A recent Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) study found you can save money buying whole foods rather than their processed counterparts. For example, a serving of a fresh fruit or vegetable snack averaged 34 cents, while a comparable packaged snack averaged 67 cents.

Also, while processed foods are far cheaper per calorie, most of these calories are “empty calories” from unhealthy fats, sugar and other refined carbohydrates, devoid of necessary nutrients. You might think well, at least calories will fill me up, but that’s not quite the way it works. The body requires nutrients and will urge you to eat until its nutrient quotas are met. And fats and sugars found in processed foods cause cravings for even more of these fats and sugars! Add these factors to the obesity-related toxins in processed foods, and you can see why they are a major cause for our current obesity epidemic.

We don’t think the CSPI study used organic food, but even if you pay more for fresh, whole organic foods, you will still come out way ahead.

Processed foods are fundamentally different from and vastly inferior to whole foods.  “make-believe foods.” They look and taste like food, but they don’t deliver the goods: the vitamins, minerals, fiber and other nutrients that everyone needs. For example, refined flour has lost anywhere from 70-80% of the nutrition found in whole grains. Processing is the ultimate robber of nutrition; in some cases almost all the nutrition is lost. And fortification with a few cheap vitamins is like being held up and robbed of $100, then given back 50 cents for bus fare home.

Processed foods are also full of toxins: preservatives to extend shelf life, artificial colors to make lifeless food attractive, flavor enhancers and artificial flavors to replace lost flavor and mask off-tastes, chemicals to help foods retain moisture, more chemicals to help the manufacturing process run smoothly. Many of these chemicals have been directly linked to diseases like cancer and neurological dysfunction.

Almost all processed foods contain the deadly toxin sugar, which extends shelf life and improves flavor, most often in the form of high fructose corn syrup made from genetically modified (GM) corn. Most processed foods contain GM ingredients. Hydrogenated and other toxic processed oils are found in most processed foods. Americans, who eat far too much salt, get 75-80% of it from processed foods. And more toxins come from packaging in anything other than glass or paper.

The two causes of all disease are nutrient deficiency and toxins. Since processed foods supply little nutrition and a cartload of toxins, they cause disease and cost you your health. Yet 90 cents of every food dollar is wasted on these “foods.”

Whole, fresh, organic food builds health. Next best are the non-organic whole foods least contaminated by pesticides: asparagus, avocados, bananas, blueberries, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant,  grapefruit, kiwi, mangoes, melons, mushrooms, onions, oranges, peas, pineapple, plums, radishes, tangerines, and tomatoes.