This site is taking a break this week. Hurricane Ian is bearing down on processedfoodsite.com headquarters and we are fleeing inland. If all goes well, there will be a post on the health benefits of meat in our diets next week. This is the second time in the 8 years we have lived on the gulf coast that we have fled our barrier island home. … Continue reading Fleeing Ian and news on the food front

We all have a vested interest in what we eat. Some of us eat for pleasure. Others for health. A few for sustainability. Most of us want to feel good about what we eat. Too many of us eat what we want only to feel guilty afterwards. Eating is a personal activity. Food culture in America is hedonistic, contradictory, and often conflicted. Some of us … Continue reading Who can tell us which foods we should or should not be eating?

Technically Food looks at the world of new food products from a skeptical eye. The author, Larissa Zimberoff, is a journalist who explores links between food, business, and technology. She does not appear to have a background in food science or nutrition but has worked in the tech industry. She is a skeptic about processed foods with a diet that tends to natural, whole foods. … Continue reading Are we ready for a brave new world of food technology?

What a primer on food chemistry and biochemistry! I had not encountered this much technical depth since my days in grad school. I envisioned nightmares of proteins folding and unfolding in my sleep! Dr. John Brandts tried to teach me about the Physical Biochemistry of Proteins. It was the most difficult course I ever took in college. I read Next Generation Plant-based Foods by McClements … Continue reading Advances in the science and technology of plant-based proteins

If you are interested in ultra-processed foods, I hope that you watched the debate at IFT FIRST either in person or rebroadcast online. I confess to being skeptical at first, but I do believe that it was well worth the effort. I hope that it has brought out the issue to the IFT community where it has been lurking underground. A difficulty I had with … Continue reading The Great Ultra-processed Foods Debates

My quest to understand vitamins concludes with this post. In reading The Vitamins by Combs and McClung, I sought answers to popular questions on the topic. What I found was that we are asking the wrong questions. It’s not about natural or synthetic. It’s about bioavailability and biopotency. It’s not about deficiency diseases. It’s about maintaining vitamin stores. It’s not about curing or preventing chronic … Continue reading Determining the nutritional value of a specific vitamin in a specific food

My quest to understand vitamins has taken some interesting turns. Two weeks ago, I learned that whether a vitamin is natural or synthetic is not important. The importance relates to a vitamer’s bioavailability and biopotency. It became clear that vitamins have more immediate missions than preventing deficiency diseases. This week, the third in a series of four, I turn my attention to vitamin bioavailability and … Continue reading Vitamins: finding a spot between not enough and too much

When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, healthy eating was about a balanced diet. We got our nutrients from foods not from vitamin tablets. My dietary pattern included whole and processed foods. Many of those processed foods were ultra-processed in today’s lexicon. We grew fruits and vegetables in our backyard garden. Mother canned and froze the surplus for the brutal Canadian winter. … Continue reading How much of a vitamin do we really need?

Nothing in the subject of nutrition is as mystical as the vitamins. Are they magic substances to prolong life? Do they provide the difference between health and disease? Are they overrated and overhyped? So many words grace the net on the benefits or lack thereof on vitamins and health. Despite my background in food science, I have become confused. I was searching for answers. As … Continue reading How important are vitamins for our health?  

So many ideas; so little time! Climate change looms. It affects every person alive today, and will continue its effects over those not yet born. It’s evil twin, world hunger, is joined at the hip with extreme climate events. Just when we thought we were getting a handle on world hunger, the war in Ukraine deals a devastating blow to food security. Many voices caution … Continue reading Challenges to feeding the world from now to 2050