From Gut-Brain Secrets.
We forget about the role that food preservation plays in our health, and our food supply, because taste and price are priorities #1 and 2 for most people. We don’t stop to consider the virtues and vices of different food preservation techniques because, having lived with shelf-stable foods our entire lives, and having left most of those decisions up to Big Food, we take a certain amount of food stability for granted.
Processed food purposely depletes nutrients to extend shelf life
Have you ever thought it strange that some foods never spoil – Twinkies, for example? Urban legend says they’ll sit for 100 years and never go bad. Whether that’s true or not, there’s a reason some modern packaged foods take forever to spoil or, in fact, never do. And it’s not necessarily the preservatives. Rather, heavily refining a food strips it of nutrients that the microscopic recyclers of the world consume – including bacteria, molds, yeast and enzymes. When there’s nothing nutritious for microorganisms to eat, the “food” takes forever to spoil, if at all, because that’s largely what spoilage is: microbes consuming the food’s nutrients to decompose it.
Simply put, when processed and refined foods don’t support life on a microscopic level, they also lack the vitamins and minerals to support the nutritional needs of multi-celled organisms higher up the food chain. So, if a food keeps for an unnaturally long time, you better bet the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients have vacated that foodstuff in the refining process. And, in many cases, the nutrient depletion is done intentionally.
The idea of processed food came from the US military
Early in the 20th Century, the US military needed ready-to-eat meals that didn’t spoil for their overseas war efforts. Through their research, food scientists discovered that removing nutrients greatly extended their shelf life because the microorganisms that cause spoilage had nothing to eat.
The packaged food industry caught on to this and developed their own methods to remove certain nutrients by refining and purifying the ingredients. Through a process of “enrichment,” they then add back select vitamins and nutrients to ingredients such as flour to avoid causing more malnourishment than it already does… and to make the nutrition label look more appealing to conscientious moms and dads.
Through this intentional process of nutrient depletion, they dramatically increase their profit potential by keeping food from spoiling before you buy it, which has always been one of the food industry’s biggest expenses – hidden in the food that you do eat. That’s the dirty secret Big Food would rather you didn’t know. It’s not nefarious by any means, because the process benefits consumers in many ways. But, being better informed, you now have decisions to make in how you feed your family.
Our society demands more from our food preservation techniques than current methods can deliver
Beginning in the first half of the 20th Century, the food industry sought more ways to stabilize food’s color, taste, texture, appearance and nutritional value. Food scientists started developing additives to leave in food products to prevent undesirable microbial activity, chemical reactions such as oxidation, and other changes from degrading the integrity and appeal of the end product.
Today, the food industry uses a wide variety of natural and synthetic agents (and a few processes) to extend the shelf life of foods sold commercially. Their ultimate goal being to create “shelf stable” foods, which means it doesn’t require refrigeration and takes a long time to discolor, separate, go rancid or otherwise deteriorate.
Common food preservation methods
- cooking
- canning/vacuum sealing
- freezing and refrigeration
- curing/salting
- dehydration
- smoking
- fermenting/culturing.
With each method listed above, “what you see is what you get,” in that each works fairly well protecting food quality, and its benefits vs. risks are well-understood. But we should take a moment to appreciate what each of them aims to do as its principal method of action: they inhibit the growth of microorganisms that would otherwise make food go rotten. Once again, microorganisms are a fundamental part of so many natural processes that we routinely take for granted.
To illustrate, here’s one antimicrobial phenomenon that benefits us all, yet few are aware of it: A number of food preservation techniques rely on salt to inhibit microbial growth. Thankfully, salt doesn’t proactively go around and kill microorganisms the way that antimicrobial agents do. Instead, it grabs hold of moisture so water is unavailable for microbes to proliferate. Unfortunately, salting, dehydration and smoking foods can concentrate salt to unhealthy levels, so it’s not a good idea to eat foods preserved primarily with salt all the time.
