Michael Hobbes Processed Food Summary

Processed food is just normal food plus an insane amount of salt and sugar. The author of the article, Michael Hobbes, goes through the process of how regular, healthy food is made into processed food for longer shelf life and better taste. A normal recipe can start out as healthy but to be made on a commercial level, the recipe has to be made in bulk, shipped around the country, and put on the shelves of grocery stores. Producing recipes in bulk is usually more expensive so cheaper and less healthy substitutes are used instead of what the recipe calls for. By the time the product gets to us, the recipe has gone bad and no longer tastes good. Hobbes claims, “use salt instead of hours to make the flavors come out” and sugar is added for more …show more content…
The article gives nine reasons why processed foods are bad for you and some are the same as what Hobbes says in his article. “Processed foods are usually high in sugar and high fructose corn syrup, are ‘hyper rewarding’ and lead to overconsumption, they contain all sorts of artificial ingredients, people can literally become addicted to processed junk food, processed foods are often high in refined carbohydrates, low in nutrients, low in fiber, high in trans fats or processed vegetable oils, and it requires less energy and time to digest processed foods” are the nine other reasons that Gunnars lists. The sugar and high fructose corn syrup is the same as Hobbes article but everything else is different including the fact that processed foods take less energy and time to digest. I believe this one point has to do a lot with the problem of obesity in that our bodies do not have to work as hard in order to get the energy that we need from our food. The statement saying that people can become addicted to processed junk food also explains this issue because the dopamine that gets released into the body when people eat this type of food. The “whole grain” breads and cereals we see at the stores are not what they are said to be; according to the article “some ‘whole grains’ used to be whole grains that have been pulverized into very fine