raw food)

Vitamins Freeze Dry Cook Cook+Drain Reheat

Vitamin A 5% 50% 25% 35% 10%

Retinol Activity Equivalent 5% 50% 25% 35% 10%

Alpha Carotene 5% 50% 25% 35% 10%

Beta Carotene 5% 50% 25% 35% 10%

Beta Cryptoxanthin 5% 50% 25% 35% 10%

Lycopene 5% 50% 25% 35% 10%