Food preserving additives can be divided into three categories:
- Antimicrobials inhibit growth of microbes that cause spoilage.
- Antioxidants slow the oxidation of fats that make food go rancid.
- Chelators decrease enzyme activity that causes fruits and veggies to ripen and discolor.
Antimicrobial preservatives. Generally speaking, antimicrobial agents and actions are the least healthy way to preserve food because they wipe out microbial life in food – including bacteria, yeasts and molds. And they don’t discriminate between good bugs and bad. Of course, this slows pathogen growth. But it also reduces the benefits you get from friendly flora, enzymes and other nutrient factors, such as phytonutrients often accompanying probiotics. Sodium benzoate, nitrites, sorbates and irradiation are examples of antimicrobial preservation.
When we think “preservatives are bad,” the antimicrobial class deserves the majority of that fear and loathing – and for good reason: Antimicrobials can’t help but kill probiotic bacteria, and damage your own cells, in your gut microbiome. And, even before you eat it, anti-microbials can’t help but kill the naturally-occurring probiotic organisms in a food that break it down into nutrients, and neutralize toxins that we can’t. In short, we sacrifice nutritional value and detoxification to gain convenience and longer shelf life.
Chelating preservatives. Although they sound worse than they are, chelating agents that block enzyme activity fall somewhere in between anti-microbials and antioxidants, in terms of risk-to-benefit ratio. Chelating preservatives work by binding metallic minerals needed in chemical reactions that cause food to transition from alive to dead and decaying. That is, fruits and vegetables need enzyme activity in fungi and other microorganisms to ripen, then rot. Without minerals and enzymes, fruit won’t ripen at all. This process is helped along by metal ions like magnesium acting as co-factors in the ripening process.
Chelators such as EDTA, for example, preserve canned foods by grabbing hold of their minerals/metals, thus disabling enzyme processes that degrade their color, flavor and texture. Citric acid is one of the gentler chelators in this class. EDTA is potentially more detrimental because it depletes beneficial minerals. And then there are chelating preservatives like polyphosphates that should be avoided, whenever possible.
Antioxidant preservatives. Antioxidant preservation operates through more bio-friendly means than do antimicrobials and chelators. They may not be as potently protective as cooking, salting, freezing or chemical preservatives. But many have little downside, to go along with decent upside. Antioxidant preservatives work by counteracting the oxidation process. As a food sits – particularly when uncovered – oxygen steals electrons from its fats and oils, denaturing their chemical structure. When oxidized, the fat/oil in the food goes rancid, and the food along with it.
Antioxidant preservatives block this process by donating electrons lost through oxidation. This neutralizes oxidation and maintains the food’s original freshness longer than it would un-preserved. Vitamins E and C preserve food through their antioxidant activities, while sulfites act as both antioxidants and antimicrobials, so they’re potentially more harmful.
A bizarre consequence of eating highly processed and preserved foods
In the Vietnam war, Vietcong soldiers were shocked that American G.I.s killed in combat took weeks longer to decompose than did their soldiers. Their thinking was: Americans consumed so many preservatives that they basically turned into Twinkies on the inside in terms of decomposition rate (my description of their belief). On the other hand, native Vietcong still ate their traditional diet, containing little to no processed foods.
Food preservation method is instrumental to its nutritional value… or its contribution to disease
Indeed, it’s not uncommon for preservation method to be the single biggest factor in nutrient availability, toxin exposure, and influence on the microbiome. The way food is preserved often makes the difference between: (1) it being good for you and prized, (2) best left for special occasions, or (3) avoided at all costs. Preservation technique is just as important as which types of foods you choose to eat, how they’re grown/produced, and how they’re prepared. Note to self: Decrease consumption of preservation techniques that denature food. And increase your intake of foods that are not devitalized through the manner in which they’re preserved. Heck, maybe even seek out foods preserved in a way that increases nutritional value and gut health, such as fermentation.