{"id":482360,"date":"2026-02-18T05:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T05:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/482360\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T05:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T05:51:09","slug":"in-defense-of-processed-foods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/482360\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of Processed Foods"},"content":{"rendered":"

Processed foods have become the go-to villain in America\u2019s health story. Picture the packages crowding supermarket aisles: frozen dinners, canned food, soda, chips. They\u2019re packed with preservatives and additives and often blamed\u2014especially by champions of the Make America Healthy Again movement\u2014for soaring rates of obesity and chronic disease. On Sunday, Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would \u201cact on<\/a>\u201d a citizen petition calling for an overhaul of how such foods are regulated.<\/p>\n

But just how harmful are they, really?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the central question in a new book by professors Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg, released Tuesday. Feed the People! Why Industrial Food Is Good and How to Make It Even Better<\/a> doesn\u2019t deny that the modern industrial food system has serious flaws. Still, the authors argue, it has dramatically improved food access and safety\u2014reshaping public health in ways that would have once seemed unimaginable.<\/p>\n

In the excerpt below, adapted from the book, they contend that processed foods\u2014even ultra-processed ones\u2014aren\u2019t the dietary demons many make them out to be. And today\u2019s calls to purge them entirely and \u201ceat clean,\u201d they suggest, offer no magic fix. In fact, such advice may even leave us worse off.\u00a0\u2014The Editors<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1929, the canned-meat company Libby, McNeill & Libby printed a now-legendary pumpkin-pie recipe<\/a> on the side of cans of its 100% Pure Pumpkin. It was an enormous hit, and pumpkin pie became a national superstar. But the can\u2019s branding wasn\u2019t quite accurate\u2014and still isn\u2019t. According to FDA regulations<\/a>, the contents of a can of pumpkin can be made of a variety of squashes we don\u2019t conventionally call pumpkins. And, in fact, most canned pumpkin you\u2019ve ever eaten is probably something called a Dickinson squash.<\/p>\n

Apologies if you\u2019re a pumpkin purist. But if you are, and you\u2019ve just found this out, what\u2019s the alternative? Roasting and pureeing a pumpkin yourself? That\u2019s a bad idea. Store-bought pumpkins don\u2019t have the right starch or water content for the custard. Go to any bakery or grocery the week before Thanksgiving and ask them what they use for their pies. They\u2019ll tell you the truth: It\u2019s from the can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Processed foods have become the go-to villain in America\u2019s health story. Picture the packages crowding supermarket aisles: frozen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[49,48,84,395],"class_list":["post-482360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-nutrition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}