Fresh is often best but processed can be practical

Food Day—a day devoted to promoting healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way—took place on October 24. I don’t know if the public took notice, but many nutrition professionals took offense.

That’s because Food Day promoters wish to encourage Americans to eat “real” food—which the promoters define as fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains with an emphasis on farmer’s markets as the source—rather than highly-processed, overly-packaged food.

One registered dietitian wrote an article about her personal Food Day pledge, pointing out the elitism behind the Food Day premise. One of her points was to not “forget that most Americans do not live near a farmer’s market or other local source for year round produce. Frozen and canned vegetables are two of the best values in the grocery store.”

Exactly. It’s time to get real about “real” food.

As Jennifer LaRue Huget reports in The Washington Postarticle, “Processed foods . . . can be good for you?” some processed foods “deliver lots of nutrition.” In the article, Connie Weaver, registered dietitian and head of the Department of Foods and Nutrition at Purdue University, says, “It is not a good recommendation to think people can have ‘fresh’ and ‘local’ foods meet all their nutrient needs.”

Food may be fresh (fresh fruit), minimally processed (frozen fruit), and every level of processed up to highly processed (canned pie filling). Processing is anything that’s done to a food: grinding, baking, freezing, canning, bottling, adding vitamins and minerals, etc. Some forms of processing, such as pasteurization, help ensure food safety.

When considering which processed foods to purchase, the key is to choose (most often) those that are closest to the whole foods they came from. Weaver suggests checking the product label to see if a disproportionate amount of fat, sugar or salt has been added.

Here are some processed foods that are nutrient-rich and, therefore, smart choices: yogurt, canned beans, jarred spaghetti sauce, canned tomatoes, whole-grain pasta, oatmeal, popcorn, salmon and tuna in cans or pouches, peanut butter, frozen fruit, frozen vegetables, canned fruit (in fruit juice) and dried fruit.

Check out Cooking Light magazine’s 2011 list and 2010 listof the best processed and packaged foods. I’ll bet you’ll be really surprised.