Although I do have to say, I think processed food is one of the biggest two-edged swords of the Western diet. On one hand, it's great that we can feed everybody and have lots of food available whenever we want it. On the other hand, the ingredients list of most of what we eat today looks like a chemistry set label. We eat crap and we feel like crap, but I think a lot of people don't realize what they're really putting into their bodies. I know I didn't, for most of my life.
I wasn't aware of the secret insanity of our food culture until I started identifying my hidden food allergies over the last several years (dairy, gluten, corn). As I started weeding out the stuff that bothered me (which caused asthma, migraines, etc.), I began learning about what our food is
really made of. Some fun reading to start out with:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19896_the-6-creepiest-lies-food-industry-feeding-you.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_19433_the-6-most-horrifying-lies-food-industry-feeding-you.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_15982_5-horrifying-food-additives-youve-probably-eaten-today.html
But again, it's one of those two-sided things...I guess it's not really a big deal unless it physically bothers you. Earlier this year I discovered I have a corn intolerance and boy has THAT been fun to figure out...did you know that table salt contains dextrose for anti-clumping purposes, which is derived from corn? That most commercial Vitamin C is made from corn? (also called Absorbic Acid) I thought I was diabetic and did extensive testing because I'd get stomach pains and become so tired I'd have to pass out for a couple hours after drinking a glass of orange juice or apple juice, but turns out it all has corn in it! (the DIY stuff or un-adulerated stuff doesn't bother me, woot!)
And yet, it's only an issue if it's an issue for you. The difficult thing is, if something DOES bother you, it can be very tricky to track it all down because of marketing. So something may be say "MSG" free, but there are a million hidden names for MSG that they get away with - yeast extract, soy protein isolate, textured protein, hydrolized protein, etc. (I had a friend who was very sensitive to MSG & kept having problems even though he thought he had cut it out of his diet completely).
There's plenty of interesting food documentaries on the topic...Food Inc., King Corn, etc. I think it's really difficult to get real, natural food these days...everything has been pumped-up, modified, sprayed with pesticides, etc. But at the same time, we're free of so many pitfalls of "natural" food - worms, bugs, etc. I can't think of a time in the last 10 years I've bitten into an apple and found a worm, so that aspect is nice...but the flip side is that we're constantly eating chemicals and ingesting things known to cause allergies. They upped gluten sensitivity from 1 in 133 Americans to 1 in 100 recently, and I think that's mostly due to it being in everything from bottled mustard to lunchmeat.
/end rant
