Processed food is everywhere.
You don't need to look far to find something which has been processed, and you may be eating fods that are processed without even knowing it.
Pasta, bread and cereals are all processed foods which people, knowingly or not, consume every day.
Almost all food has to go through some kind of process, for example: an apple is picked from the tree, it is washed (hopefully) and then packed and sent to your local market, ready for you to purchase and consume.
But the type of process which you should be concerned about is chemical processing. When a farmer takes his (or her) livestock to the slaughter and then to be packaged, this is completely different processing to a farmer injecting the livestock with antibiotics so it can be fed things that wouldn't naturally occur in its diet.
A lot of foods that are highly processed have very poor nutritional qualities when compared to whole foods which have had very little processing.
A lot of processed foods have things added to them, such as high corn fructose syrup. The reason this is done is to make the final product taste better at a cheaper cost to the manufacturer.
Many processed foods will have been sprayed with chemicals and had artificial flavours added to them. Some of these chemicals have been added to increase the likelihood that you will become addicted to them and then, as a result, crave them more and eat them more frequently.
Processed foods contain high amounts of sugar and refined fat which trigger receptors in your brain, causing you to feel hungry. You can buy processed foods absolutely anywhere these days, so if you get hungry and you haven't prepared your food for the day, you may well end up with a highly processed high sugar snack in your hand without even thinking twice about it.
The more often you eat foods which are highly processed, the more likely you are to store body fat and reduce your sensitivity to insulin. When you are trying to lose fat, you want your insulin sensitivity to be high so your body can tolerate the natural sugar which you consume through natural whole food sources.
There has been a lot of research which states that people who eat more processed food than whole foods tend to overeat, have a significantly higher calorific intake and, as a result, find it a lot harder to lose body fat.
When you eat natural whole food sources it produces a thermic effect within your body. This thermic effect is the amount of calories your body uses to digest the food you have just eaten.
...So eating whole foods which contain a lower amount of calories will actually help you to burn calories as well. That's a win win situation!
Whenever possible, you should try to avoid processed foods and opt for whole food sources to stay healthy and increase the likelihood of burning more body fat.
Check the information on the food you are eating regularly. If your tomato soup has 30 ingredients in it, you are more than likely better off making your own, and if there are ingredients in the food which you are eating that your are unsure of or have never heard of before, the same rule can apply.
