I read an article in the Washington Post that reminded me of a book I recently finished, Animal Vegetable Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. There is a lot of buzz these days about "fresh" and "local" foods (including buzz from my own mouth!), but as the author of the article points out, a person generally cannot get all their nutritional needs met with only fresh and local foods. Even on a farm where many foods are grown, the foods must be preserved to be eaten at another time. In Barbara Kingsolver's book, her and her family (husband and 2 daughters) ate only food grown on their own farm or neighboring farms for a whole year. They often would pick hundreds of one kind of food that obviously could not all be consumed that same day, so they were constantly "processing" the food to be used at a later time. I love this paragraph of the article:
"Most people might think of processed food as something that comes wrapped in plastic from a factory across the country. But Cooking Light magazine editor Scott Mowbray points out that anything you do with food is “processing.” So the question isn’t whether your food has been cooked, baked, fermented, canned, frozen, mashed or ground but whether it’s been processed in such a way that “what’s left in the package is healthy” and retains its key nutrients."
The following is a list of foods that, though processed and packaged, are good for you, tasty and can help you meet your nutritional needs :
-yogurt
-canned beans
-jarred spaghetti sauces
-oatmeal
-canned salmon
-frozen vegetables
-peanut butter
Check out the article for more info:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/processed-foods----can-be-good-for-you/2011/09/22/gIQA0xqq1K_story_1.html
