Processed foods and Fresh Foods

In one of our past few lessons, we had a debate on 'Should nutrition professionals speak out against "Bad foods?' and there was a point regarding processed foods, thus I would like to share here on some "good" facts of processed foods with comparison to fresh foods.

Processed foods can be nutritious too and in some cases even more nutritious than fresh foods depending on the manner in which they are processed. Frozen vegetables are usually processed within hours of harvest. There is little nutrient loss in the freezing process so frozen vegetables are able to retain their high vitamin and mineral. In contrast, fresh vegetables are picked from farms and transported to market for sold. It can take days or even weeks before they reach the dinner table and so vitamins are gradually lost over time.
Another advantage is processing make some nutrients more available in our foods. Some processed foods, such as breads and breakfast cereals, have vitamins and minerals added for extra nutrition. Another example is fortified milk with vitamin A and D.

Last but not least, processing some foods allows better absorption of nutrients in our body to bring out the functional effect. For example, removing phytic acid from grain foods by removing the bran helps to improve the absorption of iron from a food. Processing tomatoes into a tomato paste or sauce increases the amount of lycopene (an antioxidant) that is available to the body.