tldr;
Processed foods are processed foods. They have no will of their own therefore they cannot be “good or evil”.
Let us begin by making one rule, even if it is the only thing you take away from this post, we don’t label foods with positive and negative emotions/attributes. All food has its place.
What exactly is a “processed food”? It depends on how picky and literal you want to get, but in the world of fitness it mostly relating to boxed or canned goods that do not contain a large amount of nutrients. Chef Boyardee and Hamburger Helper are a couple of items that come to mind.
These foods tend to be void of nutrients that we need for our diets. Processed foods aren’t always void of nutrients though. Let us take a look at cereal, another processed food. A number of cereals are fortified with iron, a nutrient we need in our diets. Food fortification has been around for a while and has been used to prevent nutrient deficiencies and complications that can arise from these deficiencies.
Now let us dive into a pretty popular diet, that if we haven’t tried we probably know somebody that has, the keto diet. If you digest internet videos regularly you may have seen an advert for a cereal known as “Magic Spoon” or maybe even “Catalina Crunch”. These don’t tend to receive the same amount of scrutiny under the processed foods umbrella because they advertise as being “healthy” and “keto friendly”.
Lastly I want to put all the “fit-fluencers” on blast that say “Ew, no processed foods” and then dry scoop their pre-workout or perpetuate the anabolic window with their post workout protein shake. Sometimes they are even trying to sell you their “carefully formulated” (and by carefully formulated they mean for their wallets to get as fat as possible while giving you very little performance benefits, but I digress as that is an entire topic by itself) product. These are processed products but are never debated as being such because they make money by preying on your insecurities while calling it “healthy”.
Processed foods have their place in the world and in your diet. They are typically shelf stable and will last longer than fresh foods. As with everything in the world just consume responsibly.