Avoid processed food because it is engineered to override fullness. It is shelf stable, short on micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), built on omega-6 oils and flavored to trigger craving. Highly palatable (extra tasty) meals run 44% larger than the average meal.
One cornerstone of any healthy lifestyle change is to eat more real food and less processed food. Real food boosts satiety, the feeling of fullness, and limits overeating.
What exactly is processed food?
When we talk about “processed food”, we are talking about:
- cookies
- crackers
- chips
- donuts
- pizza
- cereals
- granola bars
- bars of any kind
- juices
- energy drinks
Anything in the aisles of a grocery store is typically “processed food” if it is shelf stable and does not need to be kept cold. Processed food does not spoil easily.
The perimeter of the store is usually stocked with “real foods,” which include:
- eggs
- meat
- fish
- poultry
- seafood
- dairy
- nuts
- vegetables
- fruits
Food in boxes or cans usually has to stay shelf stable for a long time. Real food, by contrast, goes rancid fast because it contains fats that spoil. So the makers fool your taste buds. They switch from healthy Omega-3 to unhealthy Omega-6 oils. Rancid Omega-6 is truly hard to tell apart from fresh Omega-6. Rancid Omega-3, however, reeks of dead fish. Of course, this does not fool the inflammatory cascade (the chain reaction of inflammation) in your body.
Processing lets the big food makers produce extremely cheap food. That food is often low in micronutrients and minerals. The reason is monocropping (growing one crop on the same land year after year) and soil drained of its nutrients.
Megafarms use monocropping. To get the most output, they strip the soil of helpful trace elements. By 1967, the American corn farm was growing nearly three times as much corn as it had thirty years earlier. The extra crop was fed to livestock to boost output. The average dairy cow now produces more than seventy pounds of milk per day. The top Holsteins produce two hundred pounds per day, a 1,200 percent increase over the 1948 average. In the same way, a typical potato farmer grew about 63 sacks of potatoes for every acre in the 1930s. By the mid-1960s, it was up to 200 sacks. But more food came at the cost of fewer nutrients, and food began to get blander.
Normally, people would find this food bland and gross and would reject it. But food makers fool our taste buds. They engineer flavors and colors that make us think the food is fresh and nutritious. This kind of food engineering is highly advanced and is designed to stir up emotions. Flavor engineering draws on organic chemistry, engineering, neuroscience, psychography, psychophysics, ethnography, demography, molecular biology, finance, botany, economics, and physiology. The goal is flavors that are built to increase craving. Eating is driven by the hope of pleasure — we crave flavors.
Tasty, engineered food and more food variety stir up appetite. That delays fullness and leads to eating too many calories. Taste and variety have a strong effect on how much we eat in the short term. In animal models, more variety and tastier food also cause weight gain. Foods that combine lots of sugar, fat, and flavor are hyperpalatable (extra tasty).
- highly palatable meals were 44% larger than the average meal
- activates hedonic motivational pathways (the brain’s drive for pleasure)
- over time, eating a highly palatable diet may lead to a weaker brain reward response
The brain is hardwired to seek out the most nutrient-dense food. That food is typically also the most flavorful. But food engineers have corrupted the natural order. They hand your taste buds nutrient-poor food that tastes nutrient-rich. An hour later, your body realizes what happened. It demands nutrients, and your sense of fullness vanishes at once. Interestingly, a recent study by Dr. Kevin Hall, from the NIH, demonstrated that a processed-food diet led people to eat about 500 more calories a day than a real food diet. This happened even though people felt about equally full on both.
Food is ground and homogenized (blended until even) to make every product the same. This raises the glycemic index of food (how fast it raises blood sugar). That holds even if the powder is pressed back into a pellet, because finely ground particles are absorbed faster. This faster absorption happens earlier in the gut, so less food is left for bacteria to ferment farther down. The overall glycemic load is also higher, due to a lower thermic effect of food (TEF). TEF is the extra energy your body burns to process food for use and storage, above your resting metabolic rate. That cost is gone if the food has been industrially processed.
- Carbohydrates: 5 to 15% of the calories are burned during digestion.
- Fats: 5 to 15% of the calories are burned during digestion.
- Protein: 20 to 35% of the calories are burned during digestion.
Eating real food is an easy way to eat more nutrient-dense food that fills you up more.
Related reading
Medically reviewed by Dr. Gurpreet Singh Padda, MD, MBA, MHP
Interventional pain physician, addiction medicine specialist and obesity medicine diplomate.
Licensed in Missouri and Illinois.
Last reviewed June 17, 2026
